Will Radio 1 listeners stomach a poetry-loving northerner over their porridge? We'll soon hear , for Mark Radcliffe has just been given the coveted breakfast slot.
By Stephen Armstrong
In this life there are tough jobs, there are hellish jobs and then theres taking over the Radio 1 breakfast show from Chris Evans.After every column inch writen in the last week or so has quoted that magical phrase, "Evans has put on 1m listeners", you just know that each move you make will be watched by the media , the legions of Evans fans and just about everyone else in the country . Add to that the possibility that the redheaded wunderkind himself could surface against you on Virgin Radio any day now and well , what else do you want stacked against you ?
So fix your gaze on the man with the toughest job in broadcasting - Mark Radcliffe. On Friday, Radio 1's controller confirmed that the pert 38 year-old , along with his best mate Marc Riley aka Lard, is the red-heads replacement. He is due to start on February 17 , and its going to be like replacing north with south .
This is the man who introduced the first poetry slot on Radio 1 in the stations's history. This is the DJ with a 2:1 in English, American studies and classical civilisation from Manchester University - "It does help to recall the odes of Horace when introducing a Spice Girls record, you know." This is the man with a sidekick and biscuit monitor whose catchphrases include "Arse", "Fancy a brew" , and "That's the bunny". And this is the man who is taking over from the country's best loved broadcaster. Is he worried?
"You'd be daft not to be worried, " he says. "Its obviosly a poisoned chalice. There are loads and loads of people out there who really love Chris Evans. They fervently support him and they'll just as fervently hate us. The thing is , if they do hate us, there's not much we can do. We can't change our style. There's no artifice to us, there's no slickness."
"We're just a couple of rank amateurs, and this is all we can do. We're the same two dickheads when we're talking in the pub."
when it comes to Evans, Radcliffe is charitable. Almost. "To be honest, I'm suprised he stayed as long as he did , " he says. "I couldn't see how he was going to balance Radio 1 with his television and golf interests. He's a great broadcaster, but I am amazed at how interested everyone is in everything he does. They'll be a lot less interested what me and Lard get up to , We don't get up to anything,"
None the less, the media circus is beginning to catch up with him. He was so strongly tipped in the run-up to his announcement that he found his name appearing in stories for days on end. "It felt really strange," he says."There's been all these journalists from national newspapers calling and BBC bosses ringing up me and Lard while we're sitting in our cardigans in this tiny office with no windows, and we wonder if they're talking about the same people. I mean, I read about this bloke who won't come to London , refuses to play certain records and named a huge price , and I don't regognice me ."
According to Mark Robinson the former Radio 1 managing editor , now programme controller at Talk Radio UK and one of Evans's suitors, Bannister has long been a Radcliffe fan and has been planning for this day for some time. Bannisters's bright new hope may have finally risen to the doorstep of stardom , but it has been a long, slow business. Radcliffe started media life in 1979 as a prducer on Manchesters Piccadilly Radio and remained in production with the odd sideline as an indie DJ,throughout the 80's. In 1990, however, opportunity knocked for the man.
"I was at the BBC in Manchester when 5 Live started, with a budget of £25 an hour, and could't get anybody decent, " he says. " They offered me a show called Hit the North, which showcased talent up here. It was a really good time to do it , because it was around the time of Madchester and all that , so we got loads of attention. " It also created Lard, a former Fall guitarist and plugger, who did a local-scene gossip spot that gradually deteriorated into a weekly on air row.
"I was supposed to provide all this hot gossip about the Madchester scene, but my stories got weaker and weaker until one week when all I had was that I'd seen two members of Wonky Alice in a pub, " says Riley. "Mark called me a hapless charlatan on air , I agreed, he took to me instantly and I've been part of the show ever since."
The success of Hit The North led Radio 1 to offer Radcliffe two weeks as a stand-in for Mark Goodier, from which he never returned to 5 live. The boy does well out of stand-ins. His show, Out on Blue Six, was launched in April 1991 and won a Sony Award. He moved to four nights a week in October 1993, and it was here that his blend of swearing , mistakes and personal attacks on Lard drew the attention of Malcolm Gerrie, former producer of The Tube, who needed a presenter for his new pop show , The White Room.
Gerrie was fed up with the Word-style presenters who were cropping up everywhere. He wanted someone who knew what he was talking about , but had that slight irreverence and could set his own agenda. He also wanted someone to take on Jools Holland who didn't come from the London Soho Square set, which fitted in with Gerrie's cheerfully self confessed Geordie prejudice. The White Room came to an end after three series, but Radcliffe soldiered on.
The pair's current show (from 10pm to midnight, Mondays to Thursdays) is presented by both in a laconic drawl. It features hopeless quizzes called "Bird or Bloke" and "Fish or Foul" . Where members of the pop world ring in and have to say which category a guppy falls into , There are prerecorded bits and spoof versions of todays chart sensations - Sleeper's Inbetweener was rerecorded at Ugly Bleeder , Kula Shaker became Peeler Tater, and Babybirds's You're Gorgeous turned up as Baby Bloke's You're Gormless.
"It's organised choas going out on air, but I don't really like talking about this , " Radliffe confesses."If your're not careful , you can end up sounding like, 'We're bonkers we are! You dont have to be mad to work here but it helps !' We do have a strong planning element to the show , especially with the music, but we like to let ideas run . I mean , we thing really long and hard about the records to play and the bands to have on with both radio and telly. That's the main thing to me . When a record is playing , that's sacrosanct , because people don't want to hear me talking through the intro like Dave Lee Travis."
Radcliffe insists he will continue to showcase poets and play new acts on his breakfast show , That's great new for indie bands and awful news for Boyzone. The Radio 1 breakfast show has the reputation of king-maker to pop's boy princes. If further proof of this is needed , the current No 1 , White Town's Your Woman was first played by Radlicffe and Lard when standing in for Evans after Christmas.
What wasn't clear from thier stand in periods was how popular they were with the audience , They regulary read out faxes on air from irate listeners demanding that Evans return. "We figured that if we read out the complaints, we might get people on our side , If you apologise as soon as you go on air nobody can blame you for anything can they ?"
So will he come to London?
"Well no I don't live there. I live here in Manchester and thats where I'm comfortable." And do you refuse to play certain records ? "Well yes I can't see me playing Boyzone. I bear them no malice. They're a fine cabaret act, but karaoke Bee Gees has no place on my show." And did you ask for a huge pay packet ?" Well yes. You see I didnt want to get up really early so I thought that if I asked them for a huge sum of money , they'd tell me where to go and I might get the afternoon slot , but they agreed. Its a lot of money. I dont know what to do with it I might buy my mum a car."
There's no doubt that Radcliffe is going to need all the resilient humility he displays at the moment. It is almost inevitable that the breakfast show audience will show a fall in ratings, and equally in evitable that the papers will pick up on it as quickly as possible. Radcliffes style is particular unlikely to appeal to the huge kids and preteen following that Evans had. His best hope is that his banter, bravado and buffoonery will bring back those listeners who were already starting to drift away from the breakfast show in the past few months , presumably because Evans was dissappearing up his own back side.
So what do these two chancers think ? Will the nation take to them ? There's a long pause. "I don't know says Riley. "I hope so. The response they had for our stand-in for Evans was the best they had for any stand-in and nobody was waiting outside to beat us with sticks, which we took as encouragement. They have a tape at Radio 1 that they play when members of the royal family die , and I thought that would come on after 10 minutes of our stint. But they let us go on broacasting."
"We'll just have to give it a go. We might get thrown off after six months , in which case it's back to the window cleaning."