Shipping Forecast The Controller of BBC Radio 4, Mark Damazer, attempted to explain its popularity: Zeb Soanes, a regular Shipping Forecast reader, described it thus: Another regular reader of the Forecast, Kathy Clugston, described it as "Like a lullaby, almost". The Shipping Forecast has inspired a number of songs and poems. Frank Muir and Denis Norden parodied the Shipping Forecast in a song written for an episode of "Take It From Here": "Dead Ringers" parodied the Shipping Forecast using Brian Perkins rapping the forecast ("Dogger, Fisher, German Bight – becoming quite cyclonic. Occasional showers making you feel cat-atatatatatata-tonic..."). Many other versions have
Terminology of the British Isles excludes the Republic of Ireland. In October 2006, "The Times" quoted a spokesman for the Irish Embassy in London as saying that they would discourage its use. During a stop-over visit to the Republic of Ireland in 1989, the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, indicated that he assumed Ireland's head of state was Queen Elizabeth II, given that she was the British Queen and his officials said that Ireland was a part of the British Isles. In Northern Ireland, some nationalists reject the term and instead use "these islands", "these isles" or "Britain and Ireland" as an alternative.