I’ve been having an affair for years and it has practically driven my husband insane. “You’re always sneaking off with that bloody thing,” he says, gesturing at my battery-operated navy blue Roberts radio.

There’s a reason for this. My husband detests Radio 4, he’s not keen on 3 either, 2 at a push (so long as it’s Jonathan Ross) and 1 under sufferance, because he still likes to think he’s “down with the kids”. The fact that my husband is actually “down” on the radio has, I’ll admit, led to my treating it like some form of illicit substance to be abused on a daily basis, either in the bath, in the kitchen late at night or more often than not when I’m alone in my Mini (me and Johnny Vaughan at Capital have a good thing going on).

Curiously, my husband does not feel the same way about American radio stations. When in the US, our car radio is constantly emitting some dull MOR station or other; in the kitchen NPR (National Public Radio) is welcome at all hours and when that’s not playing, his favourite radio station in the world, WEHM (96.9), is.

So you can imagine his joy when I arrived home with my Pico wi-fi DAB digital radio, which can transmit up to 9,000 stations from across the globe, 1,525 of which are from America.

It takes a bit of setting up, does the Pico, but once you’ve tuned in to your wi-fi, there’s no end to your listening pleasures.

You can listen to Afghanistani chat, Jamaica reggae, Burmese propaganda, even Chinese traffic reports. The world is your oyster (or should I say, your radio). I have never understood why more people do not eschew the pointless pap of television for the entertaining, informative, sometimes spectacularly random and oftentimes moving output on the radio.

In Pico’s case you don’t need to be in an area covered by digital transmission to feel the benefits, and you can choose the option of FM (unusual for a wi-fi radio and important for those of us who care about FM). Pico takes up so little bandwidth that you can surf the web and listen simultaneously.

I realise that I sound like an infomercial, but truly I am passionate about radio, particularly this radio (which also happens to be splashproof – very handy for the Sunday morning Archers omnibus/bath combo). Pico is selling thousands of radios a month, so I guess there must be others of you out there who agree with me.

You can also stream your MP3 player through the Pico, but we haven’t worked out how to do that yet. We haven’t found WEHM either, but my husband remains cheery at the prospect.

coolhunter@thetimes.co.uk

Pico radios are available from www.colloco.co.uk

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