You couldn't make it up

Yesterday's Daily Mail had what might be the most bizarre Richard Littlejohn column to date where the tired old rant-machine managed to combine a by-numbers piece about how homophobia is illegal (which he made to sound like it was both true and a bad thing) with a surprising degree of intimacy with Tom Robinson's Glad To Be Gay:

The last line of Tom Robinson's 1978 anthem Glad To Be Gay goes: "The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?"

It was supposed to be ironic. Back then, even though homosexuality was no longer a criminal offence for consenting adults, gays faced prejudice and persecution.

I can remember singing along with Tom. Though homosexuality wasn't exactly my idea of a night out, I thought it outrageous that gays were subjected to discrimination in areas such as employment, housing and pensions.

Really, Richard? You sang along with Glad To Be Gay and thought it was about council housing and pension rights? Rather than being a song that was more concerned with the pressing matters of entrapment and queerbashing and - here's a funny thing - journalists in the popular press describing gays as corrupting and disgusting and perverted?

Radio One More Time: Those who also entertained

Radio One has had, in its time, some unusual choices presenting programmes. Some were surprising and right, some surprising and wrong. Some were Kelly Osbourne.

Mark Ellen used to present occasionally, sitting in for Annie Nightingale, heralding his appearance with rhyming trailers. This was a good thing.

Emma Freud, for some reason, was in charge of the lunchtime programme for a ridiculously long time. We have a soft spot for Emma, but the one thing that spot is not is a two and half hour spot on a pop radio network.

Muriel Gray did a few swing shifts for Janice Long; we quite liked her, but Radio One at the time had problems with women doing radio, never mind Scottish women.

Tom Watt also did Night-time a few times - now that he's doing lots of football programming, it's not so odd, but when he was still Lofty off EastEnders, it felt wrong having him turning up to play Housemartins sessions.

Lenny Henry was recruited for some weekend work - we imagine the thinking was "an anarchic force in the mould of the young Kenny Everett". He wasn't bad, but he didn't stick around overlong.

Jamie Theakston turned up at One FM as part of the ongoing attempt to turn TV stars into radio personalities - while it worked with Zoe Ball, and people seem to have accepted Vernon Kay, Sara Cox and Fearne Cotton despite shows which can be as cold as Gazpacho Soup outdoors in Iceland - he was one who didn't take.

An even stranger presence, though, was Greg Proops, who we seem to remember having a crack at being Mark Radcliffe for a week or two. It turned out he really was at his best when Clive Anderson could sound a buzzer to get him to move on.

Tom Robinson was another "in for Janice" choice; his style, and introduction of Then Jericho and "the devastatingly handsome Mark Shaw" was encouraging, but felt a little off-key for Radio One. Still, Tom only had to wait another fifteen years or so for someone to invent 6Music to give him a home.

[Part of Radio One More Time]