THIS week’s column began with a conversation over the weekend. I was, as I often am, in the living room of the house where I grew up and Dad still lives, enjoying the company of himself, my stepmother, our neighbour Graham and our two fantastic family furbags – Mr Socks and Olive, when Dad suddenly asked me a question.

‘Whatever happened to Jane Friggens?’. Jane was a radio presenter from when I was a child, popping up on Pirate FM and later Atlantic.

I met her once at the Atlantic FM studios when on a visit, I found her most interesting.

I hadn’t heard the conversation up until that point as I was busy giving Olive a fuss, but as I sought to answer his question using the power of search engines, it set me off on one of my radio nostalgia tours of the mind as I read through an old Digital Spy forum which was at least partly rival radio staff arguing with each under pseudonyms.

Thinking back on the nostalgia tour, it reminded me of just how much we’ve lost when it comes to radio in Cornwall. See, in December it will have been 20 years since I got involved in planning what would become my first radio project, one at Bodmin College. When we began that, our radio dials were rich with local voices and healthy competition.

In the purple corner you had Pirate FM – with names such as Bob McCreadie, Allen Fleckney, Ian Polmear, Neil Caddy, James Martin, James Dundon to name a few of many.

In the blue corner you had Atlantic FM – names such as Tim Ley, Matt Bunt, Victoria Leigh, Alison Johns, Matt Tidball, Dean Moore and more.

There was of course also the BBC, with stalwarts such as Pam Spriggs, Duncan Warren and Laurence Reed – a station that was long past the days where their friends at Spotlight aired a news piece sneering at the upstart new station in 1992 (Pirate) that only had four journalists.

As a listener, you were spoiled for choice. For a few years, the world of radio was vibrant – it’s what I wanted to do when I grew up. I used to think about where would I go to work for? What would I do?

But by the time I got to that age, the bright flame was just dull ashes. First, Atlantic fell to the unstoppable march of the Global behemoth. For a few years, they were expected to keep a Cornwall specific afternoon show, with James Dundon making the jump from Pirate to Heart but everything else was networked.

Then, eventually, the once unimaginable happened. Pirate FM was also gone. UKRD had sold out to the German media conglomerate Bauer and despite holding on to its identity and local studios for a few years more, eventually it too became Greatest Hits Radio with nothing left from Cornwall.

Ultimately, traditional radio is now like supermarket milk. It’s homogenised to the point where it’s just the same whatever you pick.

And as for Jane Friggens? I understand she’s doing mightily fine for herself in West Cornwall.