‘Men gather more useless information than women’
A quarter of radio listeners are hooked on Ken Bruce’s decades-old pop quiz. What’s the secret to his success, asks Anita Singh
Everyone and their dog is conversing via Zoom these days, but Ken Bruce prefers an old-fashioned phone call. “You don’t need to see me, just like you don’t need to see me on the radio,” he says genially. “It’s much better this way. Nobody can tell if I’ve got my elbows on the table.”
Not that his standards are slipping. Bruce has been broadcasting his Radio 2 mid-morning show from a corner of his Oxfordshire home for the past two months and says he has maintained a “Protestant work ethic”.
“I do have to get up at a reasonable hour and I do have to have a proper shower and get dressed into proper clothes,” he says. “I feel that’s important, because if you’re just slobbing in your jimjams it changes the way you approach things. I’m trying to keep it as professional as possible.”
Bruce in conversation is just like he is on the radio: calm and companionable with a little note of mischief in his voice. If radio is a friend, then Bruce, who has been a presenter on Radio 2 since 1980, is the one you’ve known forever and in whose presence you instantly relax.
The BBC may be channelling its money and attention into podcasts and playlists, but the presenter says these are no substitute for live radio – especially now when people are stuck at home, many of them on their own. “It’s that one-to-one relationship that radio does so well. And really at this time it does seem to be even stronger than it was before. I mean, you can have your own Spotify playlists if you want music, but there’s nothing quite like somebody speaking to you live. Podcasts – yeah, podcasts are great, but you don’t get that feeling of immediacy which you do with live radio. To know there’s somebody there at that moment speaking to you, a dialogue between the listeners and presenter – I think that’s a special relationship.”
At a time when the BBC is desperately trying to get down with the kids, launching scheme after scheme aimed at people aged 16-34, 69-year-old Bruce quietly gets on with being the most popular radio presenter in Britain.
He has hosted the 9.30am-noon show for almost 30 years (he moved from the breakfast slot when the late Terry Wogan returned to the station in 1992) and the most recent listening figures, published last week, show he has an audience of 8.22million – one quarter of the nation’s radio listeners. The ratings reach their peak at 10.30am each day for Popmaster, the music trivia quiz.
It has taken on a life of its own: you can download score sheets, and buy T-shirts bearing the commiseration “Ooh! One year out” (Bruce’s reaction when contestants just miss the “guess the year” question). People really, really love Popmaster. Even if you’re not a music buff, you will find yourself yelling answers to the easy ones (Which hit single by Dire Straits has the same title as a Shakespeare play?).
Bruce devised the format with “quiz king” Phil Swern in the Nineties “and basically it hasn’t really changed. If you’ve found something that works, don’t meddle with it.”
Actually, there has been one change. Popmaster has been socially engineered. Where once it was dominated by men, now it is genderbalanced. “A few years ago the majority of people applying were men, no doubt about that. So we started to positively discriminate and choose more women to get on air, and that has worked, in that more women are now applying. We try to keep it as close to 50:50 as we can and I like to think we’ve actually made a difference there and have encouraged women to take part.”
Was the imbalance down to men having more confidence in their abilities? “No, I think it’s more that men accumulate useless information more than women do. Look on any railway platform and you’ll see more men than women taking numbers. Men want to know what was number one in 1957 – most people would consider that useless information,” he laughs. Every so often there are dark rumblings online about cheating, and Bruce admits there is nothing to stop contestants sneakily googling the answers. Nevertheless, he believes “99 per cent of people play it honestly”.
The number of listeners tuning in just for Popmaster has surged during lockdown (the BBC monitors these things via log-ins to the Sounds app). “Even if they’re working hard at home, they’re still due a tea break, so at 10.30 they switch the radio on. People want to have their mind challenged and be taken away from their current situation.”
Neighbours in the village where he lives with his wife, Kerith, and children aged 12, 15 and 18, do the quiz together in a Whatsapp group.
Today, Radio 2 is staging an All-day Popmaster, in which DJS from the BBC (Zoe Ball, Nick Grimshaw, Shaun Keaveny, Laura Whitmore and Dotun Adebayo) and commercial radio (Fleur East, Jason Manford, Ronan Keating) compete with members of the public, culminating in a grand final at 5.30pm.
Bruce loves interactions with listeners, and thinks BBC radio should do more to get out and about as they did in the old days of the Radio 1 roadshow. If he was director-general, what else would he prioritise?
“The BBC is facing an uncertain future and I would rather leave it up to minds immeasurably greater than mine,” he says. “But if the BBC decides to withdraw from too many areas then it loses its right to exist. It has to be a universal broadcaster. It has often been said the BBC is all about news, but it’s not. For most people it’s mostly about entertainment. If you withdraw from it and leave only news then that’s not a sustainable organisation that you can ask an annual licence fee for.”
Bruce is not one to blow his own trumpet. Ask for the secret to his success and he replies: “People like regularity and familiarity and I’ve been there quite a long time. People like to hear the same things at the same time. I’m part of the furniture.” When pressed he admits: “A quarter of people listening to the radio are listening to this show, so I’m quite proud of that. I think it’s significant.”
Does he, though, feel as appreciated by his BBC bosses as he does by the listeners?
“The reality is that I know the BBC appreciates what I do, or so they tell me. I get a little pat on the head and they make me feel valued. But certainly in the past, yes,” he says. “There have been times in the past when I got a little irritated, when the next bright young thing came in and all the publicity was about them.” And then he adds, with what I can only imagine – without the benefit of Zoom – is a wry smile: “But after all these years you look back and say, ‘Well, where are they now?’ And I’m still on the radio.”
All-day Popmaster begins at 7.35am today on BBC Radio 2, with hourly heats throughout the day
‘From podcasts you don’t get that feeling of immediacy that live radio gives you’