At last I have broadband. Too many stories to relate, but there’s one I’d particularly like to share.

While setting up my bedroom basics (alarm clock, airbed – thankfully now usurped by a real bed) I chanced upon a French radio station playing some very listenable French hip-hop. I stuck with it, and over the next couple of weeks it remained my humble alarm/snooze companion until, late last week, I took a short lie in and actually listened to it properly.

Brilliant! No ads, no DJs, just a very short hourly news update; and otherwise totally dedicated to a spectacularly diverse playlist taking in The Divine Comedy, Chopin, Parisian indie (Cocosuma, apparently), Prince and old music hall numbers. Yes, it’s a little Radio 2 and as such there’s a little ‘Ceefax music’ in there too, but it’s always of the quirky arpeggiated strings variety rather than the xylophone variety.

Curiosity piqued, I turned to Google and learned that I was listening to FIP (France Inter Paris) Radio, which turns out to be something of a cult Brighton institution. Instead of floating across the Channel as I’d first assumed, it appears that it’s rebroadcast in the city. Legend (well, the local rag) has it that the perpetrator was previously stopped by Ofcom, but vowed to return. Either he kept his word or my neighbours have a very powerful iTrip. Brighton’s love for the station has even stretched to a website set up in its honour and a Bastille Day FIP club night which I’m dying to go to.

Delighted, I immediately concluded that any city that shares my love for this quirky station has to be a good one. And that was the moment I felt at home in Brighton.