Is Glastonbury over yet? If not, can it be very soon please? On Jo Whiley’s exciting new evening show on Radio 2, the poor woman can still barely finish a sentence without referring to ‘Glasto’ or ‘the Pyramid Stage’ or whatever it’s called, where everyone who played was brilliant, as everyone always is in Jo’s world.
Is Glastonbury over yet? If not, can it be very soon please? On Jo Whiley’s exciting new evening show on Radio 2, the poor woman can still barely finish a sentence without referring to ‘Glasto’ or ‘the Pyramid Stage’ or whatever it’s called, where everyone who played was brilliant, as everyone always is in Jo’s world.
Like a few people I listen to the radio at certain specific times of day, in my case when washing up. The girlfriend will have previously retuned it to Radio 4 to listen to The Archers; I shall retune it to Radio 2 to listen to the early-evening specialist music shows and thereafter to Jo, who has controversially replaced Radcliffe and Maconie in the all-important mid-evening slot. Controversially, because Radcliffe and Maconie were fantastic broadcasters, and still are on 6Music in the afternoons. They love the music, for sure, but they are both instinctive contrarians who bicker on air as you and I would in the pub. (In addition, Stuart Maconie has a tendency to talk in complete sentences, including subordinate clauses, which I always warm to.)
I haven’t the slightest idea whether or not they were genuinely happy to be shunted off to 6Music, where they get a full three hours every afternoon, but have to play the sludgy guitar rock that dominates the station’s schedule. Maybe they were feeling marginalised and underappreciated at Radio 2, where their four shows a week had been reduced to three for no sensible reason. But their wit and intelligence enhanced Radio 2’s schedule, and whether or not Jo Whiley is an adequate replacement is a matter of fevered debate among some of the station’s more deranged listeners.
Radio 4 controllers, of course, know that they mess with the schedule at their peril. Move Book at Bedtime by five minutes and the letters arrive in sackfuls; shift Desert Island Discs by 15 and you would find yourself under investigation by the tax authorities, with turds being posted through your letterbox. Radio 2 listeners never used to be so sensitive. But the sheer popularity of the station, and the depressing absence of anything else to listen to, have made us more protective of its integrity. When word went round a couple of years ago that Ken Bruce might be dropped from his mid-morning slot, I understand words were had at the highest level. (Actually, I made that up, but I tried it in the pub the other day and everyone believed it.)
The point is that it’s so difficult to make things right, and so easy to make them wrong again. Last year, the BBC Trust, which appears to have an arse/elbow identification problem, criticised Radio 2 for ignoring its older listeners. No doubt someone was lobbied at a dinner party. As a result the station’s music policy has been watered down and DJs must now play far more 1950s and 1960s oldies we have heard far too many times already. It’s only a tweak, but it’s a bad and unnecessary tweak, for there are dedicated commercial stations that play all this dead old music. Maybe Radcliffe and Maconie were compelled to play ‘Young Girl’ by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap one too many times, and fled in horror.
But that can’t be right, because Jo Whiley’s show has a distinctly un-Radio 2 feel to it. Bunged off Radio 1 for being too old — she’s only 46, for God’s sake — she brings an unusually youthful sensibility to the station. Indeed, her defining quality is an unmoderated teenage enthusiasm for anything and everyone, which I’m afraid usually boils down to mainstream rock of the dreariest stripe. In short, she is still playing to her Radio 1 audience, but they are not listening to her any longer and slightly older, grumpier people are instead. Some of them are washing up at the time, and grinding their teeth with rage.
Still, she will probably improve once she has got over the fact that Glastonbury is over for another year, that not all of us were there or wanted to be there, or listened to any of it, or can stand U2 for a moment. I’m sure I shall be singing her praises in five years’ time, and defending her wit and glottal stops when some idiot controller wants to sack her in favour of someone else.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some saucepans in soak that need my urgent attention.
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