IT IS A RADIO show like no other and she is like no other radio presenter. The stalwart of the Saturday night romance slot Moonlight Shadow on Isles FM is one Peggy Macneil, an apparently quiet and polite housewife from Manor Park who changes with the dusk into the purring creature who relays the lurve messages with a hushed breathlessness that sends tingles up every male spine.
Yet few listeners to our wee community station actually know she achieves that alluring effect by squeezing herself into a well-worn, black patent-leather bodice and stilettos so high she has to call air traffic control before she leaves the house.
I happened to look into the studio at the weekend. The sight of Mrs Macneil, kitted out with those twirly accessories once favoured by the likes of Madonna, and those fishnet stockings – stitched from real fish nets she had picked up on the quay earlier in the evening – while lashing that poor timorous chap Glenn Denny with that monstrous bullwhip, left me quite agog.
If only the dear listeners, who firmly believe she is just a kindly soft-voiced matronly type, had the merest inkling of the sheer steamy outrageousness that goes on while the microphone is switched off and they are left to enjoy the dulcet tones of Julio Iglesias or Dolangie Matheson.
And I won’t upset you by recounting fully what goes on when there are advert breaks. Let me just ask: have you noticed how they are getting ever longer?
When a lovestruck chap phones up to ask for a dedication for the light of his life, that disgraceful woman thinks it great fun to wrestle the phone from poor Janet Buchanan and entice him away from his beloved by playing up her own not unsizeable charms. 
I feel for dear Janet. How does the host’s behaviour make her feel? Still, Janet is herself bound for greater things.
I spotted her on the STV news being interviewed in the street the other day about the Not Woolies But Very Like Woolies shop that is to open here soon. It’s a start, a Sheonaid. I’ll be your agent. Do you want to go on Big Brother? I’ll set it up. Call me.
It can’t be easy living in the shadow of a temptress cunningly disguised as a taxi driver’s wife. To make matters utterly worse, Isles FM has now gone live on the internet.
Now that she is being streamed around the globe, Peggy has unfettered access to unwary amorous amadans from as far away as Stuttgart, Stockholm and, for the very first time on Saturday night, Stockinish.
Thinking they would just ring up and ask for some timelessly soppy number like Heaven, by Bryan Adams, these slush puppies find themselves suddenly ensnared by the shameless shock jockette of Newton Basin.
“Come round here when I finish tonight and I’ll show you heaven, big boy.”
So, ladies, wherever you are in the world; make sure your fella knows nothing about Isles FM. Keep it a secret. If he mentions Midnight Shadow, just make out you have never heard of it, unless he means the single by Mike Oldfield with Maggie Reilly. Tell him. The danger is that if your guy hears that husky come-on from Peggy, you may already have lost him forever.
Meanwhile, and much less dangerously, our wee station is also broadcasting a live debate on Friday afternoon in which a panel will discuss the cases for and against Sunday ferries.
I am still trying hard to think up difficult questions to ask the panel: not that they will answer them, of course.
The day that someone comes on a programme and actually answers the questions they are being asked will be a first.
Quite what our audience listening in on their laptops in downtown San Francisco or in the suburbs of Wagga Wagga will make of the robust arguments for and against Caledonian MacBrayne staff having a day off on the Sabbath, not that most of them do anyway, we hear, we may only find out in due time.
Being 10 hours ahead of us, it will be 3am in Wagga Wagga when the programme starts, but as we know there are nightshift workers, or maybe they are just insomniacs, listening to our breakfast programme in Canada when it is just that time over there. You just never know.
My own brother, I believe, will be sacrificing some much-needed beauty sleep at his flat in an unpronounceable place in Malaysia to see if the Rev Iain D. Campbell can convince him this time.
We hope it will be a memorable affair having the great and the good, and of course the Lord’s Day Observance Society (LDOS), speaking directly to everyone in the hall, to everyone in the islands and, potentially, to anyone who cares to listen anywhere in the whole, big, wide world.
Of course, the LDOS says it is looking for someone to stand for parliament on an anti-Sunday ferry ticket. Do you fancy it? If so, let Isles FM know and they’ll probably take you on, too.
Some of those who will argue against the seven-day service already seem to be a little nervous of not only the size of the possible audience that they will have but also, because feelings are running so high about Sunday ferries, the reaction they could get in the hall.
One of them has written to me to moan he didn’t relish “being part of an audience that could be flash-mobbed by the nasties”. Which is why I have had to assure him that, while the Free Church (Continuing) is as welcome as anybody else, we will put on extra security. Just in case.
And just to doubly make sure that none of these upright, decent gentlemen are pestered in any way, we will also make sure that Peggy Macneil is told in no uncertain terms that she must stay at home until well after the hall has been cleared.
