Back in December, Britain’s deputy prime minister advised people in the UK to stock up on things like battery-powered radios, torches, candles and first aid kits (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/05/britons-should-stock-up-on-torches-and-candles-in-case-of-power-cuts-says-oliver-dowden). And while I hope we are not at that stage – yet – it did make me think that having a working battery radio might be no bad thing. Today I dug out my radio – a Sony ICF-SW7600G that I was given as a wedding present, and still one of the most beautiful products that Sony has ever made, in my opinion. I went to Tesco and bought some batteries, plugged them in and switched it on.

The sound from it was still beautiful, and I was enjoying listening to it. But then I touched the back of it – and yelped! It was ridiculously hot – and I switched it off immediately.

Opening the battery compartment, I saw that one battery was clearly not right. It was very, very hot to the touch. One rule of thumb in electronics is that if you can keep a fingertip on a component, it’s okay. If it’s too hot to touch, you may have a problem. This battery was definitely too hot to touch!

I swapped to a completely different set of four batteries (the set I bought contained eight batteries) and tried again – this time the radio worked perfectly with no “thermal anomalies”. But I think these batteries may be going back to Tesco!