Radio
Isn't one Paxman enough?
Michael Vestey
When it was announced earlier this year that Radio Two's increase in audience had made it the most listened-to radio station in Britain — nearly 11 million people are said to tune in — I wasn't sure if I should be pleased or depressed. True, it has some excellent broadcasters, but to me the banality of the music means I can't normally bring myself to listen to it. I have made an exception for this column.
I can no longer bear pop music and Radio Two's has become more contemporary over the years. I can take the wordplay and melodies of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin in small doses. Noel Coward was right about the potency of cheap music. Unfortunately most popular music since the late 1950s has been even cheaper. When I hear a modern pop song it reminds me of the extraordinary vulgarity of the age. My partner, Katie, does not agree. We have an arrangement over music that keeps the peace. She doesn't play pop in my presence: I don't play my classical music in hers. The result is, of course, that when we are both in the house, no music is played at all. This is not entirely satisfactory but it works, though I do miss Verdi's Requiem and anything by Handel, not to mention all the others. Alone in the car it's a different matter.
In fact, as I was researching this column by listening to Radio Two for most of the day, she stalked through and barked. 'Thank God, there's some proper music in the house.' It happened to be the day that Jeremy Vine, tiresomely predicted by the press to be 'the new Jeremy Paxman', was on Radio Two. Isn't one Paxman enough? He was standing in for Jimmy Young who was said to be taking a holiday but who had been complaining that at the age of 75 or so he was being axed. The dropping of JY has been an annual event for some years, often coinciding with the arrival of the autumnal feast of the Holy Cross.
Vine seems to be everybody's stand-in; I've heard him replacing someone on Radio Five Live and Eddie Mair on Radio Four's Sunday morning Broadcasting House. Will he be the new Libby Purves on Radio Four's Midweek? If I were him I would put my foot down; being an all-purpose broadcaster is all very well but that's what you can remain, never quite finding the right slot. He's an accomplished broadcaster as he has shown on Newsnight, Broadcasting House and the Jimmy Young Show.
There was an amusing moment at the end of his telephone interview with Sir John Mortimer, who was complaining about incessant noise in our lives. The heroic Mortimer was making the familiar point that people seem to be afraid of silence. There is muzak down the telephone, in restaurants and in shops. 'It enters your head and prevents thought.' The peace of the countryside is wrecked by light aircraft and helicopters; theatres are coughing places where 'people go to die of bronchitis'.
After Vine said there would be six seconds of silence Mortimer asked if Paxman would interrupt. This was a Paxman-free zone, he replied. The silence was ended by a truly horrible, bawling number by Slade which began, 'Baby, baby, baby . . .' The producer's little joke, I think.
Vine's Paxman act seemed to have deserted him earlier in the programme when he interviewed the daffy Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat MP for Southwark. Hughes earnestly opined that many of the 6 million Afghan refugees in the world should be allowed into Britain to 'stack shelves and clean floors'. Nowhere did Vine question the cost, the social problems involved, the housing and so on. In this cosy little chat he might have asked if the people of Southwark would like to absorb all these Afghans. Perhaps such questions are too politically incorrect for BBC interviewers, though the balance was restored by hostile e-mails from listeners.
Only the BBC could in the same year announce that a station like Radio Two is the most popular in the country and then make its broadcasters feel insecure. This emerged during Terry Wogan's morning show, with frequent references to contracts being either not renewed or renegotiated. Wogan, still as surreal and witty as ever, engages his producer Paul Walters, sitting somewhere almost off mike, and the newsreader in exchanges in the American talkshow style. Is there life outside the BBC. newsreader John Marsh wondered. 'I can tell you there isn't,' said Wogan. They came up with a ditty sung to `Widdecombe Fair': 'Greg Dyke, Greg Dyke/Please lend me your bike ...'
Wogan: 'If Radio Two is purging broadcasters who've reached a certain age the station is about to be disconknockerated.' Wogan's stream of consciousness is fed by listeners' e-mails and letters. He had discovered, he said, the patron saint of camping. 'Who's that?' 'Pius the Tent.'
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