The gutting of Radio 2’s schedules is merciless – it’s like the BBC’s trying to sack listeners
Good old Gary Davies, yet again malleable putty in the cracks of the BBC Radio 2 schedules. What a good sort he is showing up for work like a rookie police officer unsure as to whether the day’s task will entail filing, monitoring CCTV footage or nipping out to a homicide. Except, of course, he’s a veteran. Sixty-six years old, a Radio 1 DJ from the 1980s and presenter of the long-defunct Top of the Pops, he’s been Radio 2 glue since 2018, with a berth in Sounds of the 80s on a Saturday evening. He also pops up to cover everyone else’s holiday and, more crucially, the constant gaps in the schedule caused by the station bosses’ brutal approach to human resources.
Thus, as they ponder who should present Saturday’s Pick of the Pops, Davies’s patience is tested once more as he’s lent the gig for an indeterminate period. And those bosses doubtless feel he’s grateful for the work and will, as ever, step in with his usual vim, vigour and old-school DJ enthusiasm. While we listeners were irritated that Paul Gambaccini needed shunting from it in the first place.
Gambaccini was pushed to another slot so that the late Steve Wright could have something else to do in addition to his Sunday Love Songs programme, which was all that was left for him after his daily Steve Wright in the Afternoon was axed – despite still having several years of fuel in the tank.
And the ricochets of Wright’s axing and demise are still traumatising the schedules this week. Hot on the heels of the announcement that comedian Romesh Ranganathan will take over Claudia Winkleman’s Saturday morning slot after she stepped down to spend more time with her children, the latest target is Michael Ball, who has been moved to hosting Sunday Love Songs and is putting a brave face on it. He said he would continue Wright’s “extraordinary legacy” and was “excited and more than a little nervous”. Since joining the station in 2008 and starting The Michael Ball Show in 2013, Ball has proved himself an engaging and natural host, a brilliant interviewer, a self-deprecating individual who manages to mock the worst contestants in his weekly On the Ball quiz in such a way that you love them even more.
His voice was a soothing sound first for a Sunday evening and then a perfect filler for prepping Sunday lunch. But now his talents will be shredded as he dwindles to doing links between slushy love songs, while his gig is handed to Paddy McGuinness, the former host of Top Gear, who presents radio like he’s running a karaoke night at the pub. It’s a useful talent, but it doesn’t say “Sunday morning vibes” to me. But then, that’s the point.
Radio 2’s attempts to sack me as a listener are relentless, but I continue to cling on, mixing it up with a bit of Radio 4 – including lots of the Today programme (I’m a glutton for punishment) – some Zeb Soanes on Classic FM, with the rest of my audio consumption being on Spotify. The replacement of the likes of Wright and Ken Bruce is central to the station’s policy of chavving up the schedule – the dream, it seems, being to create the accompaniment to a sort of wall-to-wall drunken ladies’ night.
Which is fine as a purpose, if they feel this somehow adheres to the BBC values of audience, creativity, trust, respect and accountability. It’s just that they seem consistently merciless in their execution. Their inability to let people down gently is so constant it feels deliberate.
It was looking like Bruce was making a graceful exit in 2023 when he announced his departure – his decision – after 31 years. But then they forced him out earlier than mooted with Davies, obviously, holding the fort before Vernon Kay took the reins. There was Simon Mayo’s ghastly exit in 2018, which followed the brutally awkward pairing of him with Jo Whiley. Agonising to listen to, it was a form of torture for the presenters as innovative as bastinado or scaphism. Mayo later described it as verschlimmbesserung, the German expression for an improvement that only makes things worse. And, of course, shedding Wright robbed us of the miracle of a daily show: meticulously produced, filled year in, year out with a host of classic comedic characters, with well-crafted links, an extraordinary set of jingles and musical stings, and a voice that became the reassuring sound of an afternoon in Britain.
Helen Thomas, the head of Radio 2, says she’s, “looking forward to Michael’s [Ball] earlier show, where he’ll entertain his ‘lovelies’ as he’s always done.” And yup, we’ll be there, willing him on and, as with so many shunted presenters, maintaining our loyalty like the Monty Python Black Knight fought on as each of his limbs was cut off: “’tis but a scratch.”
I’m writing this on a train en route to Edinburgh and a young woman next to me asked what the subject matter is. After telling her, she replied: “I used to work at the BBC.” She recalled showing round a visiting student who wanted to work in radio. How might they realise their dream of one day becoming a presenter? “I had to give them the worse piece of advice I’ve ever given anyone in my life,” she sighed. “I told them they needed first to become a celebrity.”
