Aled wrote:I have been reading your opinions as the week has been going on, and I wasn't going to say anything for fear of looking argumentative or defensive. I'm 95% happy with how the week went with Olly (with the 5% being that the hard-core fans on here didn't like it).
To be fair on us, there's only been a handful of us that have voiced our doubts, and it's not been "this is shit, get off", I think we've expressed ourselves pretty well, even if we are ultimately wrong.
I thought it added new energy to the show, it was nice having a team member that had new elements to bring to conversations and games. From reading the forum I got the impression that the main negativity centered around that he wasn't Dave. Olly didn't push Dave out, there WAS no Dave, so it wasn't a choice of Dave or Olly - it was Dave or a team with one person missing. One forum member commented that Dom and I were trying 'too hard' - could you imagine how hard we would have had to try if we were a team member down?
I think, if I remember correctly, 3 or 4/5 trails of the best of the show last week all centred around Olly or how Chris was playing with him - which meant that was the best elements to that day's show - and you would have prefered we took that person out of the equation?
I think it's fair to say that having a "new" team member, and a celebrity one at that, means that the show is bound to revolve around them far more than say, the show would revolve around something Dave did on an average week. That's how the any entertainment show treats guests - as the focus - so I wouldn't say that's the actual fault of anyone inside or outside of the studio. I'm not sure if my disappointment with the shows is that it wasn't Dave, just that it was all a bit too Olly-focused. I've said on another thread that I don't think the problem was with him personally, just that with him being there for the whole week, it meant the whole week felt heavily weighed towards him, which would go some way to explain why most of the trails featured him. The Chris Moyles Show has always seemed pretty balanced in terms of how much of the team's personal lives and anecdotes are discussed, with the obvious exception of Chris, of course.
No, I found it a huge success - and would happily bring Olly back in the future
This was another one of my issues, he'd already been on the show a lot recently, he was in the studio in early March (9th IIRC), then on the marathon show for another 2+ hours. I know you've had grumbles about frequent guests before, because I've heard Chris mention it on air. Maybe it's more of an issue to those of us who listen to a big chuck of the weeks output, and if we're of the minority then I guess its tough shit, which is perhaps fair enough. I wouldn't think this would be as much of a problem to less frequent listeners. I'm going back a few years now, but wasn't there a week where you had a revolving sidekick to replace Dave when he was off on one of his Comic Relief tours? I think that worked better than having the same person back each day. I do appreciate this would be a tougher job for production staff such as yourself so please don't interpret that - or the rest of this post, in fact - as a demand, just constructive comment.