The Met Office's recent decision to save money by taking three of their star weather presenters off our screens caused something of a brouhaha, not least round here where we are devoted to the forecast.  We'll put up with a lot in these austere times - whether that is the idiotic plan to run aircraft carriers without aircraft or our leaders taking an axe to child benefits.  But this is a bridge too far.  We love our foggy prophets, you tamper with them at your peril.  Forecast-fanaticism is not a new phenomenon - hard to believe but it was in 1988 that the Tribe of Toffs' were inspired to write the deathless lines:

John Kettley is a weatherman
A weatherman, a weatherman
John Kettley is a weatherman
And so is Michael Fish

Very Gertrude Stein.  It seems that he now works as a "freelance weatherman" which strikes me as a rather unlikely way to make a living.  I suspect it means propping up the bar of an evening and saying "it's nippy out".  I owe a debt to the Rob McElwee fan club (yes - he does have one) for alerting me to another weatherman-inspired tune, this time by Colin Beveridge:

On a mountainside in Forfarshire
The clouds gather over the terrain
You put a hand on my shoulder
We weren't expecting rain
You're not Heather
I'm not Rob McElwee
But we can shelter each other
And babe that's more than good enough for me

Quite lovely.  I've yet to find a musical tribute to Daniel Corbett (he too has an appreciation society) but then it's hardly necessary given his own lyricism: describing the spread of cloud as "a tablecloth being thrown across a table" or the southward drift of a cold front as "a layer of treacle working its way across a plate of dessert".  Thankfully we have the lovely and heroic Kirsty to thank for this site in which she transcribes all of his broadcasts and posts them for us all to enjoy again and again:

If you're thinking about tonight, you might want to think about, perhaps, a log fire because a cold chilly night is on the way.  But it's a decent afternoon; sunny spells, the cows are happy out and about...

Now as older viewers will remember weather forecasts were suspended during the War as they might have been used by the Hun for military reasons.  The service was partially restored in October 1944 but not as a forecast, instead the wartime weather broadcast was an account of the weather from "the day before yesterday".  The first broadcast began: ‘Most people will have cause to remember it because in most parts of the country it just rained and rained.’  Three cheers then to the excellent Kirsty for keeping that tradition of retrospective weather alive, like this marvellous forecast from 15/08/10:

13:26 BBC News
One of those days where you might want to be taking the open-topped car out, maybe sort of put a nice picnic basket in it and off you go.  Maybe you're out-and-about for a walk, say across parts of Kent, along the coast. That breeze there, just making you feel [looks up] ooh yes, I do notice it.

Our little ridge of high pressure just sits and nestles across the British Isles and gives us a fine day. Notice all that lump of blue there, like you've gone like that [painting gesture] with some blue paint and said, 'ha ha!'. That's quite a storm system, maybe you're sort of packing the kids in the car, heading over to the continent. And then, bfff, here it comes [pushes in the weather system], wet weather. So Tuesday, it's going to be the umbrella day [umbrella gesture] if you're going to be out-and-about at the bus stop perhaps, or wherever you might be, heading out.

Awesome.