And now on Radio Taboo, sorry 2...
It's a scenario played out, I suspect, in more homes than just ours. Saturday morning, 10 o'clock, I switch over from Radio 4 to Radio 2 for the Jonathan Ross show. My husband groans from the innermost nook of his being, swears, cries "Oh no, not him not again, no, please, no", and bitterly mutters something about £18m.
Most weeks, we then have a micro-row, with all the lines well-rehearsed and said now out of habit rather than any real venom. For I can't bear to miss Jonathan Ross on the radio (can take him or leave him on the telly); my husband simply can't bear him. But over the holiday season, this scenario takes on a whole new twist: I switch on to find Mark Lamarr in Ross's seat, scream in horror, switch off and run away. My husband is left standing there, bemused, saying "Oh, I quite like him".
The reason I am sharing this with you - apart from hoping that others have similarly passionate household debates about radio presenters and it's not just us - is because I can't post that first paragraph on the Radio 2 messageboard, even though it's a comment about holiday cover for one of its most popular, award-winning presenters. I did a mildly critical review of Chris Evans's drive time show a couple of weeks back, and that wouldn't be allowed on the station's messageboard either.
You see, the interactive corner of the UK's most popular radio station's website has been redesigned as "the place to talk about the music you love and the music we play". Comments are steered into three dreary, music-centred categories: Your Music (what you are listening to); Folk & Acoustic (your favourite gigs and records) and, most repellent-sounding of all, The Flip Side (music-based fun and games). Try posting anything about the station's presenters, as one listener did on the Ross/Marr subject and several did yesterday to discuss Sarah Kennedy's slurring, stumbling performance on her early morning show, and you will soon find yourself on the receiving end of a chirpy message like this, taken from the Kennedy discussion:
"Good morning everyone,
We have decided to close this thread as this messageboard is focussed for you to have music discussion - any other subjects are considered off-topic."
There's no doubt that this redesign - you might want to call it censorship if you've had your thoughts deemed "off-topic" - came in the wake of the massive protests last year when Chris Evans took over Johnnie Walker's show. Yes, it must have been irksome for Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas to have faced such an online onslaught of criticism, and it did feel as if it might never stop.
But that's the thoroughly interactive world we now live in and listeners - who not only tune in, but do also pay for the station through the licence fee - have an enormous sense of connection to Radio 2, largely clustered around the presenters and personalities, not the music. It seems an odd, cowardly move, to dodge such comment, and to silence a debate that reveals only how much Radio 2's audience cherish the station. The result is now a lifeless messageboard section that doesn't match the station, and which compares poorly to, say, some of the fantastic spats on the radio 4 messageboard (I heartily recommend the wonderfully grumpy debate about Saturday Live in which the show's producer gives as good as he gets).
Of all the UK-wide BBC Radio stations, Radio 2 has the strongest on-air connection with its listeners. It's such a pity, and such an oddly timid move, that this relationship has been misguidedly curtailed online. What on earth is Radio 2 so afraid of?
