The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Radio DJ’s exit signals the triumph of TV
SO, farewell then, Ken Bruce. At least until April when you turn up on Greatest Hits Radio. After 31 years, the 72-year-old DJ presented his last show on Radio 2 yesterday. He was meant to stay until March but the Beeb rushed him out of the building.
Did he go out with a DLT-style rant against BBC management yesterday? Did he call his Radio 2 bosses “pinheaded weasels” (quoting Danny Baker’s on-air attack on his BBC Radio London masters when they cancelled his show back in 2012)? Or did he just say thank you and good day, while making a self-deprecating remark about staying too long?
By the time you read this we’ll both know the answer, but listening to his shows this week didn’t suggest there was a simmering fury just waiting to be unleashed. Bruce did what he always has; played music, none of it too edgy, made mild remarks and told old jokes. The same thing he’s been doing for the last three decades.
Still, there was the odd hint of what was looming. On Monday, Elaine put in a request for a dedication for her 70th birthday. In September. “Well, this is obviously a case of buy now while stocks last before the sale ends,” Bruce wryly noted.
On Wednesday, Struan from West Kilbride added: “I’m assuming there is a cupboard full of Ken Bruce signed photographs that, how can I put this, need to be used up. In this time of upcycling could I request a large batch, because my mother-in-law has recently acquired a couple of budgies and the bottom of the cage is getting a right state.”
In truth, the decision to end Bruce’s show early probably makes sense. Rip the plaster off and take the short-term pain rather than let it linger on for another month.
But the outcry over his departure reminds us of
something we’ve touched on before in this column. Radio is a more intimate medium than TV. We become attached to the sense of familiarity, of family even, it can offer.
It’s a form of comfort, and maybe attached to that a sense of conservatism. And so change becomes a challenge. Hence the sense of outrage that has greeted the departure of, first, Steve Wright and now Ken Bruce. In any other workplace 31 years is a decent shift you might think. But radio listeners want more.
Bruce’s exit in some ways marks the end of an era on Radio 2. Though Tony Blackburn, Paul Gambaccini and Gary Davies are all still hanging around, Bruce’s departure marks the triumph of TV. That Vernon Kay should be taking over is another example of Radio 2’s infatuation with a wellkent face. Hospital radio DJs the country over will now be wondering if they have to get a Channel 4 gameshow before they can get a job on the nation’s number one radio station.
On Twitter, listeners have been
threatening to re-tune to Greatest Hits Radio after Bruce’s departure. Some of them might even do it, but really with these things it’s indifference rather than indignation that sees listeners drift off.
I can’t say I hang out with Radio 2 during the day very often. Or in the evening come to that. But that’s because all the reasons I used to tune in – Simon Mayo and the late, great Janice Long – are no longer on the station. I’ve found other radio habits. That’s what tends to happen, isn’t it? We find new sources of comfort.
Vernon Kay, meanwhile, turned up on Zoe Ball’s breakfast show on Radio 2 on Monday morning. “Listen, what shoes to fill,” Ball said. “It’s Ken’s last week here at Radio 2. We’ve got all the feels haven’t we because we’ve both grown up with Ken in our ears …”
“OK, no pressure, crikey Zoe,” Kay replied, before offering an encomium on his soon-to-be predecessor’s radio career. “Ken is mid-mornings.” No longer.