The UKIP calypso continues to demonstrate the unelectability of UKIP

Mike Read has withdrawn his UKIP Calypso song, after it occurred to him that, maybe, singing about "illegal immigrants" in a funny-black-person voice might be racist after all.

The Red Cross were apparently offered some of the proceeds of the song, but they said no, on the grounds that they couldn't accept funds linked to a political party. And that they work with asylum seekers, so the song didn't really fit with their values, either.

Rather than accept this, UKIP decided to be arseholes about it:

A Ukip spokesman said "synthetic outrage" produced by "right-on" social media users and the media caused the removal of the track, claiming that less money would go to causes such as the British Red Cross from its sale.

But the principle that the Red Cross can't accept party political donations is a solid one - they can't be seen as being connected to a government, or a ruling class, or an ideology. A proper political organisation would understand and respect that.

More to the point: where did the idea that this was raising money for the Red Cross come from?

Here's the UKIP Facebook page announcing that "their celebrity member" had made the track:

Our celebrity member Mike Read, the former Radio 1 DJ, has written a brand new single especially for UKIP and we need your help to get it to the top of the pop charts.

It costs just 79p to download, 20p of which will go to UKIP.

Odd, if you're keen to raise funds for the Red Cross, that you wouldn't think to mention it.

And on Monday, when Read was defending his racist song as not being racist at all, he didn't mention that there were funds being raised for the Red Cross.

The Amazon download page for the song - is still live, incidentally, so Read and UKIP can't even manage to withdraw a song from distribution, never mind pull a nation out of Union. But that page doesn't mention the Red Cross, either.

I'm not suggesting that UKIP have made up this donation in a desperate bid to try and salvage an embarrassment and try a 'you're upset about racism but you're making Africans die of ebola' argument, or that they're lying... oh, hang on. I am. UKIP are lying. Of course they're lying.

Mike Read defends racist UKIP song as you can't do a racist routine without being racist

Poor Godfrey Bloom. There he was, storming out of UKIP because the party was too politically correct, only to discover that Mike Read is doing a cod-Jamaican accent on their behalf.

Speaking to BBC Radio Berkshire, Read said: "If anyone has taken it the wrong way, many apologies. But it was never meant to be remotely racist."

He said he found accusations of racism "extraordinary", adding: "It's an old-fashioned political satire... you can't sing a calypso with a Surrey accent."

Older readers might recall Mike Read's 'All In The Morning Papers' feature on his breakfast show, where he sang weak satire in a calypso style. But not in a cod Jamaican accent. Funny that.

Still, it's not just the accent that's racist; even in a Surrey accent, this would be a bit grim:

Our leaders committed a cardinal sin
Open the borders let them all come in
Illegal immigrants in every town
Stand up and be counted Blair and Brown

Oh, Mike.

He also is shaky on facts:

The EU live in wonderland
Tried to ban bent bananas and British jam

Bent bananas? That old lie was disproved when Mike Read was still famous:

European Union officials acknowledged that a regulation had just been promulgated setting standards for bananas, including the size requirements reported in The Sun. But the standards were set as a result of "pressure from the trade," applied to growers and packers and not retailers, and would change nothing since virtually all bananas sold in Britain already conformed, a spokesman said.

"It doesn't affect Mrs. Jones going into a greengrocer," insisted the spokesman, Peter Dixon. Asked about the issue of the banana's shape, he said: "The regulation says a banana should not have an abnormal shape. In no sense does it ban curved bananas because a curve is a normal shape for a banana."

That was twenty years ago.

The jam thing is less of a fib - there is an EU rule that says jam can only be called jam if it contains 60% sugar; trouble is, a lot of shitty British jam has less sugar in it than that.

The problem with Mike's claim, though, is that the UK government has already exercised subsidiarity in this matter, which undermines the idea there's some sort of foreign jam tsar undermining our ability to flog shitty jam.

Still, it's nice that Mike Read is keeping himself busy. Time must have weighed heavily on his hands since that time he was passed over as Tory mayoral candidate. Not that everyone in UKIP is a frustrated Tory, of course.

Mike Read! Mike Read! 275 - do I hear 285?

James P emails with a sad story about Mike Read:

Without wishing to appear as his official stalker or anything, there's a sad story in today's Mirror about Mike Read. Apparently following bankrupcy earlier this year, he's being forced to sell his record collection.

It's considered 'too valuable' to break up into single lots, and so is being sold as one item, currently valued at £750,000. It would've been £750,003.99, but the copy of 'Relax' appears to be snapped in half.

The other really strange thing about the Mirror story is that Mike Read - Pop Quiz and Radio 1 - now seems to be morphing into the other Mike Reid - Runaround and EastEnders:

According to the Mirror, the bunch of records has been valued at a million but, as James says, is being auctioned as one lot. Which seems a bit confusing - he's in serious financial trouble, and yet he's decided to sell the records in a way that will cost him a quarter of a million quid? You wonder how he ended up going bankrupt twice don't you?

Mike Read knows what to do

Mike Read - yes, the former DJ one, not the dead one who was R-E-I-D anyway - contributed to the Guardian this morning, marking the departure of Wogan from breakfasts.

It includes this slightly bemusing segment, rejecting the likelihood that the audience will vanish:

Yes, there will be an exodus, but probably not of biblical proportions; after all, there has never been bondage at Radio 2 – and in any case where is their Moses or Aaron to lead them to a new radio land, unless Elvis rises again from the chip shop.

Uh... yes, Mike.

Still, Mike has plans for the future and - if not Moses, clearly hopes to be casting himself as some sort of Esau:

Long one of our great exports, the music industry has been strangled by the lack of innovative radio and television. This country has far too many radio and TV stations pumping out pap, so it's not surprising that many are proving to be unsustainable. It's time for a shake-up, and perhaps Wogan's departure will prompt just that. Fewer stations, more quality and realistic budgets.

So, how does Read propose that we boost imports and push forward creative music by innovative radio programming?

As the lawyer Jaggers dealt with Pip's question in Great Expectations, let me take a hypothetical case: 20 former Radio 1 voices, all national names and all highly experienced, who have collectively broadcast to billions over the years and won countless awards. What a line-up that would be. Now, we need a hypothetical name, let's say One Gold. Put thousands of advertisers and sponsors, who would kill to advertise on Radio 2 if it were commercial, into the mix. This theoretical station may well broadcast (and I mean broadcast, not narrowcast) the best of the 80s, 70s and 60s as well as established artists who don't seem to get a look in despite highly successful tours.

Yes... Read's idea is to stimulate and innovate by hiring a bunch of faded old DJs and playing a slate of twenty-to-forty year old hits. It's like reviving British cuisine by pushing Hostess trolleys and boil-in-the-bag beef slices.

Mike Read returns

An email from James Page, which deserves to be shared in full:

I'm at a loss to describe what I've just seen... I was channel-hopping this evening when I stumbled across 'Red TV' (Sky 186), one of those channels whose main purpose seems to be to rebroadcast the 'Psychic Interactive' feed and 'Crown Court' repeats. But it gets better. At around 6pm every Saturday on Red TV, you can enjoy 'Mike Read's Pop Quiz'.

Sadly, this is not a genius bit of nostalgia scheduling, repeating old episodes of a classic show in its original timeslot, like 'Vault TV' did with The Chart Show. Oh no. Mike Read has actually come back and remade 'Mike Read's Pop Quiz'. And it's genuinely jaw-dropping TV.

Gone are the celebrity guests like Meatloaf and One Of Kane Gang. Gone are the big sets and funky production techniques. In comes a quaint little pub quiz with two teams of ordinary people (complete with comedy pub-quiz team-names), staged in an all-purpose studio which looks like how I imagine those karaoke booths which let you record your own CD, only with the sound quality of a dictaphone. Read himself sits in front of a small flat-screen TV which displays a Powerpoint demonstration of each question, and both teams of three perch behind tiny desks just about big enough for one. Awkward witty banter abounds.

Really, you have to see it to believe it. Please set yourself a reminder to watch next Saturday's episode. You will not be disappointed (by which I mean you *will* be disappointed, but won't be disappointed by failing to be disappointed). It's so completely strange to see a once-huge TV show brought back in such Tesco-Value style. It's startlingly reminiscent of the time Alan Partridge tried to recreate his chat-show in the travel tavern.

Sadly the set isn't constructed by Read himself from assorted chocolate products.

Presumably they'd use the old Mike Read Pop Quiz board game, only he was made promises about storage that he was let down by...

Talking of Pop Quiz - and bless you, James, for giving us an excuse to bring this to the table - OddBob0 has posted this to YouTube: footage of him playing, well, Mike Read's Pop Quiz - the ZX Spectrum version [Possibly more fun to listen to with the sound off, to be honest]:



We're trying to work out who the faces you can choose for your team are - Marilyn, certainly; is that Hank Marvin or Pete Waterman with the glasses?

How can you tell if you have too much time on your hands?

There are many ways, but here's the sort of clue that it might be time to think about seeking out a hobby:

Silver-tongued radio DJ Mike Read has turned Disc-Choccie - creating a £5,500 picture of Brighton's West Pier out of sweets.

The former BBC Radio 1 star is showcasing his art in Brighton, working with liquorice, Bounty bars, smarties and rock.

Although if he'd gone to St Martins, we'd probably be reaching for our chequebooks.

He has also combined his love of music with his passion for art to create pictures of famous album covers such as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road by The Beatles.

We'd like to see him try and recreate The World Of Twist's Sweets sleeve only using CD jewel boxes.

Radio One More Time: Perkins Grange

If you ever needed evidence that some ideas work much better on radio than on television, Noel Edmonds' Sunday morning trips to Perkins Grange, compared with the same idea, transplanted to BBC One and Crinkly Bottom, pretty much makes the case open-and-shut.

What on radio could be implied and glossed over - naturally, you're in the baronial home of Radio 4 newsreader Brian Perkins, who happens to be on hand to help out during the morning - needs to be shown on television; where Perkins Grange existed as a perfect mental image, Crinkly Bottom was clearly a cheap studio set in a television hangar in London.

Other elements lost something in translation.

On Radio 1, Noel pretty much invented the funny phone call. Actually, the Funny Phone Call, for that's what he called them. Before every idiot able to operate a mixing desk phone got in on the act, and the wit was bludgeoned out to make room for Scott Mills telling parents their kids are changing their name to Wanker, there was still something amusing in the idea of Noel ringing up in a "disguised" voice, making a mild claim (traffic lights outside your window, that sort of thing), letting the victim get slightly riled, before the big reveal "it's Noel Edmonds, on Radio 1..."

Actually, we don't know why Noel bothered putting on a fake voice, as it was always the same fake voice. As a relatively fresh idea, it never needed to push itself to levels of credulity-stretch or cruelty to get its laugh, and was so popular BBC Cassettes even stuck out a couple of compilations of the 'best' calls.

When taken to television, though, the concept was ratcheted up into the Gotcha, and the extra budget required celebrity targets, and before long it was all about Dave Lee Travis and Keith Chegwin. Interestingly, the move to celebritising the format had been presage during Mike Read's period on the Sunday morning show, where he took to doing prank calls on celebrities - most notably, persuading Su Pollard she'd been chosen to sing the lyrics that were about to be added to the EastEnders theme tune.

Likewise, the readings of Thomas The Tank Engine - the 'something for all the family' element of Sunday Mornings - somehow worked itself up into being Mr. Blobby on the TV. Presumably, these days, no Radio 1 show would be able to the cost of rights to bring Thomas to the air, but Edmonds was working back before Ringo Starr built the Tank Engine's stock to such levels.

Noel might point to the surprisingly high figures for Noel Edmond's House Party and proclaim it a success. On the other hand, when he did the Radio 1 show, he was one of the most popular presenters in the UK; by the end of House Party, Noel was something of an entertainment pariah. It all depends, of course, on what you see as a success.

[Part of Radio One More Time]

Radio One More Time: Specially recorded jingles

Radio One, by nature of being the only national pop network, had enormous power to make or break the fortunes of new singles. Since rules frowned on the idea of disc jockey and producer's favour being curried by the payment of large sums of undeclared funds into Swiss bank accounts, record labels had to come up with different ways of flattering the gatekeepers of the nation's taste.

One popular way of doing this was to record a specially re-worded version of the single to function as a jingle for one or more shows. So, for example, Owen Paul reworked

You're my favourite waste of time

as

Gary Davies in the summertime.

So vain were the jocks, these sly marketing parries almost always proved successful, helping keep the parent songs in the public eye... well, ear, and almost certainly squeezing a couple of extra plays here and there. And it wasn't just the usual chancers you'd expect to pull this sort of trick who got involved - even Kate Bush did a special Radio One jingle at one point.

The most played reworked jingle, though, would have been The Trainspotter's High Rise tribute to Mike Read. The original chorus ran

High Rise
High Rise
The neighbours are banging on the wall again
High Rise
High Rise
I want to live on the ground

The 'band' happily reorganised this into

Mike Read
Mike Read
Two seven five, two eight five
Mike Read
Mike Read
National radio one

So pleased was he with this, Mike Read used it not only as his main jingle, he also encouraged listeners to sing it all over the world - every day, someone's claim to have sung the tune in Berlin, or at the top of a mountain, or down a mine, would be rewarded with a mug. Naturally, there was no way of establishing the bona fides of the claims, as people didn't have mobiles, much less video cameras in their pockets, but everything was done on trust back then.

So who were these Trainspotters, whose single-turned-jingle got such exposure?

It was, um, Mike Read.

[Radio One More Time]

Radio One More Time: First Love

You were my first love
and first love never, ever dies

Much has been written about Simon Bates' Our Tune, the daily feature in which Bates would read out a letter about a love story which - normally - ended in tragedy and then, after a spin of the doomed couple's song (quite often something by Dire Straits of Will You, by Hazel O'Connor), the redemption:

So, you're looking at the radio now, saying 'what happened, Simes?' Well... Tony's leg never grew back, but his heart did...

The lack of any serious radio audience research allowed Bates to make grandiose claims for this daily spot of mawkishness. Sometimes, this would take the form of tales of hardened lorry drivers being forced to pull over to the hard shoulder of the M1 lest their floods of tears lead to multi-car pile-ups (although that would, at least, provide a fresh supply of "Julie was trying on the wedding dress when a policeman called at the door - it was Jack, he'd been killed in an accident" stories to keep the feature going.) Always, though, there was Bates' boast at the end:

Tell me your story, and I'll tell eight million other people

It's interesting that, despite these enormous audiences hanging on every twist and turn, nobody has seemed much interested in attempts to resurrect the feature in Bates' post-Radio One life. He's popped up doing it on Sky One, TalkRadio and Classic FM but (adopts gravelly voice, fades up Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet by Henry Salomon & His Orchestra) the spark had gone and, although Simon was keen to try again, the audience... well, the audience had moved on, found other obsessions. And so the tantalising question remained: had Our Tune been popular because it was on during the day on the biggest radio station in the country... or could, as Simon seemed to believe, have Radio One been so popular because of Our Tune?

To be fair to Bates, as Out On Air in Radio 4's Archive Hour pointed out a few weeks back, he was open to all-comers for Our Tune, and did feature gay relationships, something still fairly unusual to hear about on Radio One out of the context of "this is a youth issue with a telephone helpline attached". On the other hand, the way he'd build up to these stories - building a protective zone of repeated warnings ("some of you might be shocked, there might even be complaints") rather than slipping them in in a matter-of-fact fashion - suggested that he wasn't entirely comfortable featuring tales of man-on-man heartbreak and was probably only doing the queer ones because he'd run out of "normal" letters.

So, yes, Our Tune is well known. Less well recorded, though, is Mike Read's similar - some might even say copycat - feature which ran in the Breakfast Show. While Bates appealed for stories of the biggest romances and largest disasters, Read slowly carved out a niche for himself which sought out tales of First Love. In place of the Love Theme from Romeo And Juliet, there were the Walker Brothers, and - by the nature of the stories - much was played out in classrooms, common rooms and playing fields, which sat well with Read's other big feature, Schooldesk. (This was little more than hoping Mike Read would read out the name of your school - simple pleasures in those days, kids.)

In those days, Read provided the only public outlet for people, looking back fondly on a love which had been strong, burned with passion, and - usually - had been ended by circumstance or puberty, never to be regained. These days, of course, Friends Reunited performs a similar function, but in place of a TeaHee mug and a chance to hear a song you once snogged to, you get a messy divorce and the chance of a disastrous old-time's sake bunk-up.