chrismoyles.net
- Mon Jan 12, 2004 12:45 pm
#240905
From The Times
Ray Davies, of the Kinks, was forced to fly 6,000 miles from Los Angeles to London in 1970 to rerecord their song Lola, replacing “Coca-Cola” with “cherry cola”. This was to enable it to be played on Radio 1, which, in those days, banned the promotion of commercial products not just in theory, but in fact.
How times change — and not just because Davies has received both a CBE and a bullet in his leg in the same month. Coca-Cola is no longer kept at arm’s length by Radio 1, but warmly embraced. It is plugged twice in every edition of the weekly charts show. This began last week, will continue this afternoon and will not end until the summer, when the BBC will finally free itself from arrangements that it should never have made.
Not to be upstaged by these controversial on-air mentions, Chris Moyles made his debut as Radio 1’s new breakfast host the next day by commending not one brand, but several. On day one, Mars, Twix and Snickers. On day two, John Lewis, McDonald’s, Tango and Heat magazine (“Still a great bargain at £1.45”), which Sara Cox also plugged (twice) in her first half-hour later in the day, and which, strangely, you can also find pictured on Radio 1’s website. Who says the BBC doesn’t take advertising? Interspersed among the tracks by Sugababes and Lightning Seeds, and banter with his studio posse, Comedy Dave, Aled and Rachel (all noticeably more fluent, know-ledgeable and sweeter than the self-styled “saviour of Radio 1”), Moyles showed he had no intention of being any more charming than he was on the drivetime show. Cameron Diaz, for example, looked “like a bag of peas”; Wes Butters, the charts host, was “rubbish” and a “big girl”; J.Lo “hasn’t just got a big arse, she is a big arse”, a spectacular example of the pot calling the kettle black.
For someone who has broadcast for six years on Britain’s main youth station, Moyles was surprisingly ignorant. He did not realise that Britney Spears’s marriage had been reported the night before he remarked on it, and he had never heard of the heart-throb actor Orlando Bloom. He also seemed not to know the country he was broadcasting to, opening with “Good morning, Great Britain” and thus ignoring Northern Ireland.
Moyles is brave as well as yobbish — not many could discuss their own gastro-enteritis, and he abjures political correctness — and he has worked his way up with Yorkshire grit. But with 600,000 lost listeners to woo back, he will have to learn that there is more to life than EastEnders, Leeds United and pop. (The person who lost them — his predecessor, Sara Cox — spent most of her first show in his old slot poignantly emphasising just how many messages she had received from her army of loyal fans, though her Bolton voice was cheerier by the following day.) Still, one can always turn the dial, and on Monday, Shelagh Fogarty also made her debut, as Nicky Campbell’s regular breakfast partner on Five Live. She is as polished as Moyles is rough. I heard not a single fluff, mispronunciation or catachresis. Nemone, too, moving from Radio 1’s weekend lunchtime to weekday dawn, did well. She “basked in her newness”, an appealing phrase. It was, on the whole, the women’s week.
Ray Davies, of the Kinks, was forced to fly 6,000 miles from Los Angeles to London in 1970 to rerecord their song Lola, replacing “Coca-Cola” with “cherry cola”. This was to enable it to be played on Radio 1, which, in those days, banned the promotion of commercial products not just in theory, but in fact.
How times change — and not just because Davies has received both a CBE and a bullet in his leg in the same month. Coca-Cola is no longer kept at arm’s length by Radio 1, but warmly embraced. It is plugged twice in every edition of the weekly charts show. This began last week, will continue this afternoon and will not end until the summer, when the BBC will finally free itself from arrangements that it should never have made.
Not to be upstaged by these controversial on-air mentions, Chris Moyles made his debut as Radio 1’s new breakfast host the next day by commending not one brand, but several. On day one, Mars, Twix and Snickers. On day two, John Lewis, McDonald’s, Tango and Heat magazine (“Still a great bargain at £1.45”), which Sara Cox also plugged (twice) in her first half-hour later in the day, and which, strangely, you can also find pictured on Radio 1’s website. Who says the BBC doesn’t take advertising? Interspersed among the tracks by Sugababes and Lightning Seeds, and banter with his studio posse, Comedy Dave, Aled and Rachel (all noticeably more fluent, know-ledgeable and sweeter than the self-styled “saviour of Radio 1”), Moyles showed he had no intention of being any more charming than he was on the drivetime show. Cameron Diaz, for example, looked “like a bag of peas”; Wes Butters, the charts host, was “rubbish” and a “big girl”; J.Lo “hasn’t just got a big arse, she is a big arse”, a spectacular example of the pot calling the kettle black.
For someone who has broadcast for six years on Britain’s main youth station, Moyles was surprisingly ignorant. He did not realise that Britney Spears’s marriage had been reported the night before he remarked on it, and he had never heard of the heart-throb actor Orlando Bloom. He also seemed not to know the country he was broadcasting to, opening with “Good morning, Great Britain” and thus ignoring Northern Ireland.
Moyles is brave as well as yobbish — not many could discuss their own gastro-enteritis, and he abjures political correctness — and he has worked his way up with Yorkshire grit. But with 600,000 lost listeners to woo back, he will have to learn that there is more to life than EastEnders, Leeds United and pop. (The person who lost them — his predecessor, Sara Cox — spent most of her first show in his old slot poignantly emphasising just how many messages she had received from her army of loyal fans, though her Bolton voice was cheerier by the following day.) Still, one can always turn the dial, and on Monday, Shelagh Fogarty also made her debut, as Nicky Campbell’s regular breakfast partner on Five Live. She is as polished as Moyles is rough. I heard not a single fluff, mispronunciation or catachresis. Nemone, too, moving from Radio 1’s weekend lunchtime to weekday dawn, did well. She “basked in her newness”, an appealing phrase. It was, on the whole, the women’s week.
