Shut up and play some music!

Radio Radio sang Mr Costello

Now I’m not one to complain (stop laughing please) but I’ll tell you what really gets on my wick. Radio DJs.  I know there are some good ones, but they are rarely on air at the times I can tune in, which is usually when driving to or from work. 

DJs have to be able to talk for a living, but some of them are just too fond of their own voices. I know they have to speak and even entertain, but they should also know when to shut up.

Thankfully we’ve not yet returned to the bad old days of the 1970s when the likes of Dave Lee Travis and Noel Edmunds were so far up themselves it made you want to rearrange their smug faces with a spade, if only because of the way any record with the word “radio” (or better still “DJ”) in its title was guaranteed to get huge amounts of air time at the expense of songs I wanted to hear.

Presenting styles have moved on since then, but DLT’s descendants are still annoying, just in a different way. I can’t listen to the Radio One Breakfast Show, not because the music is too young and hip for an old fart like me, but because there’s hardly any of it played. Instead we are treated to a seemingly endless stream of inane chatter from a whole gaggle of people (radio DJs are no longer permitted to present shows on their own, they need a studio of people to help them), which they assume the listener will find interesting or hilarious.

 It’s not just the younger ones who get on my nerves; those experienced enough to know better (i.e. those who have been put out to grass on Radio Two) are just as full of themselves. The one that really grates most (now that the odious Sarah Kennedy has been removed) is Steve Wright, who is guilty in his afternoon show of:

• Talking over the intro or the end of records.
• Singing along to records.
• Playing records and not bothering to tell you who they are by.
• Playing an inordinate number of jingles telling you whose radio show it is.
• Sycophantic interviews with celebrities.
• Reading out requests and never failing to tell us that the listener has said how much they love his show.

It’s got to the stage where I only put the radio on for the news, which I have to switch off again quickly before the chummy banter between newsreader and DJ begins.  Thank goodness for my iPod!

"Poptastic mate!"