WHEN BBC Radio Solent first started broadcasting it was a breath of fresh air for local people of all ages. The presenters were adult, knowledgeable and sensible. Programmes were of local interest, factual, varied and the music easy going.

Now, it would seem that they are in the main, childish, nave, narrow and biased in outlook and unaware sometimes even of the concept of basic grammar, and now we hear of this leaked memo: amazing!

So the Managing Editor, Mia Costello thinks that listeners are "too old" at 65. Not content with axing some programmes with "older" presenters (mark you, some needed to be!) she has the audacity to foist upon us an excess of twittering girls and boys who tend to gigele, overtalk each other if there are more than two at a time, and gabble their lines. Some of the male presenters, talk with a comma between words, the speed is so fractured. It takes a certain type of voice to have a "listening" quality and I am sad to say hardly any of them fit into this category. Male presenters in the main are so full of their own importance they fail to realise they are broadcasting and actually have an audience! Inuendos abound and mistakes are laughed off with weak excuses. The radio station is unprofessional, condescending, patronising, self-opinionated and appears to exist for the benefit of its broadcasting staff; it treats the majority of people who phone in as inferior. (This is not confined, incidentally, to local radio as BBC radio stations2 and 4 are equally so).

BBC Radio Solent has descended into a pit of self importance I am sad to say and the standard and content of broadcasting have become irritating in the main and woeful to the extreme. For too long the Corporation has considered itself to be superior and it requires a thorough, surgical overhaul to return to its unique place in broadcasting as being professional, factual and fair, and play some decent music!

As one is now a septuagenarian I feel insulted by the attitude of Mia Costello and perhaps she should, in political speak, consider her position.

MR M A CLEMENTS, Regents Park Southampton