Ed Miliband could be forgiven for taking BBC 5 Live off the presets of his radio, after its phone-in audience gave the Labour leader a thoroughly unpleasant grilling on Tuesday morning.
Miliband had just given a keynote speech to the EEF manufacturers association and was taking questions from punters on Victoria Derbyshire's mid-morning show.
The airways didn't quite turn blue, but they did crackle to the annoyance of former red Labour voters who are clearly unimpressed with Ed's leadership.
There seems to be a jinx following Ed around relating to broadcasting - his Labour conference speech was cut from the airwaves, his best PMQs performance in recent weeks was ignored because the news networks cut away from the Commons to cover the Harry Redknapp trial.
First of all the radio-car Miliband was speaking from went dead, which didn't help matters, but he might have been better off with the dead air from his severed link to the studio.
When he came back, the phone calls weren't great. One caller called him David, and those who got his name right were hardly flattering.
One life-long Labour voter - "Charles from Wakefield" - rang in and said:
"He’s unelectable. He’s like Iain Duncan Smith was. He’s got no gravitas, no importance. He’s too young. I don’t think he’s credible. I voted Labour for all my life, I’d never vote Conservative. We need to have a credible opposition. He doesn’t seem to be taking things seriously”.
He told Ed Miliband: “I don’t think people take you seriously. You don’t seem to be involved in the process. It’s quite clear to everybody that you’re not going to be PM of this country by any stretch of the imagination; I’d put my life on that. It’d be someone like Peter Hain with a wealth of life experience [who’d lead Labour to victory]."
A man called Andrew said: "You're doing nothing at all to get my vote back, you're not acknowledging the damage you've done. You're all Oxbridge educated, you don't know anything about the life I lead, you don't just have a clue."
"I want you to lead, you're not leading."
Another caller named David said: "You fail to inspire, you fail to get people looking forward. I don't mean to be cruel…it's so important the job you are doing…I just don't think you can do the job."
Ed Miliband took the comments on the chin and with fairly good humour.