Radio 4’s Goldie Jubilee

At last, BBC Radio 4 has reconciled itself to the great importance of the graffiti artist and music performer Goldie. He has been named as one of the station’s ‘New Elizabethans’, alongside the likes of Sir Edmund Hillary, Graham Greene, Margaret Thatcher and the Queen. The qualification for admission to this gilded list is as follows: they must be ‘men and women whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character, for better or worse.’ I think Goldie qualifies for that, don’t you?

But then, I was always ahead of my time. Whilst editor of Radio 4’s The World Tonight I tried to put Goldie on air to talk about something or other — possibly graffiti, possibly the Kosovan crisis, I can’t remember — thinking it might liven up the sound of this somewhat staid and respectable programme.