Letter: One's better than ever

AS A commercial driver I, like Pierre Perrone ("One FM: singularly unsensational", 25 March), hear radio all over the UK, and my view is that Radio One is one of the very best reasons to pay a licence fee. Without their freedom to play just about anything they want, that frequency too would sound like the unchallenging blandness which is 97 per cent of commercial radio.

Without Radio One's commitment to break new music (that doesn't mean they can never play anything familiar, Pierre) there would be no Cornershop, Space, Verve, Run DMC, Nevins, All Seeing I etc for unadventurous commercial stations to plagiarise and play to death. To me, Radio One sounds better than it ever has. Would any commercial station in the UK allow the experimentation of Chris Morris or the cheek of Chris Moyles or the "northern-ness" of Mark and Lard? Not unless it was made safer by Radio One doing it first.

STEPHANIE WILKINSON

Manchester