As from today, Radio 1 s Sunday afternoon chart show – one of the most famous programmes on British radio – gets its first female presenter since it began in 1967. Fearne Cotton will host it alongside Reggie Yates, the JK and Joel duo having been axed. For the first time in 40 years, 4pm on Sundays on Radio 1 will no longer be a male preserve.
If I were the PR for Radio 1 (perish the thought), I would be inclined to make a bit more of this than the station has. But there we are. Several other changes are being introduced on Radio 1.
A new teen zone will occupy Sunday evenings from tonight, hosted by Annie Mac and Kelly Osbourne, Ozzy and Sharon s daughter, who is the new agony aunt. Early mornings on weekdays get a new presenter in the shape of Greg James, 21, just graduated from the University of East Anglia. He s so keen, he has started already.
I wish him well, but would offer the suggestion that saying of your own scruffy area of London, However hard you try, you can t polish a turd , as he did at 6.45am last Tuesday, is unlikely to endear you to your neighbours. For most listeners, however, the changes – aimed at giving Radio 1 more zest and sparkle – will be most evident at breakfast.
Chris Moyles gets an extra half-hour, which means the Radio 1 breakfast show now starts at 6.30am, not 7am, for the first time since 2001. Moyles is an enigma.
He left school at 16, his first job was making tea for Carol Vorderman on Radio Aire, and now, at the age of 33, he earns 630,000 a year. He is king of the castle. Yet, as his Radio 1 colleague Jo Whiley said rather revealingly last week, he is still very nervous , which may explain why he knocked beer over Michelle Pfeiffer s foot on BBC1 nine days ago and resorted to four-letter words.
Perhaps nervousness has a lot to do with swearing. It was good to hear Dame Shirley Bassey, speaking to Radio 1 s Edith Bowman at the Q Awards in London last week, praise the Arctic Monkeys for being the one group to receive a trophy, she said, and not befoul their acceptance speeches. You don t need to use bad language at public occasions, she said.
Quite so. In the music world, as in the wider one, DSB is worth listening to: she has had the longest chart career in pop history, an extraordinary 50 years and three months. Away from his notoriety and all those upheld complaints, there is no doubting Moyles s achievement in radio s fiercest battle-ground.
He has boosted the audience on the breakfast show to more than 7m for the first time since 1999, and thus Radio 1 s total audience to more than 10m. So, what is his appeal? Maybe that he is connected by the hip to his listeners: he is an ordinary, plain-speaking, burly bloke from Leeds, not particularly fluent, but totally sincere.
His audience of 7.26m is now only about 660,000 behind that of the peerless Terry Wogan, who is emperor (if the Irish can produce emperors) to Moyles s king. Wogan has been the most popular radio host in Britain for many years, but he is 120,000 down on his 2004 peak of just over 8m.
If things carry on as they are, Moyles may possibly overtake Wogan, who will be 70 next year, but is contracted until 2009. I just hope he decides to abdicate before losing his crown.
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