Calling time on Mayo and Whiley’s show? What a relief
‘It’s very disturbing to be actually in the news bulletin,” said Simon Mayo on yesterday evening at the top of the Radio 2 show that he – for now – co-presents with Jo Whiley. The news had broken that morning that he will leave the station in December.
Mayo’s departure from the network marks the blessed end of a failed experiment. Back in May, when the BBC asked Mayo to budge up in his seat so that Jo Whiley could share it, almost instantly it was obvious that it was a mistake. Mayo’s warm rapport with his listeners never quite gelled with Whiley’s chilled-out musical expertise, and as the weeks went by, the atmosphere sounded as if it was tepid at best.
Amid a storm of complaints from listeners in the early days, Radio 2 controller Lewis Carnie attempted to bring calm by saying that “it will take six months for a show of this stature to find its feet and bed in”. In the end, it took less than six months for it to dissolve completely. But brighter days are ahead for all: Mayo with his career as an author and 5 Live presenter, and Whiley rebilleted to an evening specialist music spot, the sort of show in which she really shines. And Drivetime? If there’s any justice, the ebullient Sara Cox, who was recently passed over as the new host of the Radio 2 Breakfast Show, will be a shoo-in.
It’s sad that the old Drivetime is gone forever. Nevertheless, as I listened to Mayo and Whiley tease each other about their lack of chemistry (at one point Whiley joked, in response to the announcement of the new Top Gear presenting team, “Can’t believe we went for that gig and didn’t get it”), I felt my shoulders easing. Mayo and Whiley already seemed markedly happier, as if they were finally having a bit of fun. What a relief, for them and us, that the end is in sight for a ludicrous few months of radio. The irony is that, finally, the doomed show was sounding – though still inescapably awkward – better than it ever has.
On Radio 3 this week there was a haven of golden autumn magic. Into the Forest is the name of the station’s intermittent celebration of the woods through the seasons and the literature and music they inspire, and it has been a joy.
During the week-long autumn instalment, was broadcast from the 1,000-acre Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Massachusetts, USA. Music was performed live and al fresco among burnished leaves, including some especially bewitching cello playing by Parker Ousley, and the woodsy theme was expanded in The Listening Service: The Magical Forest, which explored historical, musical and cultural explorations of the forest as a place of charms and witchcraft. A highlight of the week was artist and photographer Maja Daniels’s beautiful, sharp documentary Between the Ears: The Last Elfdalians, telling the story of a near-extinct ancient language spoken over centuries by Swedish forest dwellers. Daniels demonstrated that the forest is a political place as well as a home for the wild and ethereal.
All of this blended and balanced together so well, I became dependent on my daily dose of soothing forestry listening. Nature is a theme that radio is doing so well at the moment, whether it’s the ongoing popularity of Radio 4’s Ramblings, which has just finished its 40th series of bracing walks with Clare Balding, or Tweet of the Day, which is always a heart-lifting way to greet the dawn. And then there’s the trend for slow radio, broadcasting moments of atmospheric natural soundscapes which, at their best, transport you to another place – though I’ll admit that more than once, when I’ve left the radio on in another room, the distant sound of a glorious waterfall has made me run to check if the boiler has exploded.
No such fears with the enthralling birdsong melodies, crackles and whispers of the woods, though, in an episode of the BBC’S Slow Radio podcast, A Moment of Calm in Gwydyr Forest. The autumnal
Into the Forest programmes were a collaboration with BBC Two’s Autumnwatch New England. On TV you could observe the visual spectacle of tree swallows in “tornado” flight formation and coo over marvellous miniature owls, but I found the air crisper, the colours deeper, the sounds richer and the spirit of the forest much more intense and alive on radio. Who needs pictures? When I closed my eyes, barefoot in my kitchen in the dreary morning, the forest was all around me.