Radio
The great BBC radio swap shop
Varsity’s new radio critic Alaistair Beddow tells you what’s worth tuning into and what isn’t.
Hello? Goodbye! Another brilliant addition to the radio canon.
It’s been a very busy week in radio. In case it had passed you by, here’s a little recap: Terry Wogan vacated his Radio 2 breakfast show at the end of last year and so this week has seen all of the top BBC radio talent swap jobs. Wogan has passed on his show to Chris Evans, who has passed on his show to Simon Mayo, who has passed on his show to Richard Bacon, who has passed on his show onto Tony Livesey. Got it?
Chris Evan’s new slot started awkwardly last Monday with gaff-prone Sarah Kennedy crashing the pips at the top of the hour before the familiar voice of Moira Stuart reading the news bulletin steadied the ship. Stuart’s appointment is a stroke of genius because her dry wit provides an excellent counterpart to Evan’s cheeky banter, and her very presence will no doubt go some way to placate those former TOGs (Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals) who were dreading the arrival of the outlandish Evans. But evidence of Evans’s past outlandishness was few and far between. During his years on the Radio 2 drive-time slow Evans has mellowed into an establishment figure whilst retaining his edge; whether he’s matured enough to keep the 8 million TOGs listening remains to be seen.
What surprised me most about Evans’s new show was the amount of ridiculous features cluttering up the space between the music. The production team’s brainstorming session obviously rendered many ideas, but surely somebody could have been selective about which ones to take to air. A particularly lame example at the end of the show is called ‘We Say Goodbye, You Say Hello’ and involves listeners ringing up to say hello, only for Evans and his chums to shout goodbye. Evans needs the confidence of his own convictions to eject some spice into the show without resorting to pointless nonsense. Within time I’m sure he’ll have worked out a formula as long-lasting as Wogan’s, but until then I won’t be listening very often in the mornings.
Simon Mayo took no time at all in adjusting to his new slot on Radio 2’s drive-time programme but then he is somebody whom you can rightly call a ‘veteran broadcaster’ without sounding too pompous. At times though Mayo sounded so comfortable that I thought he must have been presenting on autopilot with his feet up on the desk. Mayo’s experience in speech radio shows through in the way that he connects effortlessly well with his guests whether they are politicians, musicians or quantum physicists and so his talent as a broadcaster seems really wasted playing records. Yet, since he is unwilling to relocate to Salford with the rest of the BBC 5Live team next year, Radio 2 is as good a home as any for this ‘veteran broadcaster’.
Somebody willing to make the journey to Salford next year is Twitter-obsessive Richard Bacon. Taking on Mayo’s old slot in the afternoon on 5Live Bacon has more to prove than Evans or Mayo, not least because he has possibly as many critics as he does fans. On Monday Bacon interviewed David Cameron, opening the questioning with the brash remark ‘well, Doctor Who’s not a fan of yours’ before repeating David Tennant’s recent criticism that Cameron is ‘a terrifying prospect for Great Britain’. John Humphrey’s job is safe for the moment.
Jarvis Cocker - the next John Peel?
While on the topic of new shows let’s give a shout-out, radio style, to Jarvis Cocker who has recently begun a new Sunday afternoon show on BBC 6Music. Cocker promised to ‘bring the boringness back to Sundays’ and his mix of laid-back chat and irreverent music is indeed perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon listening to the radio. Writing in a blog for the Guardian, Johnny Dee has compared Jarvis to John Peel. An audacious claim if ever there was one, but, judging by Cocker’s performance so far, one with a grain of truth nonetheless.
Topics: Radio
