Radio One More Time: Goodbye

So, we've actually made it through forty brief essays on Radio One, and what way more apt to finish than looking at some of the exits from the station?

The most famous, of course, would be DLT's "changes being made which go against my principles" on-air resignation - a move which might have been slightly braver had he not known he had only ten weeks left to run on his contract and Danny Baker was already measuring up for curtains.

Andy Kershaw's departure from Radio One similarly had an eye on remaining contracts - Andy Parfitt offered him an extra three months in May 2000, on the strict understanding that after that his slot was going to be turned into a dance show. Kershaw elected to not bother with a twelve week goodbye, and disappeared in a burst of Bhundu Boys and chat about the TT Races.

Lisa I'Anson's bemusing period filling in lunctimes with the observations such as her back announcement for Garbage's Only Happy When It Rains that "that's really odd, because I like it when it's sunny" was halted when she enjoyed herself during a Radio One Ibiza weekend to the point where she didn't turn up for her show.

The launch of Virgin 1215 proved a magnet for many of those who felt uncomfortable at being asked to play records that listeners under the age of 90 might enjoy. Gary Davies jumped ship, with a lot of nudge-nudging of a "I can't tell you where I'm going, but, oh, is it quarter past twelve already?" nature, while Tommy Vance also headed off to the perpetually reformatting AM rival.

Steve Wright supposedly quit when he tired of being told what records to play during his short-lived breakfast show - that would be "some" records, presumably, judging by the low number of tracks he usually managed to get in between the chatty bits, and his decision to join TalkRadio. (That, in itself, was a cause of some grief as the BBC maintained he still had three months contracted to them to work through.)

But perhaps there is one name, above all others, who should be remembered for his departure. Duncan Johnson, the first man to be dumped from Radio One, after just three months on air. Jordans crime? He was considered too old for the station. His age? A crinkly 29.

One last farewell: Janice Long, who failed to return from maternity leave. She later told the NME that, having been presenting a daily night-time show at the time she left to have the baby, management suggested on her return she downsize a little: "They asked if I could manage being a mother and presenting a half-hour programme every week." The show she was offered was Radio One's weekly round-up of its best bits - a podcast before podcasts were possible. Its name, of course, was Radio One More Time.

[Part of Radio One More Time]

Radio One More Time: The pseudonyms

If, as we saw yesterday, Radio One's listings played host to a surprising number of unexpected names, the airwaves also played host to a depressing number of fake and adopted personas. It seems that nobody can work on a radio programme without being given a matey name.

Comedy Dave on Chris Moyles' show is but the latest in a very, very long line of producers, researchers and sidekicks who've travelled under false documents - either to disguise their real names, or to create a hilarious comedy character. The Steve Wright show buckled under the weight of them: Sid The Manager; Jervaise the hairdresser (complete with 'hilarious' homophobic overtones); Mr. Angry From Purley. Even Marc Riley spent his entire time at the station under the "Boy Lard" banner - although, oddly, Mark Radcliffe dropped the "Scrawn" nickname when the pair moved over from Radio 5. Gary Davies found space every day for Willie On The Plonker - two knob gags for the price of one - and Kevin Greening's travel was handled by Major Holdups. Jimmy Savile's Record Club owed the debt of organisation to Dignified Don, while Tony Blackburn's Junior Choice carried a credit for Uncle Ted.

And, one Christmas, Mike Smith got through the thankless task of presenting breakfast with the assistance of a Christmas Fairy. The fairy bore a surprising vocal resemblance to Sarah Greene.

[Part of Radio One More Time]

Radio One More Time: Fun At One

It's the happy, happy sound
(Fun... at one)
Of Radio One

Perhaps one of the oddest, but tenacious, slots on Radio One was Fun At One. As the name suggests, it was an attempt to inject some "fun" at one o'clock in the afternoon. It's not entirely clear if this five minutes of official "fun" was intended to undermine the dj by implying that the rest of the time Radio One wasn't very much fun at all, or merely offered a chance to recalibrate our level of what the Radio One of the day saw as being "fun". It might also have been an attempt to balance out the 12.30 Newsbeat slot - offering a jelly and cream of light entertainment in return for the bread-and-butter of world affairs and a two minute interview with Owen Paul.

In this case, "fun" was actually defined "a substantial but unsatisfying chunk of an old comedy production". Since this came at a time when the network had managed to get through a decade and a half without making a single proper comedy programme, producers were forced to rummage back in the dusty cupboards of the Light Programme, undermining the cutting edge youth sounds by throwing in five minutes of hairy old comedy. I swear in 1983, they interrupted the latest chart run down to play ten minutes of a back episode of The Glums. Laugh? It was like giggling was still on the ration.

Incidently, Southern Sound took the concept of Fun At One, and based its entire Sunday afternoon programming around it, when the End of The Pier Show it promised the IBA when applying for the licence (live comedy and entertainment) was replaced by a more budget-friendly End of The Pier Show which consisted of Sean Bolger sticking on one of those commercial remakes of Hancock's Half Hour that were released on LP in the 1960s, and disappearing off for a Sunday Roast.

Of course, Adrian Juste made frequent calls on the BBC Record Library's spoken word section during his inexplicably long-running programme on the shows. Juste's role - we suspect awarded by himself - was to be the network's joker; having only a couple of hours to fill each week gave him plenty of time to prepare old comedy clips to sprinkle over his show the way firecrews cover blazes with foam. And, like a firecrew's foam, these would also drain all the oxygen away from the spark, too. Juste had two ways of destroying any comic potential in a piece - one way was to cut out one half of a two-hander, and fill the role of straight man himself (here, all his lines would be delivered in a "oh, I'm about to lose it in a minute" style which was one part Knockout-era Stuart Hall to two parts pre-eruption Mount St Helens); the other would be to try and skim out any preamble from a monologue, thus rendering little more than a punchline and a canned laugh.

When tiring of pre-recorded bits, rather than using the time to actually play records, Juste would instead resort to overlong shaggy dog stories. These, for some reason, he decided couldn't just be reduced to their punchline, even although they were just as "amusing" like that: I Left My Harp In Sam Plank's Disco. See?

Curiously, during Gary Davies' era of attempting to update lunchtimes on Radio One, dropping Fun At One merely opened up space for him to introduce a feature that involved a long shaggy dog story the punchline to which was a pun on a current pop song. It might have been no funnier than Ron Glum using Bisto to hide Pa Glum's parson's nose (allowing Ethel to visit him while Pa's toe was stuck in the bathtap), but at least it had a slightly more contemporary feel.

Still wasn't much fun, though.