I’m driven to distraction by Radio 2’s schedule change
Everyone knows that good radio is the best way of making car journeys go faster. A gripping drama or a hard-hitting political interview often do the trick, but sometimes there’s nothing like proper music and cheery voices to make the miles fly by. And when you find a drivetime show that pushes all of your buttons, you don’t want anyone messing with it.
Which is, sadly, what Radio 2 have done. Simon Mayo’s Drivetime was overhauled two weeks ago as part of a major shake-up of the station’s schedule, but the results of the Jo Whiley & Simon Mayo show (Monday to Friday) have so far, to use the obvious metaphor, driven me to distraction.
Mayo’s formula of matey chat, cosy features and cheesy tunes shouldn’t have been as big a hit as it was, but something about it just worked – and I and almost six million other listeners were fond of it. However, Radio 2 has been, quite rightly, looking for ways to include more women in its daytime line-up, which has been all-male for the last two decades, and someone somewhere decided to bump up Jo Whiley from her own evening show to co-present with Mayo.
I was willing it to work. I like both presenters very much and the omens were good: the BBC pointed out that Whiley and Mayo have already known each other for 25 years. Well, I’ve known plenty of lovely people for 25 years, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily want to be locked in a room making forced small talk with them every evening.
And that’s exactly what the new Drivetime sounds like. Mayo, who previously kept the afternoons buoyant with fizz and warmth, now sounds dejected, having described the weeks leading up to the change as “difficult and upsetting”. Whiley sounds awkward, like a party guest who showed up having misread the dress code. The atmosphere is polite but tense.
The worst thing is that some of the most beloved elements of Drivetime have been jettisoned. No more Book Club, no more Foodie Thursdays, no more Matt Williams or his laugh. The BBC has received so many complaints from furious listeners that they’ve issued a statement asking people to “give it a chance” and let the new show “settle down”. In the meantime, who will take responsibility if there’s a surge in road rage on our motorways?
There’s no Glastonbury Festival this year, so the BBC – in another burst of brave decision-making – filled the gap with a Biggest Weekend festival of music over the bank holiday. Eyebrows were raised at the booking of Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and a series of similarly expensive pop stars for short live performances, but, in the end, the best moments were the least Glastonbury-like ones, courtesy of Radio 3 in Perth. Percussionist Evelyn Glennie, folk singer Karine Polwart and star soprano Danielle de Niese all rocked the stage with eclectic, intelligent and beautiful performances while the sun shone.
We must all pray for a cold shower of rain to fall on Ambridge, though, where The Archers (Radio 4, Monday to Friday) has been full of the friskiest joys of spring and innuendo. Brian and Jennifer Aldridge jumped back into bed together, their daughter Kate is running “ecstatic dance” classes, Tom Archer and Hannah Riley are getting cosy over kefir, while Freddie Pargetter admirably stood up to sleazy art teacher Russ – who is already shaping up to be a skin-crawling villain – to demand that he keep his wandering hands off his sister Lily. And when vet Alistair Lloyd spent a night with the jodhpur-sporting Lavinia Rafferty, word was quick to spread. “Perhaps Alistair was seeing to her Schnauzer,” said Jennifer when she heard the news. I nearly spat out my tea.
And speaking of innuendo and a good time, you can rely on the Fortunately… with Fi Glover and Jane Garvey podcast to give you one. The most recent episode, a riotous royal wedding debrief, is particularly good. I also suggest you download the Emily Maitlis interview, which contains the revelation that Maitlis gets her hair blow-dried not in a salon like us ordinary folk, but by a female Albanian army general, who goes round to her house on a bike three times a week. Glover and Garvey are just as incredulous at this as you’d expect. They’re a winning double act of gossip and indiscretion, and they make me snort with ugly laughter.