When I first went to work at Radio 1, I must confess to having been a little bit startled. Radio 4, where I was working simultaneously was like a hive-full of eccentrics, each going about their own business in their own idiosynchratic way. When I turned up resplendent in my punk-chic garb few of them batted an eyelid and I was simply welcomed to the throng of what had once been the Home Service, as if it was my birthright. As I continued my career in Radio 4, I found that as long as you were good at what you did people would dismiss all but the most appalling indiscretion. Radio 1 was a completely different kettle of fish.
It was like the management were secretly embarrassed that Radio 1 had come into being and that many of them tried their best to adhere to the Light Programme blueprint wherever possible, without openly admitting they hated everything about pop and particularly rock culture. Most of the DJ’s were incredibly bland and their producers ultra-conservative. Needless to say the bulk of them treated my arrival like I was some virulent pesticism sent to spread disease in their happy, good time radio station. I got the impression that many of them were pleasant to my face but just waiting for a chance to stab me in the back and hoping that the opportunity came sooner rather than later. I’ve touched on unfounded allegations against me elsewhere in this journal, but I’m sure these were just part of an underhand campaign to stop the young upstart in his tracks. I’ve always suspected that the main protagonist was a man called Ron Belchier, the producer of one of the daytime shows. He was ex-forces, old school, light programme and not very happy about the way things were going and I feel he saw me very much as the enemy. All this aside, Ron would be in the company at The Yorkshire Grey on Langham Street most days and would always buy me a drink as I would he. As Machiavelli always believed you keep your friends close and your enemies closer!
One day when we were at the pub Ron turned to me and said
“Richard, you’re a pretty switched-on guy. (his actual words!) We played that Lou Reed record on the programme today and I was wondering if you knew what ‘giving head’ was?”.
At first I thought he was winding me up, but then I realised he really didn’t know, so blushingly I explained. The record in question, in case you don’t listen to lyrics, was Walk on the Wild Side and I found it amazing that the powers that be would play such a sexually explicit record on a family station, when they had banned Anarchy in the UK by The Sex Pistols, simply because it dissed the establishement; What price rational and reasonable behaviour?
I had expected Radio 1 to be full of radical people who loved music and were united in their efforts to bring a bigger and better slice of the musical pie to an ever-hungry, young audience. In reality they were a bunch of grey men more worried about furthering their own careers than anything else. There seemed a great reluctance to rock the boat under any circumstances which seems a trifle ironic, bearing in mind the fact that the film about Radio Caroline, from where most of the DJ’s originated, was called The Boat That Rocked! There were however a small number of exceptions. On the DJ front there was John Peel (Kenny Everett had gone by this time) and on the production side there was Peel’s producer John Walters and the then producer of The Simon Bates Show, Malcolm Brown. I never really spent any time in Peel’s company but got to know the other two and would imagine they were the only two people in Radio 1 who actually liked me.
John Walters I got to know well and admired very much. He was an ex-musician who’d played bass with The Alan Price Set and I think he sussed very quickly that I had more in common with musicians than my colleagues in Radio 1. I got the impression that he and Peel suffered from the same malaise and Walters confided in me that Derek Chinnery, Controller of Radio 1 was trying his best to get rid of John Peel, moving him farther and farther away from the mainstream in the hope he would get fed-up and jump ship (not literally this time!). Chinnery was an headmasterly type who liked his presenters to be intelligent, but on the understanding that they only used that intelligence to further his own ambitions for the station. All complied apart from Peel! Both Peel and Walters are no longer with us and I for one, feel that the world is a much poorer place without the pair of them.
Where Walters was eloquent and ebullient, Malcolm Brown was the opposite. He was laid-back, dry as sandpaper and would only speak when absolutely necessary (usually to order a pint of Guiness). He was a shortish, wiry man with red-brown (not technically ginger but more of that at the end of this chapter!). He lived in darkest Surrey and played the organ in church at the weekend. In many ways Malcolm was unlike anyone else in Radio 1. He was thoughtful, intelligent and actually knew quite a lot about music.
One day I was standing in the queue at the cash office, where freelances went to get paid, when Malcolm came up to me and said;
“Richard there’s too much dead wood in Radio 1”
I nodded in agreement without having a clue what he was talking about. He went on to tell me that he admired my passion for music and found it refreshing that I knew quite a lot about all different types of music, not just pop and rock. He told me to get a couple of hours of music together and said that he would book a studio and produce a demo of me presenting, with a view to taking it to Chinnery and asking him to give me a show. We went in a studio shortly after that and produced what I thought was a fairly good demo. Malcolm called me up the following day and told me he had arranged for us to see Chinnery with the demo.
My only indirect dealings with Chinnery, up until that point had been through his assistant Deadly Doreen, or Doreen Davies as she was known to her mum! I wanted to include aforementioned ‘Anarchy in the UK’ in a show we were doing about punk music, but when I got a copy from the BBC library it came complete with a sticker saying under no circumstances play it without consulting the Controller’s office. When I rang, Doreen asked me why I wanted to play that ‘awful’ record. I told her that whilst I knew it had been banned, I felt it was an essential ingredient for any credible programme about punk. Doreen chastised me advising that the BBC didn’t ‘ban’ records, they just chose not to play certain discs on grounds of merit. She then told me that she didn’t think it was a very good record and would not be happy if I included it. Driven by a burning ambition to join the top ranks of the Diplomatic Corps, I included it! This did not bode well for my imminent meeting with the fat controller.
When Malcolm Brown and myself entered Derek Chinnery’s office he looked twitchy from the off. He was dressed in a dogtooth check, summer weight suit, with Tattershall checked shirt and woollen tie; hardly cutting edge gear whichever way you cut it! He sat us down and ordered coffees, extremely uncomfortable in his attempts to put us at our ease or more accurately, off-guard. He looked at me through his horn-rimmed spectacles and said; “Well Richard, I’ve listened to your demonstration tape and I must confess I was surprised; it was very good.”
I was on my way!!!! Or was I? Sounded like he’d hoped it wouldn’t be very good.
“ Having heard quite a lot about you, I was expecting someone who sounded loud and arrogant when in fact you’ve got a very nice, laid-back radio manner.”
Breakfast show here I come!!! Well maybe some time after eight in the evening.
“In fact, in my opinion you could have a very bright future with Independent Local Radio.”
Independent Local What!!!!
I asked Derek what he was trying to say. He stuttered in an indefinable brogue which came from somewhere on the west side of England, that he’d been asking around and whilst there was nothing specific, he didn’t feel I was a ‘Radio 1 type of person’. Rather than prolong my humiliation I thanked him for his consideration and took my leave. Malcolm followed about five minutes later. I asked Malcolm where he’d been. He told me he’d been having a go at Chinnery over what he’d said. He felt that Chinnery’s problem with giving me a break was that he would be getting ‘another John Peel’ in that I was likely to play stuff that I thought was good, however off the beaten track and with no regard for playlists and the poptastic factor. In other words he too regarded me as an enemy in the camp and wished to shunt me off without even allowing me to get started. Problem was Chinnery was right, but I always wonder did he do what was best for the station; I like to think he didn’t.
I thanked Malcolm for his time and effort and we remained friendly until I left Radio 1 for TV. Since then our paths have never crossed and I often wonder what became of him.
‘Ginger Geezer’ is a track from the wonderful album ‘Teddy Boys Don’t Knit’ which deserves the title minor classic. It was produced by the very Malcolm Brown referred to above.
