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diet, it offers up a nutritious daily helping of hard news—the meat and veg—and garnishes it with a variety of other stories—the
amuse-bouches,
palate-cleansing sorbets and desserts. Kings and queens there have been, as well as various other noblemen, presidents, prime ministers, advisors and hangers-on. It was easier to get the high-profile guests on the air before allnews TV, the hundred-channel universe and the Internet made competing demands for their time and attention and before the spin doctors took control of the politicians and their agendas, but the AIH chase producers can still land the big fish when they have to.
    But first the cabbages.
    In November 1998,
As It Happens
celebrated its 30th anniversary. We decided to put the audience front and centre for the occasion, inviting them to write lyrics for the opening theme and to speak up about their favourite stories from the past. Barbara Frum’s interview with former Maple Leaf Gardens owner Harold Ballard was a popular favourite, as were Michael Enright’s lesson in worm charming and Al Maitland’s moist experience with a beaver, but the most requestedblast from the past was Frum’s encounter with the Big Cabbage. As regular listeners know, we rarely pass up an opportunity to celebrate the growers of giant vegetables. The standard line of questioning isn’t hard to imagine:
How big? How heavy? … What did you feed it?
But on one occasion in 1976, Frum’s questions to Farmer McLaughlin in Bristol, England, were falling on deaf ears—literally.
    BF: How big is big in a cabbage?
    FM: It’s five foot across the top.
    BF: So if you measured around the circumference …
    FM: No, across the top.
    BF: You mean if you cut it in half, it’d be five feet across?
    FM: Pardon?
    BF: If you cut it in half, would it be five foot across?
    FM: Pardon?
    BF: Hello.
    FM: Hello?
    BF: If you stand up next to your cabbage, where does she come to on you?
    FM: Up to me breast.
    BF: No kidding. You could roll that down a hill and kill somebody.
    FM: Huh?
    BF: YOU COULD ROLL THAT CABBAGE DOWN A HILL AND IT WOULD KILL SOMEBODY!
    FM: Pardon?
    [pause]
    BF: Have you cut it yet?
    FM: I dismantled it anyhow.
    BF: How did you dismantle it?
    FM: Pardon?
    BF: Mr. McLaughlin, how did you dismantle it?
    FM: [unclear]
    BF: How’d you get it so big?
    FM: I’m not telling you. [pause] I talk to it.
    BF: Mr. McLaughlin, what do you feed your cabbage?
    FM: Pardon?
    BF: WHAT DID YOU FEED YOUR CABBAGE?
    FM: I don’t hear you. What did you say there?
    BF: Mr. McLaughlin, I haven’t got the strength for you today, I’m sorry. Why don’t we call you on Monday?
    FM: I’ll be working Monday.
    BF: You’re working Monday.
    FM: You oughta come over to see it.
    BF: WHAT. DID. YOU. FEED. THE GODDAMN CABBAGE?
    FM: I’ll send you a picture of it.
    BF: I don’t want a picture of it! I just want to know what you fed it!
    FM: Huh?
    The Goddamn Cabbage didn’t make it to air that night. The producer wrote it off as a “failed interview” and stuck it in her drawer. But she dug it out again for an end-of-year round-up, and it soared to the top of the charts, profanity and all.
    Except in the United States. We love our American listeners, and we love the fact that public radio stations across the U.S. broadcast
As It Happens
in their own markets, but once in a while, we run afoul of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in Washington. The FCC have very strict rules about the sort of language you’re allowed to use over the public airwaves. They don’t seem to object to serial-killer dramas or hate messages or selling crap to kids, but they take a dim view of using words like
crap
or
goddamn
on the radio. It’s incumbent on AIH producers to phone Minnesota Public Radio when they think there’s something on the show that might bring censure down on our American fellows, so Minnesota can bleep it out before it hits the innocent air south of the 49th parallel.
    The Internet, satellite radio and