Liz Kershaw: The Thursday Radio Column

Jim Bowen is Mr Sincerity; you quickly feel like he is a friend to whom you could tell anything. As he says: 'No topic is taboo. We talk about anything'

"My listeners are recycled teenagers. Coffin dodgers," Jim Bowen told me, while tucking into a post-programme pile of steak and chips. We were down the pub after what he called "another three hours of mayhem" on his mid-morning show on BBC Radio Lancashire (9-12, Mon-Fri). Known as the "The Happy Daft Farm", and now in its third year, it sounds like in-house radio for a retirement complex and it's taking the county by storm.

"We're like a big family, Liz. One woman rang in and said, 'I want to talk about funerals, Jim.' I thought, 'Oh Christ, the show's gone tits-up now. Anyhow, she says, 'Jim, me Mam died last week. She was a big Gracie Fields fan, so I went out and bought a CD. I told the fella at the crematorium to put it on track one. We were all weeping, ready to sing 'Sally', when the silly sod must have pushed the wrong button because the next thing, blasting out as the coffin starts to slide away, is 'Wish Me Luck As You Wave me Goodbye!'" He howled. "We never get maudlin. People ring in all the time and say stuff like 'Jim, I've just been bereaved. I don't know how I'd have got over it without you.'"

Jim is Mr Sincerity: you quickly feel like he's a friend to whom you could tell anything. "No topic is taboo. We talk about anything, me and Sal [Sally Neadan, his on-air sidekick]. When our Chairman [of the BBC governors, Sir Christopher Bland] came up for a visit, we were discussing her underarm hair."

Bland is now off to BT. Could the two events be in any way connected?

"We play music." (Big bands, Cilla Black, Irish ballads.) "We have a daily quiz, guests from the world of showbiz like Jimmy Cricket or Dougie Brown and, this week, wrestlers and the fortune teller, The Great Manuel, so called because he uses a manual." Of course. "And a Red Indian chief. They told me I couldn't call him that but he said that's what he wanted.

"These days, political correctness has made people frightened to be creative. I've paid enough income tax to have a right to have my say. I wouldn't get out of bed to offend anyone. There's no malice. We're not laughing at the punters. We take off accents – Swedish, Scots, Asian. We use words like "tart" and "trollop". To me, they're terms of endearment. We were told "tart" is OK on air but not "trollop", by a woman that they sent up from London with a flip chart. She said that we couldn't say "Sambo". Well, I ask you. I call my dog Sambo. Why not? Folk call me Jimbo. Liz, I'm just too old to change. I've been at it for 40 years."

Four decades of stand-up have stood him in good stead for working an audience, even one he can't see laughing. "Each show starts with a sketch. A dramatisation of a joke," he explained. "You know, instead of saying 'A bloke went into a pub', me and Sal, we act it out."

Lovely. Marvellous. Well maybe most of the time. Last week, we heard an office scenario get the Bowen treatment. Sal's regular role in the show seems to be to play sexy and cute. So she portrayed, with some gusto, a girly secretary to Jim's posh boss. Another sketch set in a Baptist church was totally untroubled by a punchline. Instead, it petered out to applause from the "cast".

Obviously I'm missing something here. I'm told the locals are lapping it up, though as, according to Jim, they "slide further down the road to couldn't-care-less land".

What does the station boss, John Clayton, make of all this? "Jim's great. He's just an old fart." Well, he writes most of the stuff, and boasts that, post-Bullseye, he brought out the real broadcaster in Bowen.

"He'd never done this before. A radio virgin of 62. He had a bash one Christmas doing a few shows. They were really horrible. But I believe it takes two years to build a show. His strengths are being funny and dealing with people. The music and features are entirely incidental.

"I really didn't think he'd do it every day because he has to get up at seven. So he has a driver to bring him in, and then he spends most afternoons in his recliner."

"Yer see, Liz, I'm 63. I was practically retired, although I still do stints on the QE2. I haven't got a contract. I can walk out of here tomorrow if I'm not enjoying myself," Jim informs me, waving across at his colleagues. "Now these lads here have families to feed. But I don't care. If I say 'bollocks' on the air, John'll call me into his office. I say 'bollocks to that' and that's it."

"I don't like gratuitous swearing," he's quick to point out on air, although "that Robert Maxwell was a sod. I hope his sons are inordinately embarrassed at having such a crap father."

This kind of topical debate is punctuated by regular features such as "The Word", a conundrum for which the listeners suggest the clues. Terry from Preston urged us to "think of the sound I make when Sal takes her top off". An elderly chap cheerfully informed us that he'd been on his own for 24 years now, and was now listening to sexy Sal while enjoying himself under his duvet.

The next caller was not under hers. "But are you under the doctor?" Jim chuckled, reading out a listener's e-mail with this breaking news: "From now on, doctors have been told only to use the proper medical term for Viagra. Mycocksafloppin. I'm on a yellow card, me, and I'm not bothered," Bowen reminded us. An outbreak of nostalgia followed a discussion on the complexities of computers. "In the old days, you just broke the lead in your pencil. That's if you had any lead in your pencil. If not, all you needed was a caring hand."

And then a caller with this compliment. "It's a bloody good programme, Jim. I'm proud of Radio Lancashire."

Bowen thrives on feedback. "We counted down to Christmas by pretending we kept a turkey in the studio called Tommy and we used sound-effects of sharpening knives. Listeners were sending in packets of Paxo. Then we said he'd escaped and been picked up by a Bernard Matthews lorry. People had T-shirts done saying: 'Kill Jim. Save Tommy'. The local NFU accused us of being responsible for a slump in turkey sales."

According to Clayton, "He may make out he doesn't care, but he's obsessed with ratings. It stems from his club days. It's like wanting to know how many raffle tickets we've sold on the door".

So, how is business for Bowen at the BBC? "The station's listening figures are up from eight to 13 hours," (per listener per week), "and our share of the local audience is up 9 per cent," John Clayton happily confided. "And I put it almost exclusively down to Bowen."

Bull's-eye. Smashin'.