This week I have been 19,000 people.

Since rising on Monday I have been wandering around clutching a strange little booklet in which I have occasionally scribbled Xs and lines on a series of complicated grids.

I am one of 2,500 adults taking part in the RAJAR/Mori National Radio Listening Survey.

Last Saturday afternoon a silver haired gentleman in a salmon blazer knocked at the Ministry’s front door and asked if – for the incentive of being entered into a free prize draw to win £100 at odds of 2,500-1 (still better than the National Lottery) – I would trot through the motions on behalf of broadcasting’s least attractive sibling.

Given the desperation clearly visible in his face as he tried once more to make the prospect seem appealing to another householder eyeing him suspiciously, he couldn’t really have hit a richer seam – a radio addict, a former radio activist and someone (just about) intelligent enough to understand the methodology all in one rotund, sweaty, balding package.

It seems barely credible at this stage of technological evolution that we still measure radio audience numbers manually but there we are.

So all week I have had to try to remember in which precise 15-minute segment of the day I switched from Station X to Station Y.

Thus, when I drove home from work on Friday and retuned from Radio 2 to Radio 4, when exactly did I do so?  I remember I was driving through Wootton Green but I don’t know the precise time for certain because I was WATCHING THE ROAD, STUPID!

And when I wandered into the card shop earlier today and caught five minutes of the Jonathan Ross show, was it between 11am and 11.15am or between 11.15am and 11.30am?  As if I’m timing my every movement in the middle of the town centre on a Saturday morning when I’m trying to prevent pensioners from elbowing me in the ribs, kids from vomiting on my shoes and Big Issue vendors from accosting me every 16.3 yards.

Was I in the butcher’s queue long enough to have heard the requisite five minutes of Classic FM between 11.30am and 11.45am today, or was I probably only waiting three or four minutes?  (If you don’t listen to something for at least five minutes of the 15, you don’t record it.)  Who knows, or even dares to care?  Besides, I had sausages that required prompt refrigeration – no time to dawdle clock-watching.

But still, RAJAR expects 2,500 participants to remember so they can sit down with a cuppa in the evening and try to complete their little booklet semi-accurately.  Mental.

But not half as mental as the fact that I represent 19,000 people.

And by a quirk of timing, this means that Virgin Radio’s figures are going to get a shot in the arm this quarter.

As mentioned earlier in the week, I’ve started to become something of a fan of Iain Lee’s work for Virgin on Sunday nights.  This week, however, he also broadcast on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights as a stand-in for a holidaying colleague.  I therefore – atypically – listened to Virgin for at least two hours on each of three nights during the survey period.

Ordinarily I would have listened more to 6 Music, Radio 2 and Five Live, but they’ve just magically lost 19,000 listeners from this quarter’s figures.  Sorry, people: it’s nothing personal.

Plus, the fact that I listened to podcasts originating from Radio 4, Radio 2, Virgin and LBC during the week counts for nothing.  Because – while listening to live radio streams via t’Internet is deemed to count – there is no way to record podcast listening on the National Radio Listening Survey.

Every bloody radio station promotes its podcasts incessantly, investing vast sums of effort and expense in the format, yet the industry-sponsored listening figures entirely fail to take account of the genre!

While there is less than a tenth of the money in radio that there is in television, these 19,000 blips do nevertheless actually impact on people’s livelihoods.

Heavy hangs the responsibility around the poor Minister’s shoulders.

And Iain Lee owes me a pint.