Johnnie Walker Meets … Peter Kay (Radio 2) | iPlayer
Desert Island Discs Absent Friends – Victoria Wood (Radio 4Extra) | iPlayer
Blink Once For Yes | Love + Radio
A strange mishmash of roundups, remembrances and reviews this week. The time between Christmas and new year (Boxing Week? Twixtmas? Resolution Run-Up? Slobba-lobba-ding-dong?) is always an odd one for broadcasters. They get as many shows prerecorded as possible, and then bus in the second-in-commands for news. Everything’s slightly skew-whiff.
Evidence: on Friday, Johnnie Walker had a special show. Instead of his Sounds of the Seventies or even a regular Johnnie Walker Meets… he had the sound of Peter Kay, as he and Kay drove around Bolton and Manchester in Kay’s car, listening to tracks that each had chosen.
I tuned in with trepidation. Peter Kay only agrees to go on TV or radio if he can take over. He’s a broadcast bully, a chat-show terrorist, taking everyone hostage from host to guests to audience. Though I enjoy his standup (if Michael McIntyre has his finger on the pulse of the suburban south, Kay knows what makes northerners howl), I can’t watch him on live TV. He makes everything about him. It’s maddening.
And at the beginning of the programme he did exactly this, hogging the mic as though it were his show rather than Walker’s. Plus, his hijack clearly began before they had even started recording, when they’d met at Piccadilly station and Kay shouted at a punter that Walker was his long-lost dad and he’d just found out he was adopted. Funny, of course… but no one else had a choice. Nobody ever does with Kay.
Gradually, though, Kay let Walker speak and managed to get some lovely stuff from the long-time music fan, especially about the Beatles and being a DJ in San Francisco when the Sex Pistols played their last gig. Of seeing the Beatles in 1963, on a Saturday night in Handsworth, Walker said: “They inspired me to do something different. Four blokes who made this amazing music, had this great sense of humour, and the world was going nuts. They played two gigs in one night… It was the freedom and potential of being young and being yourself and really having a go at something.”
Lovely stuff from him, and in the end from Kay too. Music has a way of unwinding people into revealing themselves, and a relaxed Kay was far more charming than his usual hyperactive show-off. Plus, he played Frank Wilson’s Do I Love You (Indeed I Do), so we can forgive him a lot.
Another northern comedian, Victoria Wood, managed to always be gracious, and her 2007 Desert Island Discs – rebroadcast on Christmas Day as part of the Absent Friends strand – was lovely to hear. Anyone who chooses Randy Newman’s Marie and the Doobie Brothers’ What a Fool Believes knows what music can do to your heart, and this show, her second Desert Island Discs appearance, is one I remember very clearly. Wood was so honest about her loneliness as a child, and the devastation of her marriage break-up; she let you in, and it made you love her more. No way would Peter Kay relinquish control enough to do that.
Finally, if you’re feeling robust during this strange week, then try Love + Radio’s latest, Blink Once for Yes. Be warned: it’s heavy stuff. An accident, a family tragedy. Nothing we haven’t heard before, but presented and crafted by John Fecile, one of the family members, into an intensely compelling real-life story. Hard to forget.
