LISTENERS PROVIDE THE KEY...
Broadcaster hails the views of ordinary people
OVER THE past 14 years, Jeremy Vine has taken more than 25,000 calls as part of his hugely popular Radio 2 show. But one of the most memorable came from Yorkshire in the run-up to last year’s Brexit referendum and was a moment that gave listeners the sense that the public voting for Britain to depart the European Union might really be on the cards, despite all the expert predictions to the contrary.
“If you listened to Radio 4, Brexit was a total shock, but if you listened to Radio 2 it’s exactly what you expected,” Vine says. “One of the key moments in the run-up to the referendum vote was when we had an expert on talking about something and he was followed by a woman called Phyliss Capstick from Sheffield. I said to Phyliss, ‘why aren’t you listening to the expert’ and she said ‘Experts built the Titanic’.
“Those four words were at the heart of the referendum debate, that’s what won it for the Brexiteers. It doesn’t matter what the experts say, we’re going to go on how we feel about this and we feel that it’s right to leave. A lot of what happens now is driven by emotion, by instinct and by experience – not by expertise.”
Vine, who has worked with the BBC since 1987, says the conversation was symptomatic of a change of caller attitudes over recent years – a shift that he believes could have helped predict previously unexpected political events.
“The exciting thing just now is we have got two things going on at once,” he says. “We’ve got the situation where experts are increasingly a distressed asset class. They’ve made a lot of wrong predictions, whether it is on diets, or diesel.
“Separately, we are increasingly having listeners who might previously have thought of themselves as ordinary people, who are now much more confident in diagnosing themselves, arguing for things and talking with a lot more confidence. Suddenly you’ve got people with life experience being empowered to talk about it. You can sense that the listeners now feel that they are in the driving seat.”
Of course, front and centre of the BBC’s coverage of the EU Referendum was Vine himself, whose use of increasingly complex graphics and swingometers has become synonymous with election nights.
Since this year’s snap election, which saw Theresa May cling to power after losing ground to Labour, talk of an early second vote has been incessant.
Asked if he is expecting to return back in front of the green screen before the standard five-year gap, the broadcaster is uncertain: “I wouldn’t mind another run-out.
“Now we’ve got a general as far away as 2022 and if I was Theresa May I wouldn’t call it a second earlier. While the DUP coalition is controversial, so far it hasn’t fallen apart.” And what would his callers and listeners think of a second general election within a year? “The people don’t like being told to vote in a snap election.”
Brother of comedian Tim Vine, the busy broadcaster started off his career in the media by working for the
Coventry Evening Telegraph before moving to the BBC. In addition to his radio show, Vine is also the host of quiz show Eggheads and famously appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2015.
Of course, listeners to Vine’s Radio 2 show know that the topics of his phoneins cover a huge variety of issues, not just the political matters of the day. And Vine says it is sometimes the most unexpected topics that end up generating the greatest level of debate.
“We did something on lollipop ladies the other day and I couldn’t believe how angry listeners were, even by the existence of the lollipop ladies because they hold up the roads,” says Vine, before segueing – with true broadcaster panache – into something completely different: “We also did something about the amount of hardcore porn on battleships, because a Royal Navy chaplain had to leave because he saw too much hardcore pornography, it upset him, he had to leave his job.”
In his new book, What I Learnt: What my listeners say and why we should take
notice, Vine argues that the views of his callers should be taken seriously, whether it’s their thoughts on road safety or pornography on ships. And he believes these everyday gripes can help to predict seismic political events such as Brexit.
He recently expanded on the topic as he appeared in Yorkshire at the Ilkley Literature Festival earlier this week as part of a nationwide tour he is taking part in to promote his book. Since 2003, Vine has been taking calls on his radio show during times of huge political change and turmoil, especially in the past few years with the unexpected ascent of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the US.
Vine says there are some topics that are particularly likely to start a war of words between different sections of listeners; mainly old people and their use of buses, cellophane and Tony Blair giving an opinion on anything.
He says that hearing the totally unvarnished and unspun opinions of ordinary people on issues big and small is both fascinating and hugely educational.
Of such a huge volume of calls there are a couple that particularly stand out in the memory for Vine.
“There was the guy that had been pecked in the eye by a gannet, and the woman who had used superglue instead of contact solution when trying to put it into her eyes in the middle of the night, so her eyes were glued shut.”
Striking the right tone with these callers is vital, says Vine, given the variety of topic. “Some items are very, very serious and some items are very, very silly and some items you have no idea what they are. We did a segment when we were looking at the death of Koi carp fish in garden ponds in Wiltshire, which on the face of it sounds rather trivial, but then you realise that these fish are about £1,000 each, the owners are really upset and they suspect an otter.”
I mention that a relative recently witnessed her Koi carp being taken from her garden by a heron, and Vine is genuinely disappointed I wasn’t able to call in.
More seriously, the show is also unafraid to tackle difficult topics, looking at the issue of gun control in America hours after the appalling mass shooting in Las Vegas that claimed the lives of 59 people and left more than 500 injured after 64-year-old Stephen Paddock shot at people attending a music concert in the city.
At the other end of the spectrum, Vine accepts that his show often descends into downright silliness at times as conversations go all in all sorts of unexpected directions. “We had a guy who found a dead dolphin on the beach and decided to cook it for his Christmas lunch, and we exposed this hole in the law.”
But his passion for the show and getting to the bottom of his viewers’ issues is clear and Vine believes the programme acts as a helpful town square of sorts. “As they used to say, all human life is here and that’s the amazing thing.”
Experts have made a lot of wrong predictions. We increasingly have listeners who are now much more confident in arguing for things. Listeners feel they are in the driving seat. Jeremy Vine, broadcaster and author.