RECORDING songs from the radio and saving them as MP3s? Surely that's not allowed.

We like radio. As entertainment forms go, we're fond of anything which can be enjoyed whilst engaged in something else. Television is a demanding beast, its evil hypnotic draw able to destroy an entire evening in one fell swoop. Videogames are even worse, absorbing whole weekends with their loud blipping noises and flashing lights. And let's not even start on books, with their tiresome reliance on the reader's imagination to facilitate the creation of mental images. How cheap is that? Anyone would think there was a war on.

Radio's different because it only uses your ears. This leaves your eyes free to undertake their vital role in assisting movement and action, allowing you, the listener, to continue doing something useful with your time - polishing brass, hammering, spinning around in small circles - while simultaneously staving off the terrifying internal chatter of the naked human mind. Everyone's a winner.

But picture this. It's a sunny Saturday afternoon, and you're standing in your garden with the radio blaring out. Perhaps you're having a delicious ice cool beer, or a mojito, or maybe just some water because you're poor. It's a beautiful, lazy moment of indulgence, and it's rounded off perfectly by a brilliant new tune throbbing out of your speakers. For three minutes, all your troubles are forgotten. Then, as swiftly as it arrived, the music disappears, to be replaced by the hideous warbling of some meek singer-songwriter. The mood is shattered and, despairing, you throw yourself headfirst into your lawnmower. Nobody attends your funeral.

A little planning can prevent this tragedy. There's a weird new radio device from Intempo called the Rebel, which records 40 of the most played songs from your radio station of choice, strips out the DJ and the ads then pipes the result into your MP3 player via USB. We're not sure what method it uses to achieve this technical feat, but it sounds ungodly. Digital radio and web radio can be given the same treatment with judicious use of a line-in cable, and incredibly the process is actually legal. We're also not sure what method it uses to achieve legality either, but it sounds equally ungodly. That or Intempo has some dirt on a high ranking police officer. Either way, it's a novel way of getting more out of your radio, and one more string to the bow of one of our favourite wastes of time.