Trevor Dann

In light of the Blue Peter revelations I feel I should admit to my part in the great Radio Nottingham phone-in scandal of 1974. It was like this, your honour. I was producing ‘All Sides of the Question’, an evening phone-in which was stubbornly untroubled by callers. As the panel trudged gamefully into the second half hour with a reminder of ‘the issue that’s got Nottingham talking tonight’ I left the ops room, found a phone in the production office and called in as Ian from St Anne’s. They kept me on for 15 minutes. They had to because there was no producer to tell them to wind up. Eventually I put the phone down and dashed back to hear a plaintiff “well it seems as though Ian hasn’t paid his bill.” When the panel had left the building, the presenter turned to me. I knew I was in for a bollocking. “Well done,” he said,” you’ll go far in this business.”

Of course it wouldn’t happen today would it?

Apologies for the hiatus. I was told that the only way to stop the spammers invading this blogsite with messages about useless stocks and unfeasibly large plonkers was to launch a spam catcher and shut down for a fortnight. While I’ve been away I’ve worked out how to turn the BBC ‘listen again’ feature into my own private radio station (yes I know I’m the last kid on the block to do this, but it’s REALLY liberating). In the last few days I’ve enjoyed Clive James’s brilliant essay on martial arts, Feargal Keane’s moving dispatch from Dublin in From Our Own Correspondent and some fabulous wriggles from BBC producers on Feedback. All were broadcast at times I couldn’t have listened to them live, but in this on demand world there they are on the iPod alongside the Guardian’s weekly football podcast, Fighting Talk, Nick Barraclough’s country show and all my other favourites.

Talking of BBC wriggles I enjoyed the internal sour grape emails about the RTS Awards. Do they really think these things can be manipulated? God knows I’ve tried. But apart from wangling Nick Drake into the Times’ list of the 100 Greatest Albums, I’ve never had any joy. I’m busy judging a category of the Sony Radio Academy Awards at the moment and I have no idea who’s going to win. Long may that be the case.

Driving home tonight I heard the first cuckoo of spring. Or at least something equally remarkable. Chiltern FM were doing local programming, talking about schools closed in the morning and road blocks and all that stuff that independent local radio used to do so well. A nice chap called Gaz played some records he didn’t seem to like much, but he sounded genuinely concerned about the good burghers of Beds and beyond and the show felt warm and intimate and useful. Well done them. 

Snapshots from a lovely evening on the south coast attending a meeting of The Space, a monthly gathering of Brighton’s boho media folks:

1. The taxi driver who took me to the hotel and turned round as he wrote out the receipt. “Word to the wise,guv,” he said in an accent straight out of Dixon of Dock Green.”If you’re going out tonight, turn left. Those clubs down there,” he glanced to the right, “they’re all gay bars.”

2. Meeting the lovely Maggie de Monde who asked me if I remembered an 80s band called Swan’s Way. “God yes.” I replied, “they were rubbish.” “Oh, I was the lead singer,” came the dead bat. We laughed about this at the La Tasca later so I think I got away with it. Just.

3. Seeing Briggy Smale, the former entertainment guru at Radio 1, still flourishing.

4. Getting three different emails in the morning describing my talk as “inspirational.” This was quite unexpected. I do waffling and the occasional funny story about Noel Edmonds, but I’ve never been accused of inspiring anyone before.

I’ll be back in Brighton on the 21st for a talk about Nick Drake with Iain Cameron who knew Nick and played with him on the long lost Radio 2 session. Please come along and be, er, inspired!

This week’s RAJAR figures revealed an uncomfortable statistic. At 55 years old I’m now officially the same age as my mother. She’s 84, lives alone, watches Deal Or No Deal every day and likes Alan Titchmarsh. We have nothing in common at all so why does RAJAR lump us together? Wouldn’t it help stations like Smooth, Classic Gold and BBC Local Radio if they could break out the 55-64 year olds? Many of us have teenage kids, laptops, credit cards, iPods, even sex now and again. We are ‘economically active’ as the marketeers say. And what’s the statistical sense in including the influential baby boomers in the same category as their parents? 

I’m back on the promotion trail plugging the new paperback edition of my book about Nick Drake. Most of the interviews involve sitting in an unattended studio in Broadcasting House or at BBC Cambridge talking down-the-line. It’s always slightly unnerving when an interview starts. I’ve done enough of them to know that most radio presenters won’t have read the book, many will be doing the interview because their producer told them to and some will try desperately to include you in their show. Last year, flogging the hardback edition, I had “while you’re here can you pick the winner of our limerick competition”, “so who exactly was Nick Cave” and “well we haven’t got any of his music on our core so here’s the Bee Gees.”

But this week has been better. Robin Young on National Public Radio in the US was terrific. She’d read the book, she had some carefully edited clips of Drake songs to play in and she kept me on my semantic toes. You can hear it at: http://www.here-now.org/shows/2007/02/20070201_17.asp

I also enjoyed chatting to Matt Jamison on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Once a week Matt and I meet in Dunstable to record my show for Classic Gold. It’s a typical presenter/producer relationship - I bring in the old Jethro Tull albums, he suggests I play something a bit more eighties. But on Sunday mornings Vinyl Matt of Classic Gold Albums is transformed into the smooth host of Matt’s melange of music and mirth, three hours of radio revelry in which anything can happen and probably will - copyright local radio billings passim. He does the 9 to 12 slot which I did myself for a few months in 2003 and for the first time in my life I got to review the papers. Blimey that’s good fun. Ranting against the Mail On Sunday, bigging up the Arsenal, a quick pop at Fariah Alam and Prince Harry and back home for bacon sandwiches.

Incidentally Darker Than The Deepest Sea (published by Piatkus/Portrait, available at all good bookstores, and some poor ones) has sold more than Ashley Cole’s and Chantelle’s books put togther. Which doesn’t say that much for any of us, though I expect they got a bigger advance than I did……..

LS Lowry, Ena Sharples, Tony Wilson, your boys took a hell of a beating……..

As any Gooner will tell you there’s no greater moment in sport than the sight of a soundly defeated Manchester United team traipsing off a football field. So it was a huge pleasure to watch the red army wipe the smiles off the smug faces of Ronaldo and co at the Emirates. It was a shame though to miss John Murray’s commentary on BBC 5 Live Extra which promised to recreate the grid system of early football broadcasts. And sadly it doesn’t appear to be available on the BBC’s Listen Again site. Does anyone have a recording they can lend me?

I was taken by an article written in 1927 on the occasion of the first ever radio football commentary (Arsenal v Sheffield Utd) by ‘Gunner’s Mate’ and reprinted in this weekend’s match programme: “I would congratulate the BBC officials upon their enterprise and would assure one of my pessimistic friends that the dissemination of descriptive accounts of football matches in this way is not likely seriously to affect the revenue from turnstiles nor to cause the football reporting newspapers to go into liquidation.” It reminded me of a nineteenth century football report I found while making a documentary for BBC Radio Nottingham in the 1970s. “None could gainsay Forest’s victory once Williamson, the home pivot, had toe-ended the leather past the visitors’ custodian.” Over to you Alan……

“It is unquestionably a good thing that the programme has raised these issues and provoked such a debate,” said the Chief Exec of Channel 4. Inspired by Andy Duncan’s promise of a thought-provoking TV discussion about racism in the media I tuned in to hear the views of one of the contributors, a perfumier described later by Edwina Currie as “a slag”. “Why doesn’t she f*** off, the f***ing f***er? She f***ing makes me f***ing sick with her f***ing poppadums. Aaaaaaaargh, Eurghhhhhhhh, F**********ck!” Very enlightening Andy, well done. We’re looking forward to the radio version.

Fighting through the storms for a session with Sean Street’s MA students at Bournemouth Uni turned into an unexpected treat. The class were completely on the money about the future of radio (podcasts, streams, niche services, innovation, quality of audience not quantity, content not delivery etc etc) and I came away with a real sense that were being equipped to make a contribution to the industry. But best of all was Jackie, who won’t mind me describing her as a ‘mature’ student. She told me how much she loved GLR and how she’d cried when the BBC took it away. “In those day”, she told me,”if you met a man in a pub and he said he was a GLR listener, you’d think ‘I can imagine having babies with you’”. If only Matthew and I had realised the aphrodisiac qualities of rock ‘n’ rollin’ news…..

Nice to meet Emma Wray (wife of Classic Gold’s Gordon) too, ex GWR presenter and station manager, now studying for a PhD at Bournemouth, researching the programming on early ILR stations. Bournemouth holds a big archive including the old LBC library but they can always use more priceless old recordings so when you’re clearing the loft or digitising your station archives, remember your friends on the south coast.

So it’s finally revealed. The BBC will get a licence fee increase, but not as much as it wanted or hoped. And, perhaps more seriously, its borrowing limit will be restricted to £230m, much less than the £400m the corporation was seeking. Most of the press coverage has concentrated on analogue switch-off and other TV issues.  But what will be the effects on BBC Radio?

Will 5 Live be able to stay in London, which many of its staff privately want? Will live music or drama or foreign news coverage be cut? Is local radio under threat again? Will the BBC finally face up to its role in talent cost inflation and ask some of its big names to work for less?  It would be interesting to hear from both Radio Academy members and others about what this funding crisis might mean for the future of BBC radio and the industry as a whole. I’ll publish any comments here.