Wielding the axe

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a bit sorry for Mike Harding. The long-serving host of BBC Radio 2’s ‘folk, roots and acoustic’ show was given the heave-ho last month, and the far-from-underemployed Mark Radcliffe took his place last week. One might ask what Harding had done wrong, and indeed Harding has been asking it repeatedly. He says he was sacked by phone and given no sensible reason for his dismissal.

Ah, the freelance life! I have been sacked so many times from so many supposedly cushy numbers that they all meld into one vast megasacking, but as far as I remember, they rarely give a reason, or at least they almost never give the real reason. On one occasion, though, someone did. The editor in question had taken out an eminent older journalist for lunch and asked him if there was anything he fancied doing on the paper. Eminent older journalist pointed at my column and said, well, I wouldn’t mind doing that.