which device to get?

Why not just buy a smart tv?

Cost

Smart TVs are coming down in cost all the time seacliff I got a 32" for my bedroom for £199 from Curry's/PC World which since I bought it a few months ago has had an offer price of £179 advertised.
Don't you have to pay for subscription for Alexa I pay £3.99 for all music and the cost goes up if I want her to take control of other things in the house but I just stick to the music options.

We just use Google Chromecast, seacliff, to cast programmes from iPlayer, Netflix etc from my phone onto our LG tv. It works fine and only cost £30.

You need a good broadband speed for that though Maggiemaybe, which seacliff doesn't have.
Roku seems to be your best bet, with only one HDMI port.
We had Roku at our last house. We upgraded to a smart TV when we moved here.

Thanks for suggestions.

Roku had been suggested by someone, and also amazon fire stick. But do either of these let you listen to radio?

I do not pay for Alexa now. It is on my tablet but I hardly use it. I thought it came free with fire stick? There are so many options, it's a minefield.

Also as with anything run by Amazon you have to be very careful what you "click" on as you can sign yourself up to alsorts of things

An Amazon Echo, once you've bought it, is free. There is no subscription to pay unless you want to pay for Amazon music unlimited and such.
I believe that you can stream Radio through the Roku box.

Your PC is capable of buffering streaming services for you (running Netflix on your PC) but a standard TV isn't. A Roku buffers but doesn't have as much storage capacity to do it as well as a PC. With poor broadband speeds, I suspect that there isn't much available to you. I think I'd nag my broadband provider a bit to see if they can make any improvements. You said you are with Sky (broadband provider?), I can't find the link but think I read somewhere that they can boost broadband for ‘gamers’, it may be worth asking them.

You could also try using a wired connection to your router rather than WiFi which may also improve speeds, but you would have to connect to the ethernet port on a Roku 3 (I think, but you'd have to do your homework, I haven't tried it).

I have a Roku with my non-smart TV and it works fine, I also have a smart (stupid) TV that doesn't have Netflix and I can't add it, so if you change your mind and get a smart TV, check carefully which apps are available.

I would think that something like an Echo would cope with streaming radio as data streams are much smaller.

Good luck with this, poor broadband speeds are often the biggest hurdle and mean that your options are very limited if you want to use streaming services.

Thanks for all the advice. A very kind person on another forum actually sent me a NowTV box free, just postage, such a nice thing to do.

It was easy to set up with ethernet cable. However when I tried watching Camomile Lawwn on c4, I had buffering problems. Weirdly the actual programme played OK but when the b****y adverts came on, it made it impossible to watch.

I will have to phone India again and try and get broadband speed improved a bit.

Google Chromecast. Very easy, very simple.
I can cast Netflix, YouTube, podcasts, Amazon Prime.