Don’t let hip-hop oust the Hip Op Generation from Radio 2

TWEnTY-THREE years ago, almost to the day, I was babysitting the legendary Jimmy Young’s lunchtime show on BBC Radio 2. J.Y. was on holiday and it was my job to keep his seat warm for a couple of weeks.

And so, in a simple quirk of fate, at 1.59pm on the second Monday of my stint, I got to pass the baton to Steve Wright, at the very beginning of what was to become one of the longest-running and most popular programmes in broadcast history.

Steve Wright In The Afternoon feels like it’s been there for ever, part of the fabric of the nation. Soon it will be gone, despatched to the ether as the Beeb goes in search of younger listeners.

In September, Steve steps down to make way for Radio 1’s Scott Mills, as part of a reshuffle ordered by Radio 2’s newish controller Helen Thomas, who is on a mission to make the station more amenable to ‘mood mums’ — women in their 40s. That, of course, is her prerogative. Radio controllers, like newspaper editors and football managers, must be free to mould their line-ups in any way they feel appropriate. I have no problem with that.

Steve has accepted the decision with characteristic good grace, tinged with sadness. He will continue to present his Sunday love songs show and work on other projects.

But this does feel like a fin de siecle watershed moment, not just for Steve but for millions of us who love Radio 2.

Yes, Jeremy Vine has made the Jimmy Young slot his own, presenting a successful Mail-style news magazine programme — though I could live without the bonkers cycling activism and the ubiquitous Guardianista George Bloody Monbiot, who seems to be the ‘go-to guy’ on climate change. Jo Whiley, too, is consistently brilliant.

Yet, one by one, the old guard have been dragged out of Wogan House, put up against a wall and shot. Part of the magic of Radio 2 was the evening schedule, which catered for the eclectic tastes of those of us not in the first flush of youth. Sadly, Bill Kenwright, Don Black and Paul Jones have all been shown the door.

If and when the great Ken Bruce is put out to pasture, the last raven will have left the Tower.

There’s a reason Ken is the most popular radio host in Britain. He presents a grown-up show for grown-up people. In our house, as in millions of homes, cars and workplaces across the nation, everything stops for PopMaster.

This is where Chesterton’s Secret People of England (and Scotland, Wales and northern Ireland) are to be found at half-past-ten every weekday.

When the then controller of Radio 2, Jim Moir, invited me to be Jimmy Young’s holiday relief, I asked him: why me?

‘Because your readers are my listeners,’ he replied. The same still applies, even though we’ve all got older. Steve Wright and Ken Bruce are part of the furniture. And I mean that in a good way.

In a turbulent world, marbled with madness and wokery, Radio 2 has always been a haven of sanity. With the imminent departure of Steve from the afternoon slot, another brick in the wall has been removed.

As I said, Helen Thomas has the absolute right to run her own train set. What worries me is where do those of us who still hanker for the age of steam go next?

There’s no Radio 2 And A Half, catering for listeners like me who still call it the wireless. The Beeb has channels for millennials and minorities, but nothing especially for the Listen With Mother generation, the greybeards who religiously cough up the licence fee for ever-diminishing returns.

We’re not all pipe-and-slippers, we’re still rock ’n’ roll.

Before Covid put the kibosh on it, I’d been commissioned to make a documentary for Radio 2 on the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Isle of Wight pop festival, which I attended as a teenager. It attracted over 600,000 people and was bigger than Woodstock.

J

IMI HENDRIX and The Who headlined. We’re not talking Ladykillers-style string quartets here. But where do the class of 1970 go to hear our heroes now?

Yesterday, Steve Wright’s golden oldies featured Alice Cooper, the Monkees and Cilla. Can we expect the same from Scott Mills?

In the u.S., satellite radio offers a cornucopia of channels devoted to every taste, from Elvis and hip-hop to 1940s crooners.

In the UK, the powers-that-be at the compulsory licence-fee-funded and ‘diversity’ obsessed BBC increasingly ignore the majority who pay their wages. While the Beeb retains a virtual monopoly of the AM and FM frequencies, nothing much will change.

The excellent Boom Radio, aimed at the over-50s, is digital only and lacks the funding to mount a serious challenge. With a level playing field, Boom could give Radio 2 a proper run for its money. It would be a natural home for Steve Wright and Ken Bruce, if only it could afford them.

For now, make the most of Steve Wright In The Afternoon until that Elvis Has Left The Building moment comes around in September.

As Jimmy Young would have said: TTFN (Ta Ta For now).