The Gift of the Gab with Radio 2 The Gift of the Gab with Radio 2

SIMON MAYO: This is a record of what happens when

you put a collection of BBC Radio 2 presenters in a room

and ask them to talk about their life and times in radio.

With more than two centuries of experience between us,

spanning seven decades, the only problem was getting us to stop.

This is Mr Ken Bruce. He's been with Radio 2 since 1982

and is a connoisseur of the best in popular music.

You'll know Claudia Winkleman, of course, from the telly but

she's also the presenter of the Arts Show every Friday night on Radio 2.

Bob Harris joins us as well, it's Whispering Bob of course.

Music connoisseur and our resident expert

on pretty much anything that twangs.

This is Jo Whiley, host of our weekday evenings unmissable show

and purveyor of all the live music you could possibly want.

And we couldn't do it without Tony Blackburn, radio veteran,

Pick Of The Pops host, and nearly 50 years ago, radio pirate.

And I'm Simon Mayo.

you'd think I might just have smiled a little, wouldn't you?

With the six of us all duly gathered together,

it seems sensible to start at the beginning.

What made us all want to work in radio?

I used to listen to Journey Into Space on Radio Luxembourg

and things like that and put the radio on

and the valves would light up in those days

and you had to wait for it to come on.

I just thought it was magical.

I thought I'd quite like to be inside that box!

SIMON: With the glowing valves!

Well, with the glowing valves, yes.

My mum and dad used to have a sort of a record player radio...

That's right.

A big sort of radiogram thing in the corner of the room.

It had the big dials and it's exactly as you say, Tony, it did, it glowed.

I always thought that was my first sort of feeling from it,

when I was probably about four or five,

listening to Listen With Mother - with my mother -

and it just represented warmth and happiness.

Yes. So that was my first sort of feeling about the radio.

They always used to say radio was showbusiness for ugly people,

so that's what I...

I thought that was politics!

THEY ALL LAUGH

But I, like Bob and like Tony, just listened to,

heard something on the radio and thought, I could almost do that.

I didn't have any particular talent

but I thought I could sort of speak all right,

and all I heard were the serious people, the announcers being funny

on things like Beyond Our Ken and Round The Horne

and on Take It From Here and I thought,

"That sounds like a good job, that sounds like fun.

"Let's have a go at that," but without any means of ever thinking

I could do it. I don't know what made me think there was a possibility...

That is the quantum leap, though, isn't it?

Wanting to be on the radio and then how do you be on the radio? Yeah.

I do remember radio at home much more than I remember television.

It has just always been there,

whether it was at my grandparents' house...

My dad has always had a massive ghetto blaster.

He used to work on a building site and I remember he used to

walk around with this big ghetto blaster on his shoulder

and he's only very little, but radio was always really, really important.

I used to do that thing of listening to the top 40 and recording it

and pressing record and its...

I don't know, just always had this really deep love of radio.

We used to have, as you had I think, one of those big record players

and it had a radio and it had a turntable built in

and I rigged up, it was a loudspeaker

and I used to put it at the end of the hall

and I used to actually do DJ programmes for my mum and dad.

JO: Me too! Yeah. Yeah.

TONY: You did that?

I pretended to be, I pretended to be Simon Stephens, I changed my name

because I thought my name was pathetic.

My sister did jingles on a xylophone and I wrote out links

and I put the records on and did the whole thing.

I've still got the singles with the number with the running order.

Do you think other people did that

or is it just that we are quite peculiar and obsessive?

I used to record the top 40 and then play them back and pretend to do...

But from my world, I worked in telly beforehand

but there is a feeling in telly where anybody can work in telly

because literally all you have to do is paint yourself orange

and read out loud but you had to be something really special

to get into radio because radio, they hear your true self.

You can't hide behind anything else

so for me it was I was praying and then I got lucky.

The one thing I loved about radio, I didn't want to be

part of the whole, I didn't want to be part of showbiz,

I didn't have that kind of thing of I just want to be an entertainer.

Because I am quite shy I loved the fact that it's really intimate

and no-one has to watch you. Television can be quite daunting

but the fact it's just you and these people that you are speaking to

and that's what I always got from radio.

I remember being ill and when you're lying in bed and your mum is

doing things around the house

and listening to things like Pete Murray and to Jimmy Young

and just being really comforted by those voices

and them being kind of friends and that's what really appealed to me

that I could just sit there and just...

BOB: Did you have this thing, Jo,

I mean when I started buying my first records,

I got an incredible amount of pleasure

playing those records to my friends.

We used to have record hops as they were in those days, in the late '50s,

playing the new Buddy Holly or Ricky Nelson and the Everly Brothers

and all of that and sharing these new singles we'd bought

and I still think now that what I'm doing is just a sort of slightly

larger version of that and that the essence of just that

and turning people on to music and communicating

an enjoyment that you feel about this record you've just discovered.

There's nothing quite like it, yeah.

That's exactly it. No, it's really exciting,

just having that two-way dialogue between people and

being able to go, "I just heard this single and it's absolutely fantastic,

"I hope you like it!" And then you put it on

and then people nowadays can let you know instantly

if they like it or they don't like it.

That's what so lovely. Maybe at some point

we might talk about it but the thing about Twitter and Facebook is

that you know immediately whether...

I do it less with music but more with chat on the Arts Show -

if you're having a conversation with somebody, I did see that and I did...

Whatever it is. It's just, you know. SIMON: Is that a good thing?

- That's a great thing. - Is it?

To know people's opinion straightaway?

Yet, as long as it's positive!

As long as it's, "Well done, Claudia, yes, very good question."

I think it's fantastic.

You do immediately get a reaction, don't you?

I think Twitter and... Particularly Twitter, I think, is very exciting.

SIMON: Here's the next question.

How do you judge whether you've had a successful show?

I don't think in terms of success or otherwise.

I just do the show, and leave at the end of it

because there'll be another one tomorrow. I think

if you're doing a daily show, there is this kind of continuity to it,

it's a long stream of activity

over a whole year or years,

and so I don't come off saying, "Oh, that was a really good show,"

I just say, "That's another show done."

Sometimes you get a feeling, don't you? Sometimes you just have

a gut instinct of knowing that everything's flowed really well.

I guess nowadays you get feedback and people telling you you're great

so you're going, "I was great tonight."

I think you just have an instinct of whether

everything just kind of flows really well.

The show you think is great was probably

never as great as it was and the show you think was terrible

was probably not as bad as you think it was.

Am I right in thinking that you do the show

and you just go and leave someone else to clear up the mess?

Yes. Usually you, Tony. Yes.

When I was starting out, I definitely would have judged

a successful programme as to whether I did the voice-overs right.

JO: What, hitting vocals?

Yes, if there was a 27 second voice-over on this track,

can I get up to 26? Yes, I did it. Great, that's a successful...

That was... Of course, no listener cares about that and now,

you realise that actually, you don't actually have to do that at all.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't,

but that's how I would have judged a successful programme, I think.

I will gauge it by how well me and the guest have clicked.

So, when we had Luke Treadaway on

and we got on brilliantly and he says, "Is it all right if I stay?"

Oh! KEN: That's nice.

And then if you have David Bailey on and he gets weird

and starts pacing around the room and then just swears

and sort of leaves, that's less good because it's my job to make them

feel comfortable and try and get the most out of them

so that's how I will gauge it just by those chats.

Good interviews. If you have done a great interview

or if someone has been really engaging then you just know it's

gone well and then if you play some fantastic records,

then that's when you know you've got a good show.

Play the records that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand out,

you think it must be doing the same, even if it isn't, you think it's

doing the same for the audience. JO: You hope so. Yeah.

JO: What about you, Simon? - A successful programme?

You're not still trying to hit vocals?

I'm not trying to hit the...

Well, though sometimes it's quite nice...

JO: Satisfying.

Satisfying feeling, a complete mystery to everybody else.

Crashing a vocal is terrible though, isn't it? You feel bad about that.

You feel sick.

I think also if there's an interview section that you're doing,

if you've got a guest that's come in, there is enormous satisfaction to

be had from the well-honed question. CLAUDIA: Yes.

It doesn't matter really what the answer is but you just think,

"That was exactly the right question to ask," and sometimes, you know,

you have a very long and rambling question, a bit like this answer

but it goes on a long time and I hate it when interviewers showing off

how much information they have by putting it all in the question,

whereas actually, someone like Larry King when he was on CNN,

mastered the art of the short question.

At Prime Minister's Questions, the most effective questions

are always the short ones. It's always, "Well, why?"

"How do you feel?" BOB: Absolutely.

All of that kind of stuff but the well-honed question,

there's a great satisfaction to be had from that..

BOB: Do you find, Simon, I mean I do judge how well an interview is going

by how much of me I'm hearing.

The more of me I'm hearing,

the less well I think the interview is going.

CLAUDIA: Totally.

If you're just nudging away and you got somebody talking,

and it's a lot do with the interviewee

and how willing they are to be communicative and all of that

but as a rule of thumb I think the more of me I'm hearing,

the less well this interview is going

because then you're just nudging and you're opening up this lovely

atmosphere within which your guest is beginning to feel comfortable and

relaxed and beginning to feel happy to express themselves and open up.

I try and explain to my kids that the key...

One of my keys to life is basically just doing your homework.

They really don't like that at 5.00pm on a Wednesday.

I go, "You know the key." "Really? Are you sure it's not fish fingers?"

And when I interview anybody,

the more homework I've done,

even though I don't want to read their third book

because I read the first or whatever,

because it's a Sunday night and I could be watching telly,

they know immediately, they know when they walk in

if you've absolutely done it and you're so self assured

that you actually just sort of let them go, like you say,

you go, "Tell everybody about it."

You're not trying to show off, you're not going... And that's where...

So if I really do my homework, that's when it goes well.

Right, here's another question.

What's the best idea you've ever had?

TONY: I think probably introducing a dog.

JO: Arnold! BOB: Arnold, yes.

Arnold the dog.

I found Arnold on a sound effects record on Radio Caroline.

It's sad, isn't it, that's the best idea I ever had?

I found this dog and I thought, well, British people love dogs

and I introduced this dog, and this dog, Arnold.

It certainly got more fan mail than I ever got.

SIMON: Why Arnold? TONY: I don't know.

I just came up with the idea, Arnold, I don't know, out of the blue

and this dog barked and barked and barked

and I got really quite annoyed.

It became terribly annoying but it was so popular I couldn't drop him.

The only feature I've had which stood the test of time

is Confessions, which I'm still doing, which I'm still doing now,

but I think it started as a...

It was doing Breakfast and it was a record amnesty,

I think it started off as a record amnesty, you know

admitting to records that you still possess that you borrowed

from your neighbour or girlfriend or something. And we had,

"Yes, I've still got this after five years, this album after 10 years..."

and then... So that was it and I thought there was going to be,

like you say, a feature that lasted a day

and then got letters from people saying,

"While you're at it, can I say that, not only did I borrow his album

"but I also borrowed his wife," I don't know, it was...

And I was thinking, "Hang on a second, I'm not sure we can do this."

Then started to read out some of the letters

and then it was like opening the floodgates as though people,

they'd stopped telling the pastor what they'd done

so they wanted to tell someone on the radio.

We were talking earlier on about whether our kids listen to the radio

and what they do listen to and my kids are across the whole age range,

but they love Confessions, that's the one thing that they're all like,

"Turn it up, turn it up, we like this."

The most frustrating thing is that I can't do so many

that we used to do without any...

They were just, no-one even wanted to know what I was going to read out,

I'd just choose them and there was one which I know wouldn't...

Ones involving goats and hamsters, which were always the most popular,

would never get through any more.

There was one from a hospital orderly

who'd been out on the town

and his job was to prepare people for operations and he was

shaving a guy's chest because he was having a heart operation.

He said, "I wasn't concentrating

"and before I knew what had happened I'd shaved off his nipples,"

and it got a fantastic reaction and people wrote in

and all of that sort of stuff and now it wouldn't actually get on the air

because it involves...

JO: Too many repercussions! ..Illegality, I suppose!

THEY ALL SPEAK AT ONCE

I have got one more idea I came up with which is the Golden Hour.

KEN: Full of ideas, this man!

I came up with that idea, that's lasted long time,

KEN: That WAS a good idea.

The only good idea I ever had, I think, was to decide to myself

I was not a serious broadcaster because I thought I was at one time.

I used to do hospital radio. I did record shows and I thought,

"This is good fun," and I joined the BBC

and I thought, "No, actually, I'm going to be a serious broadcaster

"and do politics and current affairs and things like that."

And it became apparent to me that while I could just about

get away with it, I wasn't actually any good at it

and I was better at doing record programmes and so I thought,

"Right, well, that's what I'll do."

That happened to me because I did radio journalism at college

and so you're with all these really hard-bitten journalists

and they're all out there searching stories

and tracking them down and I just used to sit in the studio

just doing segues and talking up to vocals and just being a proper anorak

and I just thought, "This is it, this is my path."

Nobody else here wants to do it but I love it, I love playing songs,

I love listening to music and I made the exact same decision,

"Right, this is my future, I can't pretend to be anything else."

I couldn't get excited enough, as much as the journalists did,

about the latest Cabinet reshuffle. I thought, "Oh, yeah, that's nice."

And it was at that point I realised,

actually, you're not cut out for this.

Actually, there's more competition in that field as well, isn't there?

There aren't so many people who can talk nonsense.

It is strange, though.

There are fewer and fewer people because there isn't...

At least there was a sort of training ground when you and I were younger,

from local stations perhaps,

pirate ships, commercial stations,

there were many of them, who were allowed to be themselves.

Fewer and fewer people are doing that now.

The BBC local stations are more speech than music

and so nobody is being left in a room with a box of records and told,

"Fill two hours," any more, which was always the way you learned.

OK, here's another question.

What's the song you most enjoy playing and why?

Oh, can I go with this one? Yes.

Baz Luhrmann, Everyone's Free To Wear Sunscreen because it is one...

You mentioned earlier on, Ken, about when you play a song

and it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up

and you know it's having that effect on everyone else.

Without fail, every time I play that

you always get an enormous audience reaction.

People who never heard it before and then other people who've listened

to it and there'll always be one line that you'll listen to in that song

and you'll just go, "That's so true, I will be a better person,

"I will do this thing and I will wear sunscreen."

It's, I just love playing that song.

My answer is totally sentimental

because my mum's favourite song in the whole world hands down,

it's Midnight Train To Georgia by Gladys Knight

and I remember her looking on the dial for it when I was little,

when it was very popular, I don't know how old I was, five,

and she used to be stirring inedible stew, singing in the wooden spoon

and I remember, I think it was the first time I stood in for Ken,

and it was on the list, because I just get the list,

and I'm so grateful, I don't make eye contact with anybody.

I haven't sent in an invoice, I can't believe they let me stand in for you

and that was on and that was a proper moment, it doesn't get better...

Like, even if they then say, "You've got to leave now,

"don't write to us any more,"

I've still done this.

And when your mum was singing at home did you have to do,

"Superstar, but he didn't get far." You did all that stuff?

All of that and then she would... Yeah, it was.

TONY: Great song. It's a great song.

And that is, yeah, every morning, or every afternoon, her singing.

I don't, is this the same as what's your favourite song?

Because I'm not sure.

CLAUDIA: No, because that's not my favourite song.

So I think, my instinctive reaction was to say Stay With Me by The Faces

because it just always sounds fantastic on the radio but I think

also if you see a track like Elbow doing One Day Like This,

you know that the audience are going to go mad for it,

they absolutely love it,

and I think when you get a track like that it's sort of a gift

because you're thinking, everyone is going to stop what they're doing...

OK, everyone stop, turn this up.

You know there'll be people in cars who'll turn it up really loud,

looking across at each other, having that communal moment.

- Arms raised. - There will be somebody working

in a sentry box somewhere listening on an iPod or something

and they will all have that little moment

and that's the joy of what we do, isn't it?

Yes, in the context of us talking about radio and things

Rex Bob Lowenstein, Mark Germino... TONY: Fantastic, yeah

..which tells the story of this kind of rebel DJ

who just played everything from Madonna to George Jones.

"Smash and trash till they cuffed him on the floor."

And this company was brought in to rationalise the playlist

and he was the last bastion fighting against this,

just playing what he wanted to and eventually he had to, didn't he,

lock himself in the studio until he was arrested

and taken and the judge said to him,

you know, when he's in the dock,

"By the way, what was that great record that you played last night?"

It's probably impossible to come up with your favourite record, isn't it?

ALL: Yes. This Magic Moment, The Drifters.

Oh, yes.

The strings on that one. What's yours, Jo?

I think there's also records that hit you for different reasons.

I always love to hear and play on the radio, Nina Simone,

I Put A Spell On You cos that really does give me the kind of "uh" moment.

But then, is this actually affecting the audience in the same way?

There are songs that I love playing on the radio because they lift me

and I always get a picture, remember the Royle family,

when Jim Royle and Twiggy were papering the room to Mambo No. 5

and you know they were dancing and I think there are songs like that

that I love playing, like Alesha Dixon, The Boy Does Nothing

because that always makes me start moving and Beach Baby by First Class

and Sugar Baby Love by The Rubettes, come on!

That's got them all going. JO: First band I ever saw live!

Frankly they're just great songs just to get you up

and get the whole show up, I think.

What is your most irritating radio habit?

CLAUDIA: Oh. TONY: Oh.

I'll go first.

I think I'd find other people in the studio irritating.

I don't want anyone else in the studio

if they absolutely don't have to be there.

KEN: I would rather be alone.

I remember... Just now actually!

THEY ALL LAUGH

I remember when I was a young announcer on BBC Scotland,

the senior announcer there,

I was leaving one night and switched the light off in the cubicle outside

the studio and he came rushing out

and said, "Oh, don't do that! Don't do that!

"I can't bear the thought of somebody listening that I can't see."

And I thought, "But you're on the radio!"

But he actually hated the idea of there being somebody possibly

sitting watching him do it

and I think that's the same as you're saying, Simon, it's an intimate thing

and you want to feel surrounded by people that you know and trust,

but you don't want strangers watching.

These are more insecurities rather than bad habits, aren't they?

JO: This is a therapy session, right?

Who do we pay?

You probably like it, don't you, because of the television.

You always have a big team around you with TV, haven't you?

Yes, far too many people so I much prefer radio

but if I'm interviewing somebody and they say something,

I like that I can see an immediate reaction from people

sort of behind that person in the control room.

My most irritating habit on air is the fact that

I say a song is brilliant, even if I hate it. Continue.

I say "um" all the time.

I thought we were meant to be taking ourselves apart a bit more

so I would never... Um.

SIMON: We can be as reflective as you wish.

Yeah, we haven't done embarrassing radio moments yet

and that's kind of what I really wanted to know what everyone's is.

Ken, why don't you start?

I haven't had any at all!

Just those moments that you like, oh, that you will always remember.

Two of them, one of them being when I was reading out a text

that was talking about the West Kent Country Ladies Hockey Club.

That's available on the internet for people to listen to that.

That was quite a good one.

The other was when we had Biffy Clyro playing at Reading

and it was obviously a live broadcast and very, very exciting.

They've got very ardent fans so no-one was supposed to know

they were going to be in this tiny little tent but obviously

all the fans knew that they were going to be there so I'd run up

onto the stage and I introduced Biffy who were going to do a cover

of Rage Against The Machine, Killing In The Name Of which is very,

very sweary and we hadn't really thought this through properly so...

And the band had assured us they were going to do the sanitised version

but, you know, you trust these guys.

So, they go on stage and they start to perform it.

THEY do the sanitised version,

however the audience just sing really loudly

at Reading and my producer...

I remember looking over at my producer, Piers Bradford, going...

We literally had to just go, "And we'll be leaving Biffy Clyro there."

So that was one to remember.

We probably all got a version,

a story which is putting the wrong version.

It's very difficult to play the wrong version any more because it's all,

because we only get the right version if it's on the hard drive

but I do remember at Radio 1 doing a golden hour,

though we didn't call it The Golden Hour,

we called it something else, but it was exactly the same thing,

playing the KLF and it's, I had never heard the original version,

with the sample goes, "It's time to kick out the jams,"

and then in the hit version it's then got a reversed tape loop

of what he actually says

and I had put on the wrong version so it actually starts with

this guy shouting "OK, it's time to kick out the jams...melon farmers"

and I heard it as it went through and my producer heard it and we both

looked at each other at the same time, thinking, "Did that go out?"

"Yes, it did."

The phone rings and it's the head of music saying,

"Take it off now, there's another one coming,"

and I said, "No, no, no, I don't..."

Yes, there was.

THEY ALL LAUGH

So you take it off but that's kind of par for the course

and everyone loves it actually, everyone thought it was very funny

but the really worst one was my producer arranging Naomi Campbell

to come in with a cake for my birthday and I didn't recognise her.

CLAUDIA GASPS

So the incident was going out, thanks very much!

And he hadn't realised that I hadn't worked out who it was

and eventually he went, "It's Naomi Campbell."

"OK, thanks, Naomi, for coming in."

Was it a cake-a-gram or something?

SIMON: It was. JO: A girl's got to work!

My most embarrassing moment didn't happen that long ago.

I bring cake in when I stand-in for Ken

because I figure people like...

Anyway, I bake and I get so nervous about standing in for you that

I bake at 4.00am and they said, "You probably shouldn't eat that crumbly

"lemon cake over the desk," and I was like, "Oh, whatever!" You know!

And as I saw a lump went in and the whole thing sort of seized.

JO GASPS - I probably shouldn't admit this

but then there was a sort of 40 second...

And I was, because I'm not, I'm nothing like as brilliant as you

and I haven't had the experience and I was... And there was cake

and the producer was going, "We told you, the cake in the..."

And it was sort of steaming, then a man turned up with a ladder.

I love that, if it all goes wrong, with a ladder!

And there was 30 seconds at least of dead sound

which I know is the worst thing you can do in the whole world.

SIMON: Cake-induced silence.

JO: I thought it was only tea, I didn't realise cake was a hazard.

- Apparently. - Oh, my God,

I'll have to rethink my whole studio behaviour!

KEN: Champagne is the worst of all! - You would know.

I think mine's probably introducing Duran Duran as "Durren Durren".

JO: I heard that, I remember listening to that.

On the Top 40.

JO: Isn't that funny, I remember where I was when I heard you say that

and I liked them and I was like,

"I can't believe he just said "Durren Durren"!"

Yeah. "Durren Durren".

And the other one was doing the Radio 1 Breakfast Show

and I had the same manager, Harold Davidson, who handled Frank Sinatra

and Frank Sinatra - I picked up the phone and said, "Who's that?"

He said "Frank", and I said "Frank who?"

He said, "Frank Sinatra," and I put the phone down and it WAS him.

That was embarrassing. I had to ring him back.

The other one, very quickly, was interviewing Eartha Kitt,

do you remember Eartha Kitt?

And she'd just come off a flight from America and I was

interviewing her and the question I asked was obviously quite long

because at the end of it she'd fell asleep!

THEY ALL LAUGH

BOB: That's fabulous. - So I just quickly put a record on.

BOB: That's fabulous.

Another question.

What will it be like to work in radio in 10 years' time?

Well, let's assume, let's hope that we are all going to be there

and we'll have our shows and they'll all be better

but what will it be like to work in radio in 10 years?

It so difficult to predict, isn't it,

because technology moves on so quickly.

But the death of radio has been predicted for as long as

I've been listening to it.

TONY: Oh, I don't think that will ever happen.

In the '60s they were saying

"Sound radio is dead, television is the way ahead.

"Nobody will listen to the radio in 10 years' time.

BOB: Video Killed The Radio Star.

But of course the mp3 player, the Walkman was

the first thing that came in and nobody will listen to the radio.

The youngsters, you've got hundreds of children, haven't you, Ken?

KEN: Hundreds, literally!

My children don't listen to radio and I don't think young...

They tend to come back, Spotify, it's YouTube, isn't it, Simon,

you've got children.

Yes. But do kids listen to radio?

They will listen to audio entertainment

and they'll listen to it on their phone.

JO: They'll listen in the car if you make them listen to it!

KEN: But they will still want somebody to bring them the music

that they're getting. They still want a human communication.

The record producer T-Bone Burnett,

T-Bone is 64 now and he very strongly believes in the role of the curator,

particularly, he says, in this day of internet where

there is now so much information.

There is a parallel between that and what we do, that we are,

we are introducing people to new music,

we're pointing them in the direction of ideas that we think are good

and I tend to go along with T-Bone with this,

that the idea of the curator becomes more important as time goes by,

where you've got so much information overload.

I think kids really still like the idea of presenters actually,

like with Radio 1. CLAUDIA: So do I. Like Grimmy.

Yes, exactly, Grimmy and Greg James and just as we used to,

I used to listen to Simon, I used to listen to Tony.

People like to have people who are taste makers and who entertain them,

so they will turn on the radio and they will,

they'll listen to Chris Evans as well

so I'm sure that that appetite will always be there.

Webcams will probably become more important as well,

you know radio television, I think there's a possibility of that.

God, I don't think it could get any more! Everything that we do.

That's the irony, that we go into radio because we quite like the

solitude and the intimacy and then everything is filmed all the time,

everything you do, which is fine because that's what

the audience demands and we kind of have to fit in with that

but that is ironic.

Is the answer, one of the answers, that there'll be much more work?

Everyone is going to have to work much harder because you can't just

go in with a pile of records any more, although that's in our soul.

Just you, pile of records, go in and make a radio programme.

Actually, you will be expected to do that

and then to write some stuff on a blog or do some social media

or to film it and do that because that is just the way it is.

But it will still be able to be appreciated and experienced

in its original form, just you listening to a person and music.

SIMON: I think we're out of time. CLAUDIA: Oh.

Thank you very much indeed. KEN: Thank you.

KEN: It's been fun. JO: It's been a revelation.

BOB: It really has been. It's been really good.

I know, more stories, can we just stay here? These people can leave.

SIMON: We can lose the pictures and just carry on with sound.

KEN: I'm amazed Tony Blackburn's still in work after all these things

that went wrong in his career! JO: He's had so many great ideas,

- that's why he's still here. KEN: That's it.

SIMON: Has anyone actually sworn on air?

TONY: I called Radio Caroline, Radio BLEEP.

KEN: I didn't mean to say it but I said,

"Well, it's better than listening to this old BLEEP"

And I thought, "I just said BLEEP!" THEY ALL LAUGH

I nearly went on and said something worse because I'd said BLEEP!

LAUGHTER FADES AWAY