Chapter 2
The Weeping Truckdrivers
Steven Armstrong (Broadcasting Journalist): I remember a character in what I think was a Douglas Adams book, an American woman who comes to London, and the two things she notices most of all are that pizzas don't deliver - this was in the mid-eighties, before Domino's - and how bad the radio is here. She's listening to Radio 1 in her hotel room, and she's waiting for this comedy voice to stop talking and the DJ to return. But gradually it dawns on her - that was the DJ's normal voice.
I first listened to Radio 1 with my brother, taping the charts on Sunday evening. Recently I discovered a tape that I'd made at the time - Paul Nicholas's 'Grandma's Party' was in the charts. I have a mental picture of me and my brother crouching down holding a microphone to the radio speaker. We listened, of course, but Radio 1 in the eighties was just ridiculous. One incident that stands out was when there was all this tabloid furore about the Beastie Boys, and Simon Bates played a Run DMC track and then 'No Sleep 'til Brooklyn'. The impression he gave you was that he had done something that was so dangerous and so frightening, that it was tantamount to punching the prime minister.
All the daytime people were laughable characters, even Simon Mayo on the breakfast show'. Gary Davies with all these terrible single-entendres about his boxer shorts and his bit in the middle... It was as if the radio had been taken over by the people who were the guides on Club 18-30. Dave Lee Travis - the self-named Hairy Cornflake - he physically made me choke when I heard his voice. He had this stupid snooker game - I can't find the words to describe it. In the early nineties I had a long argument with the programme controller at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, who was convinced that Dave Lee Travis was the greatest presenter in British radio. I was stunned into silence.
Dave Lee Travis (Disc Jockey - on air, 23 August 1986): Today we have the final of the current tournament of Give Us a Break, snooker on the radio. Contestants from Bath, Romford, Sheffield and Droitwich Spa. We'll have the tranogram, the dreaded cringe of course at twelve o'clock, and two featured albums, the new one from Daryl Hall, and the recent classic from Kid Creole and de Coconuts. So keep it here, as somebody once said. We have three hours of mayhem for you! [Plays Kid Creole.]
['Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy' fades out.] Methinks he doth protest too much! To get it out the way, I've been away. Between last week's show and this week's show 1 thought I'd take the only opportunity I had for a break, and I went over to Corfu, which is a bad place to go in the middle of August when it's extremely hot and the hotels don't have air-conditioning. So for some reason I've got a bit of laryngitis and I do apologize for that. [Plays a Eurythmics record.] That's the Eurythmics. Even after all these years I can't help being amused by the name. The Eurythmics! Wonderful.
Now then, last week you may recall that we set you up with a special clue for a two-word tranogram, and we referred to the behaviour of one Bruno Brookes at Alton Towers, saying he was having a go on all the dodgy rides and everything, and that this could well be a good description of him. Two words. We played 'Rip It Up', 'It's Over', 'Sundown', ‘Killer Queen', ‘Johnny Be Good', 'Our House', 'Call Me', 'Kissing With Confidence', 'Eyes Without a Face' and 'You Might Need Somebody', Put that all together, perfect description of Bruno Brookes Risk Jockey. A Risk Jockey! Wasn't that brilliant? We loved it. The first three out the bag were Pat Butler from Alton in Hampshire - oh dear, I don't like the name of your road, Spittlehatch, you've got to move, Pat, you've got to move out of there! David Walsh from South Shore, Blackpool, that's a big address. And Sue Coe, from Leamington Spa. Prizes on the way to you.
Harry Enfield (Comedian): Smashie and Nicey are in my opinion the best characters Paul and I have done together ... It seemed odd to me that, although millions of people listened to Radio 1 every day, no comedian had ever taken off their DJs before us. It had always struck Paul and me that there were two main types of DJs - those who loved music like John Peel and Alan Freeman, and those who loved the sound of their own voices, like DLT.
Radio 1 also struck us as a funny old place because, in 1990, when we started doing the DJs, the whole youth culture was ultra-modern, with the take-off of dance music and fashion-conscious, music-based magazines like Q, but Radio 1 was still dominated by DJs with seventies haircuts and cuddly cardigans, whose idea of a good record was Rolf Harris's Tie Me Kangaroo Down'.
