Psychologists – and, indeed, psychiatrists – reckon that all of us, certainly the healthiest of us, construct myths about ourselves and our past. Ironically, the most mentally healthy people construct a version of their past which gives them support and succour. It is an existentialist point I suppose, but to an extent if we imagine the past to be something then that in a way is what it is, for what is the past but somebody else's perception and version of events and people?
The construction of myths is well recognised to be a powerful force in national identity. The British, for example, like to think that they are unique in their courage and forbearance in the Blitzkrieg in World War II. Yet, diaries and other accounts of German civilians during their far worse aerial bombardment provide much the same narrative; they too were united against a common enemy.
Hilariously, last week-end one of the Australian newspapers, reflecting not only on the Commonwealth conference in Perth but also on the announcement of the end of primogeniture in deciding the succession to the British monarchy, has discovered that if the proposed rules had been in place over the last couple 100 years or so, the current British monarch would be a homoeopathic in Halle, Germany. I'm tempted to say "you couldn't make it up", but of course we did during World War I, when our German Royal Family changed their name and effectively renounced their entire national heritage, being as Britain was then fighting a country headed by one of their cousins.
Just as we were coming to terms with all this came the announcement of the death, two days before his 85th birthday, one of the best-known and certainly most extraordinary figures in our national life. Sir Jimmy Savile created so many myths about himself and assumed such an extraordinary impenetrable character, it was impossible to know the truth about him or virtually any aspect of his life. We know that he was the youngest of seven children born in poverty in 1926: we know that he was a "Bevin boy" sent down to work in the pit in World War II, during which time an accident nearly crippled for life and we know that he was a full-time professional wrestler. There are some other facts that many the newspapers and other media got wrong but can be verified as incorrect: for example, The Observer obituary stated that he worked on radio Caroline but he never worked on any of the pirate radio ships, although he did visit radio Caroline North in 1965 and, according to Keith Skues's book, Pop Went the Pirates, was full of admiration congenial circumstances in which the seafaring and seasick disc jockeys worked. BBC online so that he was one of the first DJs on Radio One – complete rubbish as a quick check on the line-up of that famous picture at all souls Church opposite broadcasting house in London would testify, as well as a scan of the early schedules which are easily seen online. Skues's book also quotes his reaction to the launch of radio one, saying it could never replace the pirates because one station had replaced the variety produced by so many.
The biggest unknowns and intrigues are to do with his private life and sexual proclivities. I do know that a number of journalists on national newspapers had a number of files on him that they wanted to run as a story over some decades, but he put great legal pressure on them – he refers to this one occasion in his autobiography – not to run it and it seems that usually, they couldn't make it (ahem!) 'stand up'. The Sun did in 2008, and he sued - apparently with success. Of course, you can't libel the dead, so we might expect a flurry of stories in the weeks and months ahead. I think his existentialist self has been lucky in that, due to the public opprobrium over ‘Hack-gate’ the newspapers are being very careful about what they print at the moment – even about dead men and not wishing to further alienate the public who often feel it is unfair to attack people once they are unable to answer back. We do know that he was devoted to his mother – whom he called The Duchess - to an extent which I think most of us would regard as unhealthy. If ever there was a case to support Freud's theories psychoanalysts and Jimmy Savile is surely it!
We don't even know, as he often boasted, whether he was in fact the first person to regularly spin records professionally as the main form of entertainment for the evening dance halls and ballrooms, but no one else has made this claim so we can be pretty sure that was true. This period though is one of the murkiest in his past. He hints in his autobiography and has subsequently claimed various interviews that he was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a thug. A tough man in a tough and tenuous business, he would "sort out" any trouble and any rivals. They called him The Godfather, he boasted.
He says that, whilst he never actually had anyone beaten up, some of the stuff that he did give him these 10 years in prison.
And was he, as has often been claimed, the first radio DJ to ditch scripts and talk off-the-cuff? That's more questionable, given that was on Radio Luxembourg which at the time was in thrall to dedicated, sponsored slots from the big four record companies.
This strange arrangement, which did not seem to cause a great deal of comment at the time – probably because Radio Luxembourg and the other pre-war continental commercial stations had established the idea of sponsored programming being a normal part of commercial radio – was commented on several times by Pete Townshend, who gave the inaugural John Peel lecture on Monday night at the annual Radio Festival, the home of which is now near the futuristic Media City in Salford.
It was a privilege to be in the audience – at the first opportunity I scrambled into the hall to get the nearest available non-reserved seat directly opposite the lectern and mic set up for The Who’s lead songwriter and guitarist.
I think Pete Townshend is one of the greatest creative forces we’ve had in Britain in the post-war era, with a takent which is spread well beyond being in one of the greatest rock bands of all time and somebody who, moreover, thinks, speaks and writes extremely intelligently about rock music and other forms of art. His interview with Jon Savage in December's Mojo magazine for example is well worth reading. And the link with John Peel – who could hardly contrast more with Jimmy Savile – is especially strong in my case, for the moment that I really appreciated Peel was when he played the whole of what I still think of as side two of Quadrophenia straight off the back of the 11 o'clock news one night. I can't remember hearing that done – certainly not on the BBC – before, but what I didn't know ungtil the Toiwnshgend lecture (introduced by Peel's eldest son, Tom Ravenscroft, himself now a radio DJ), was that Peel had been an important part of the production of the album, having helped Pete mix the radio distort bit at the end of Cut My Hair.
But The Who were clearly fascinated by radio and especially commercial radio, having produced the hilarious The Who Sell Out album, which mixes their music tracks with jingles and commercials from the offshore pirate stations of the mid-1960s, notably Radio London – the most commercially successful of those stations and which was financed and programmed by Texans. And ironically, although Peel came to be the 'antithesis of the 'Boss Jock', fast talking, jingle playing top 40 radio style that Radio London so successfully produced - albeit in a slightly watered-down form for the sensibilities of English listeners - he did in fact in Dallas on top 40 station, where a lot of those classic Top 40 radio ideas came together in the early 1960s.
Now, I have met both John Peel and Jimmy Savile, although if I said I'd worked with them both that would be pushing it a bit, except that I was a full-time employee of the British Forces Broadcasting Service during the Peel period in which John Peel’s Music was recorded at the London HQ and broadcast on its stations around the world; I met Jimmy Savile at the time he was presenting a syndicated golden oldies radio programme, which I bought and programmed on Sunday lunchtimes when I was Program Controller at Radio City Gold in Liverpool.
They could hardly be more contrasting characters and it won't surprise you to learn that I felt a far greater affinity with John Peel than I did Jimmy Savile! Like many of the best radio presenters, andDJs John Peel was shy, but unlike most radio presenters he had absolutely no interest in the showbiz side and was especially unusualat Radio One in not pursuing the huge amounts of money to be gained by opening supermarkets and the like. Although he did, not eschew all the financial games that could be made if you were a well-known and unique voice, earning quite spectacular amounts of money for voicing commercials for lavatory paper and the like!
But when I met him at the BFBS studios in London and was allowed to sit in on his programme, I kept very quiet for the first 20 minutes or so as I know how sensitive many radiopersonalities are to breaking that magic that somehow they create in inbetween microphone and listener. Much as I wanted to chat to him, my inner voice told me to shut up and wait to be spoken to!
After a while, he looked up at me and said: "I do like reggae records Richard, don't you?" I nodded and tried to think of some pointed and intelligent reason for my liking of such music, before he continued: "they have such pretty labels".
I think that was his very kind way of telling me that I shouldn't be overawed by his status and reputation, as someone who would bring to the attention of the great British public – and indeed the publics of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium and other countries within the transmitter range of the BFBS Germany (according to independent research then reaching some 5 million citizens across Europe in addition to that those for whom it was intended; British servicemen and women and their families and civil servants working for the Armed Forces) so many artistes and so many different kinds of music.
Indeed, even way beyond the audiences for the BFBS stations was his BBC World Service programme, which had extraordinary number of listeners in, I think, every continent. But although he took that side of his work extremely seriously he didn't take himself too seriously and that is what I think people perhaps loved about it more than anything else.
Anyway, I obviously hadn't made a complete idiot of myself as, at the end of the programme he said he he was going off to Radio One and invited me to sit in on his programme there at Broadcasting House in Portland Place – which, in deference to the audience in Germany he’d just been addressing, he termed ‘Portland Plaza’, which for some reason (probably giddiness at finding such a rapport with one whom I so admired), I found hilarious!
But what I also liked about John Peel was the fact that he didn't just make a few extra quid by recording programmesfor BFBS and then forgetting about the Services audience, he actually went out to Germany and other places to the big summer showsand the like. I think it was because he never forgot his time as a conscript – he must have been amongst the last of the National Servicemen - and he realised that although after 1960 British troops were all volunteers in theory, in reality if you were, say, a working-class lad from South Yorkshire, your options were somewhat limited. The Army provided a regular income, food, board and great mates, in return for what was, at that time, the rather limited risk of receiving an enemy bullet to the head.
There are countless tales of how John Peel connected with those otherwise feeling disconnected, isolated, insecure and alone – just as the young John Ravenscroft had been, at private school, in the army and – the reason for him making the foray to Dallas – to be a representative of his father’s firm. (He was working on radio there when JFK was assassinated and in fact had met and shaken hands with both President Kennedy and LBJ on a previous visit they had made to the city - the photograpbhic evidence of this he liked to flourish to doubters at social gatherings!). Having all these experiences - the banal and the bizarre - made him able to relate so well to people through the radio.
Radio presenting IS an artifice of course; it is so strange to be able to make that connection from the microphone. It's only when you stop doing it you realise what a weird job it is!
For some of the time when I was at the BFBS Berlin and did the Breakfast Show, there literally would be nobody else in the studio, indeed the only person I saw first thing in the morning and for the first and a half of the programme orso was the security guard came round with his German Shepherd dog to check that the IRA had not left a ‘present’ overnight. To go into the studio first thing in the morning, open a microphone and make that connection with the unseen audience - then on both sides of the divided city - was an odd thing. I also had, along with the other presenters, a late-night show every other week (just as Peel had to 'double up' on the Midnight-2 am slot on Radio London, where he made his reputation with The Perfumed Garden Show) and on at least two occasions I repeated the same thing that I'd heard John Peel do all those years ago; play the whole of oneside of Quadrophenia.
So, John Peel made you relax but it won't surprise you to know that that was certainly not the case with 'Sir Jimmy Jangles’. He came up to Liverpool as a kind of promotional trip to promote his show and for us local radio types to bask in his reflected glory and have a bit of national celebrity stardust sprinkled over us as we gathered in the main studiofor the team photo, which I'll dig out and perhaps post of online on another occasion.
He came up with the producer of the show, who I knew because we both worked at Metro Radio in Newcastle upon Tyne. Sir Jimmy never actually spun a record on the radio in his life – he was always ‘tech op driven’. Indeed, this syndicated show was contrived from a series of links recorded by the producer at the flat in Leeds and then later mixed with the music. He could knock off a few shows in one afternoon at a time long before ‘voice tracking’ became common!
Savile's first words to me when greeted him in reception was: "where’s the photographer?" I replied that we hired a photographer to come along and take some shots in a little while, but he said impatiently: "No, no. I mean the press photographer!" It was quite clear that his only interest in coming to Liverpool was to get into the local/regional papers but unfortunately both the morning and evening paper in Liverpool were, if not exactly downright hostile, extremely reluctant to give the station any publicity.
This had been the case for years – the reason being that not only were we rivals in terms of news coverage and I suppose in some way for the audience's respect and attention, but as a commercial station, for advertising revenue. Up until the launch of Radio City in 1974 the local papers had a monopoly on the lucrative display advertising for car showrooms, stores and like. So it was that if the paper felt obliged to feature the station or its presenters, because they opened an event for example, they would routinely refer the person as being from "a Liverpool radio station."
It was actually hilarious and became a running joke at the stationas to the lengthsgs they would go not to mention Radio City. And, fair enough, on this occasion, our PR department hadn't supplied them with a story to justify picture, so they didn't show up.
Whilst we were doing the tour and the photo shoot in the studio, Savile got on the phone to his contacts at the paper and, after beating a hurried retreat as soon as the main business had been done, headed downtown and, low and behold, next day he was in the paper with some sort of contrived story which had nothing to do with the station and of course didn't mention it.
His exit may have also been hastened by a slight disagreement I had with him as walked round the newsroom. He was saying that competition in his day was much greater than ow. I said this was rubbish – he had a virtual monopoly when he started, whereas now there were hundreds of stations. I have a notion he wasn’t used to being contradicted. It may be that I am one of the few people to have crossed him not to have their legs broken by his friends in the Underworld, or their scrotum cut off and hung on the door of his revolting mobile home, featured on the Louis Theroux documentary (don’t watch any repat of THAT if you’re feeling queasy).
So this was my experience of this extraordinary one man machine devoted to his own publicity and glorification. There was certainly nothing about Savile that was anything to do with promoting music – I don't believe he had any interest in popular music and you can tell this by the way he introduces it either on radio or on his creepy Top of the Pops’ performances. (If you don’t believe me and you have a strong stomach, check out some of the repeats they’re currently showing on BBC4 from the relevant week in ’76, just before punk arrived on the scene, the promotion of which was the re-making of Peel's credibility for a new generation.) No: Savile was not my idea of a DJ at all. I just didn't get ‘it’, or his attraction. Those stupid catch-phrases and the faux yodelling. Is that supposed to be funny???
However, as in other radio fields I believe he was genuinely a pioneer. Aongst all the glowing obituaries on account of his radio and TV stardom, two shows hardly got a mention and yet these are the very ones for which I believe he does deserve some credit. One was called Speak Easy, produced by the religion department at the BBC and was a Sunday afternoon panel/audience talk show on Radio One, whichwass very innovative for its day and tackled wide range of subjects related to morals, current affairs and so on, from an interesting variety of locations. The chief innovation was the "Mr Roving Mic' which went round the hall to pick up questions and comments from the audience. As I say, this hardly sounds ground-breaking now but it was at the time, especially for ashow dedicated to young people's opinions and lives.
The other was called Savile’s Travels – the same title that was usedfor the syndicated golden oldies' show many years later. This was innovative on several levels: firstly Savile used a very small tape recorder and he went around the country during his stints as a hospital porter, marathons, etc., and talk to "ordinary people" as he did so and then linking into the music. The show was seamlessly put together and again it doesn't really sound very original now but there was nothing like it to my knowledge before and rarely since.
I think this idea stuck in my mind for when I did a special afternoon programme from Maltby colliery in South Yorkshire on BBC Radio Sheffield. I recorded the different links and interviews as I went in the 'cage' down the mine, scrambled along the seams with my specially adapted Uhe ( bulky reel to reel tape machine (maximum recording time on one school of tape at the minimum acceptable professional speed of 7.5 i.p.s, which therefore had to be changed by torchlight underground). The machine was one of two specially adapted by the BBC and approved by the mining authorities as safe to use underground. Essentially, there was a special outer case to prevent any chance of an electric spark being emitted from the machine, which could cause the catastrophic deep underground. Anyway, as I stumbled along I had a list of the records that had been programmed to playin my head and so could link to the tracks, and then I played the whole thing out 'liv'e in the show, whichwass apparently so effective that the newsroom thought that I was presenting thewhole show live form the pit and were quite amazed to find – when they tried to send a message to me at the mine! – that I was sitting in the studio.. So I have to thank Savile for planting that idea in my head.
Back to the Radio Festival and Pete Townshend's lecture was introduced by two of my favourite radio presenters. I've blogged about before when I visited there then evening show on Radio Two in the spring and afre now to be found on weekday afternoons on BBC 6 Music. To me, Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe are pretty well everything I want in a radio presenter: knowledgeable, witty, sharp, with a superb rapport with their listeners and the sort you'd love to go to the pub with for a couple of hours. This is what you strive to do I believe as a radio presenter.
I also greatly respect both their talents as writers and journalists. I met Stuart again when he gave a talk as part of my university’s series of lectures on ‘identity’, to promote his latest book Hope and Glory: The Days That Made Britain. Unsurprisingly, he is also an excellent lecturer and, again, quite shy and self-deprecating. After going up to him with a colleague and re-introducing myself, he signed my copy of his book and graciously accepted – or let his agent accept on his behalf! – a dedicated copy of MY book! It was a bit of a cheek and was not sure whether even I would have the bottle or the gall to do that but then again I am always telling my students that people can only say ‘no’ at worst and I did hope he might find some of it interesting. His agent was very kind about it, told me later she had indeed handed it on to Stuart and said she was ordering a copy for herself – so that’s one extra sale!
Shortly after arriving there I was greeted warmly by John Myers – with whom I worked in the mid-late ‘80s at Red Rose Radio. He went on to become a very grande fromage indeed in radio and is now Director of the Radio Academy. This was his first Radio Festival, so naturally he was a bit nervous. He described me to another big radio person as his 'hero'. Nonsense of course, but nice! He was enjoying my book, he said; I talked sense and it was perfect for an hour or so on a long train journey! Not a bad recommendation: hope he can post that on Amazon! After doing a very significant report on radio for the government he has just been asked by the Beeb to do one on how to implement local radio cits with the least pain. Should be fascinating!
My main reason - or excuse – for attending the Radio Festival though was to accompany my students at the Foot in the Door session on the opening afternoon. This is a great idea and similar to the 'crossove'r day that we have at the BEA and NAB in Las Vegas, where students and other wannabes are given the chance to have their show-reel critiqued and then to meet industry professionals, make contacts and quiz them about how to get into the business. At Foot in the Door they use the ‘speed dating’ idea, whereby you have 10 tables, each of which has two or three professionals on it in different areas of the business and you move on after klaxon call every 15 min. It was hosted by Rob Ellis of Capital FM fame, much to the delight of my female students, as can be seen!
We had a bit of time before the event, and, whilst the girls ‘did lunch’, a male student, Adam, and I did a quick tour to check out the mazing changes at Media City. I asked him to take a pic of me outside the new Manchester home of Radios 2, 3, 4 and 6 Music in ‘The North’, with Stuart Maconie’s face prominent in it!
FITD with the team 31 Oct 2011
We were interviewed by the Radio Festivals' podcast team before the main event started. As you can hear, the students find my undimmable enthusiasm for radio quite amusing as I readily concede, yes I've never been' cool'… never seen the point of ‘cool’; I think that being in a radio station can be the most fun you can have with another group of adults without taking your clothes off! So I make no apology for my enthusiasm and, as I sometimes waspishly point out, I've never been out of work and these two things may be connected.
I did make a gratuitous plug from my book in the interviews but sadly this was cut! Not so into other interviews I've done recently of which I'm very grateful to have the chance to do a bit of promotion,one of which was by a fomer student on our international journalism course for Euranet,
to a potential audience of over 13 million. I often joke with my students that when it comes to the stage where I am applying to them for work I know they have made it and I couldn't be happier. Well, I wasn't quite asking for work here but it was still good to be interviewed by one of my former students, although she said she felt like a 19-year-old again and was very nervous!
The other interview, this week, was on BBC Radio Merseyside, which, as I mentioned in my last blog post, is still reeling at the thought of some 20% cuts in its funding but which also had just received good news about improved ratings, adding some 43,000 weekly listeners. The spot that I was given was just about the peak time of 07.50 so I was very pleased with that and delighted that the interviewer would be my former colleague on the sister station to Radio City Gold, Tony Snell.
Rudin B21 int R Merseyside 2 Nov 2011
and, thanks Tony, for allowing me to give the title publisher of the book again at the end of the interview!
Tony is a real star and someone has developed so much as a broadcaster from his days as a breakfast show FM jock someone who can handle with ease and without awful 'gear- crunching' as I call it, in going from different types of items, the wide-ranging daily current affairs based programme, but still keep his slightly cheeky and 'Anfield lad made good' approach. It's a neat trick and it works because it is real and genuine and Tony can break through to make a direct connection with the listener. The magic of radio. Contrived, in very strange circumstances - but reality, not a myth.
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