The car hadn't been broken into - I'd just lent it to my brother who'd moved the radio to thwart theft - but the prospect of a journey to work without radio filled me with far more annoyance than it should have done.

It seems that even after a couple of months' driving, I have become dependent on my routines.

We don't like these routines to be disrupted, especially in the mornings.

My father, one of the most temperate, good-humoured people I've ever known, used to turn into the Incredible Hulk if, preparing to shave in the morning, he discovered that one of his teenage sons had nicked his shaving foam. You might not think the prospect of crossing the landing to steal it back would be such an arduous one. But that would be to underestimate the extent to which we become attached to our rituals.

Still, none of this explains why I was so disturbed by being deprived of my radio for the morning. Because I thought the radio just annoyed me.

I mentioned last week that I'd got into the bad habit of changing the station while driving, and on my silent journey the other day, it was this that I missed as much as the actual radio content. The satisfaction of my listening experience lies in becoming exasperated with one station and turning to the next, only to become even more exasperated by that one.

Take Radio One, for instance. Populated by egotists who make me feel old (not in the sense of wistfully pining for my lost youth, but in the sense of despairing at the way young people are heading these days), so much of it is puerile, juvenile drivel. On a good day, I can lower myself to its level, and even begin to enjoy the company of Chris Moyles and Scott Mills - though never, of course, as much as they enjoy themselves.

But more often than not I wind up swearing, shaking my head in aloof despair. So I move up a station - only to crash into the wall of banality and tedium that is Radio Two.

There's Steve Wright, with his forced laughter at his own non-jokes, the crushing irrelevance of the "factoids", the stiflingly unimaginative playlist that flogs the life out of classic songs through bone-headed repetition.

All too often the cosy curmudgeonly tones of Terry Wogan clash with my mood. And don't get me started on the bring-back-the-birch bleaters who phone in to Jeremy Vine.

I haven't figured out how to get my radio to play anything else, other than Radio Four.

Ah! This is more like it, I think - erudition, reasonable voices, arty debate and decorous political scragging. It's quality stuff.

Which is why I sometimes can't stand it. I become impatient with its civilised tones and start pining for Chris Moyles and his chav gags.

Far better was the time a few days ago when a posh lady on Radio Four argued, in the hushed tones of the passive-aggressive left, that maybe one reason why we were facing a global terrorist threat was that some tactless people insisted on writing books arguing the case for atheism.
Great! A life-affirming jolt of rage coursed through me. I was shouting and swearing at the radio.

I was annoyed, and therefore happy. Which brings us to the curious paradox of the missing radio. By removing it, my brother had deprived me of a way of annoying myself and, well, it was annoying.
awolstenholme@ywng.co.uk