McASKILL, ROBIN (1975 - ) Broadcaster. I've now enjoyed a ten year association with Radio Tay, first as a regular caller and then a featured guest on the Rob McAskill show. My relationship with Rob, unfortunately, has never fully recovered from 2005's race hate contention. Personal differences aside, I think the show would benefit from a more knowledgeable co-host. Rob's facetious manner is completely inappropriate to the mood of the show. Should anyone call in with a genuinely interesting point, Rob will inevitably reach for the button that plays birdsong, an offensive allusion to the caller's state of mental health. This would be bad enough if the jester's cape suited him, but his on-air persona is so strained that the listener can only feel embarrassed for him. I'm not sure what compels him to posture as a bantering man of the people. My own investigations disclosed, he is a son of the manse and the recipient of an expensive education. This information, light heartedly imparted at last year's Christmas show, caused him to turn beet red and stammer something about a scholarship.

At times Rob is openly resentful of my presence, foisted upon him, I suspect, by station managers who recognised his inability to carry a show unassisted. When it suits him, however, he enjoys referring to us as some kind of double act. On these occasions he calls me 'H', and encourages me to refer to him by his own self devised nickname 'Rascal' which, in its modern connotation, indicating a likeable scallywag, is appropriate only in that it rhymes with his name. Until recent times, of course, it would be assumed that a man walking around with the word 'Rascal' pressed onto the back of his jacket had been condemned to carry a terrible warning. One would have expected the brand to be accompanied by physical mutilations, severed thumbs, perhaps, or slit nostrils. Rob, however, wears his customised outfits with every appearance of self-satisfaction. See Also TOBIN, MIRIAM

 

Home

Glossary

Hamilton Live

Casebook

 

Contact