The End of an era but it’s far from over for class act

The last music Ken Bruce played on his last ever Radio 2 show was the finale from Abbey Road by The Beatles, culminating in The End. He quoted the lyrics: “In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” But then, because he’s a professional to the last, he handed over to Jeremy Vine on the stroke of noon, and his actual final words were, “It’s 12 o’clock, here’s Jeremy.”

That slick handover capped a classy final broadcast after a less than decorous couple of weeks in radio. Although Bruce’s departure for Radio 2’s commercial rival Greatest Hits Radio, announced in January, was his own decision, it has come during an ongoing rejuvenation drive at Radio 2.

It can be assumed that someone of Bruce’s age and experience – at 72, he has been a BBC broadcaster for more than 40 years – may have begun to feel unwelcome. Vernon Kay, 48, will take over from Bruce at Radio 2 in May.

The BBC then placed Bruce on gardening leave rather than letting him see out his contract. Bruce put out a hurt-sounding tweet about this, and gave a philosophical interview on the Today programme.

So, during Bruce’s swansong, there were some elephants in the room. The final track he’d played the day before had been It Ain’t Over ’Til it’s Over by Lenny Kravitz, which sent a pretty clear message. However, beginning this show, Bruce made a plea not to read too much into the music.

“Lots of good music on today,” he said. “Don’t go looking for any secret messages or hidden agendas behind them, they’re just good songs.” He promised “a normal programme, very very normal”.

But how can the end of a much-loved radio era be normal? There were tributes from colleagues and callers-in, and a recorded message from Rob Brydon. Vine called Bruce the best person he’d ever worked with. Bruce batted away most of the affection, claiming that Glaswegians didn’t like compliments.

And what about the music? Well, of course there were messages, hidden or otherwise. There was Pilot of the Airwaves by Charlie Dore, about the relationship between radio broadcaster and listener. There was How Does it Feel by Slade, containing the lyrics: “Do you know what it’s like to be searching and suddenly find all your illusion, all your confusion, all left behind?”

In his final moments on air, Bruce said his thankyous, particularly to the listeners, he said, who “complete the dialogue”, and he hoped that maybe that dialogue could continue “somewhere, sometime in the future”.

It may be goodbye, and he may have played The End, but for us, it’s actually not the end. And thank goodness for that, because this show, professional, cheering, and all about the music, was a reminder that Ken Bruce remains the best in the business. And his business isn’t finished yet.