Paid listener

The BBC Monitoring Service was set up in 1939, as a listening post to radio services around the world, recording, transcribing, translating and analysing bulletins in search of intelligence. It was first based at Wood Norton in Evesham, before moving to Caversham Park, near Reading, in 1943.

Now simply called BBC Monitoring, it still performs much the same function - though there are more sources, online, tv etc to check, and it has to make money by selling its intelligence.

Much as I do. Thus, by monitoring a range of wireless sources, I'm saying one Lucio Mesquita is odds-on to be next boss of the Caversham operation. Lucio, with a degree in Broadcast Journalism from Casper Libero College, Sao Paulo, joined the BBC World Service in London in 1995, rising to be head of the Americas section under Mark Byford. He's currently head of regional and local programming in the West - of the UK, that is.

Lucio could lead by example, by shifts listening to Portguese services, and claims some Spanish and French.