BBC Radio 1
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Radio 1 is a BBC radiostation devoted to young people aged one (and over) featuring irreverant music they enjoy (known as the "pops"). and presenters who for some reason INSIST ON SHOUTING and using the word "official" a lot. It also attempts to keep them informed of events in Britain, her overseas dominions and the foreign World through its news service "Newsbeat" which is tailored to make current affairs appear more palatable to the "young people" - for example a story about Gordon Brown meeting Vladimir Putin would be re-written as "Britain's main nigga Brown has been 'illin' with Putin, the Leader of tAtU-country".
Formation[edit]
In the swingin' sixties, the UK Government was getting rather cross with so-called "pirate" broadcasters like 'Radio Captain Pugwash' because they were more popular than the boring old dross turned out by their own state broadcaster, the Home(osexual) Service. So Radio 1 was created in 1967 by a Bill & (Tony) Benn gluing together some old Dansette Record Players and building a small 'studio' with Sticklebricks, sticky-back-plastic and Lego. The Royal Navy then torpedoed the broadcasting ships of pirate radio stations with stupid girls' names like "Caroline", "Jackie" and "Florence". Radio Erimintrude was particularly popular with students (though recent research has shown that this was possibly a figment of the collective imagination of those people using hallucinogenic substances like toothpaste and Gripe Water).
After the Navy spanked all the pirates’ bottoms, and sent them home without any supper, most of the DJ's were given cushy jobs by the BBC (which just goes to prove that breaking the law can be highly productive). One of those rescued from the cold North Sea waters - just off Clacton - was Tony Blackburn and he was given the option of changing his name and his underpants and becoming one of Radio 1's first official "Dee-Jays". Others from the pirate ships tempted to the Beeb included Kenny Everett, Simon Dee and Johnnie SkyWalker. Tony Blackburn took to his new job with rather too much relish (mainly Highly Passionate, HP Sauce type relish), presenting the station's first show only hours after being dragged from the sea, in drag, suffering from hypothermia and clutching a cuttlefish. His famous opening line on Radio 1 was
- "Yurlistenintothefantasticnewsoundovradiowoniymtonyblackburnaaaandthisizthumoove!"
Nobody knows what he was on about but he played "Flowers In The Rain" by The Move just afterwards. The rest is history.
The station was taking off and it started to attract a hip crowd of listeners after somebody played a Velvet Underground record before 6pm on a weekday! John Peel, who had previously been DJ-ing from a decommissioned navy submarine under the name of Bottom Feeder, was approached to do a hippy show called, The Stinky Garden. The show was a mixture of strange records and inane chat from Peel interspersed with chanting that would often run into the small hours. His listener-ship grew by 60% as he was the only person in the country that could play hip music on the radio. Tony Blackburn attempted to play 'Silver Machine' by Hawkwind during his show but lost his bottle by the end of the first verse, apologizing profusely to his audience. He was placed on suicide watch as a precaution by Radio One bosses.
New DJ Alan Slag Anderson joined the station and struck up an audience with his new afternoon show 'Let's Have A Cup Of Tea And Cry'. It was mainly a mix of Alan recounting stories of his exploits in hotels with girls and the odd record. The Show hit controversy in 1971 when Alan swore repeatedly on air between songs and started talking about sex graphically. He was struck off and never worked in Radio again.
1960s-1970s[edit]
Given the entire lack of any other radio stations playing gramophone records of any kind, the station quickly became one of the most popular in the entire Kingdom with roughly one in five hundred people listening at any one time (at least one of these being The Queen who had a tranny in the royal boudoir, but that's another story - see Transvestism in European Royal Families, 1702-1769 (Dame Simon Schama, 1989)).
During the 1960s and 1970s 'wonderful' Radio 1 became the biggest radio station in Christendom (except for the ones that were bigger) when the DJs such as Tony Blackburn, Know-All Ed Stewpot, Noel Edmonds and Ed Stewart) and Annie-get-yer-gun Nightingale (now the stations longest surviving server) became household names, just like Ajax, Omo and Caneston Thrush Treatment Cream. "Sir" Jimmy Savile became as famous as The Beatles and has several planets named after him including Stupider, Haircury and Youranus.
This era also coincided with the launch of BBC One's television poptart show Top Of The Top of the Pop Form which was often presented by Radio One's star DJs from exotic locations such as Las Vegas, Paris, Mars and Preston. Popular libel suggests that the DJs themselves would pay for all of these outside broadcasts with their own money, because they were so so fucking rich! Peter Powell even had his own gold studded gas cook-ring for making the tea!
1980s[edit]
Possibly musics' most inventive and credible decade, the period that gave us enduringly-popular legends such as Adam Ant, Rene and Renato, Sting, Hilda Baker & Arthur Mullard, Sheena Easton and Bill Collins coincided with the platinum era of such DJs as Simon Bates (who can forget his daily listener letters on the joys of inner body function "our tube"?), Mike Read, Steve Wright (and his catchphrase characters that you hear again and again like Mr Angry of Liz Hurley and Ricky Jervais the camp hairdryer) and Dave Lee Travis (aka the Furry Weetabix), a man so fitted to radio he had to cover his entire head in facial hair in order to be allowed in-vision. It also gave us Adrian Juste, a deranged man who used to kidnap much-loved British comedians and force them to do some of their most well-known routines at spear-point in the studio with him whilst chuckling insanely and giving them feed lines such as "oh yes?!" and "what happened then?". In 1990, Juste was actually arrested for the unlawful imprisonment of Les Dawson but was released without charge.
In 1987, an attempt to reach a black audience was made by employing Cilla Black and giving her an ill advised hip-hop show 'The Black Hip-Hop Show'. Starting her first show on June 5th 1987, Cilla greeted the audience by saying her now infamous catchphrase "Suprise Suprise" and dropping the needle straight on to 'Fuck The Police' by NWA, it was 6.30 on a Friday evening. Needless to say the DTI had kittens and the station was nearly taken off the air. It is not widely acknowledged that a lot of Westwood's presentation style is derived from 'The Black Hip-hop show' and credit was paid in 1997, when Cilla Black was invited to participate in a special Westwood Hip Hop show featuring the Wu-Tang Clan, to celebrate Ten Years Of Hip-Hop On Radio One. Cilla famously impressed RZA by performing her now legendary and unique 'Everton Cackle' scratch during a performance of 'Da Mystery Of Chessboxing'.
Whilst listeners tried to crack "Level ten" of Manic Miner on their Sinclair ZX Spectrums (difficult in those '80s rollerboots!) the fantastic sound of Radio One would be pouring from every orifice - and sometimes from a transistor radio. There was just one problem though, the station that had been set-up to appeal to the 'fab' 'young' 'groovy' ‘people’ had found its listeners growing old with it and now there were a lot of pensioners still tuning-in along with the kids. Although they were only in their 30's and 40's by the 1980's, they'd taken horribly debilitating physiological altering drugs in the sixties and had aged by five decades in two. That didn't matter, though, coz: "Here's the fantastic new single from Culture Club!"
1990s[edit]
The decade started with Radio 1 changing band for some reason. It moved from 247metres on the medium wave to crystal-clear commercial-free FM on so many different frequencies that they had to change the name. Radio 1 was re-branded as "One FM" because it could be picked up right along the entire FM band from 88-108mhz and on peoples' fillings in Emley Moor. The FM stood for “Fucking Marvellous” if you worked for a Hi-Fi manufacturing company or "Flamin' 'Mission" if you had to go and buy a new radio.
However, there were even-bigger changes afoot at "The Nation's Favourite" (as the Polish liked to call it) with the arrival of new controller Matthew Bannisters. Despite being the same age as most of the old guard, Bannisters decided that there were too many "old" DJs at the station and believed that the children are our future and they should be pandered to in a patronising Janet-Street-Porter-esque manner. DJs such as Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates and Eric "the" Bastard, resigned before they could be sacked. Younger and more desperate presenters like Danny Baker (35) and Mark Radcliffe (38) replaced them. Matthew Bannisters was 53.
New shows, new formats, new presenters, new listeners, new Mini-Disc players. Well that was the idea. In fact at times the station sounded like a badly re-mixed commercial radio station from the late 70's and listenership plummeted like people falling out of planes without parachutes. The only shows that retained any real kudos were those of John Peel, The Drunk Policeman show and that miserable northern bloke who liked world music (aka natives running around hot countries playing with their doo-dahs's).
The real "saviour of Radio 1" to coin a phrase (accurately in this case) was dancey-dancey housey-housey music as promulgated by the likes of Pete Tong (a 12-inch Asian import who changed his name and grew five foot to make himself more Inglish) and other recruits from Kissey Kissy 'ousey-'ousey radios (like Judge Jules and Danny Rampling) pumped up the volume....and the listeners. Outside broadcasts from Ibiza and HomoFest boosted their credibility, and once the ginger minga Chris Evans had been cleared off, things picked up for a while.
The first dance music orientated show on the station began in 1990 and was called 'Want Any Doves Mate, Alright Sorted', it was presented by DJ Kris Akabusi and mainly played slightly out of date house records from the previous summer. It was promptly replaced by Pete Tong and his show 'Sleek Causal' which was like being judged by someone in club for dancing. Soon followed Judge Jools and his hardhouse courtroom show where the Judge would deliver verdicts on the latest trance records whilst beating his hammer and sickle along.
Jo Whiley even scored a dance music show in 1994 with her late night program 'I'm Rushing with Jo Whiley' which was said to be kinda like being out of your face on pills at a party with Jo Whiley talking over the top of house records about life next to you.
Fabio and Grooverider scored a show where they just played sub bass down the airwaves for 3 hours instantly sending the country into a spin.
Two thousand, thousand thousands[edit]
Now the station is the home of Chris Moyles (the knight of a large breakfast, starchy lunch and beer flavoured pie tea), Zane Lowe, Scott Mills, Colin "Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend" Murray and a host of other twats playing endless chart pop for stoopid people alongside inane lowest-common-denominator "comedy" items. You also get Tim Westwood shouting in an affected accent about "the bomb" and making explosion noises. Basically it's like the 70s again only with slightly-younger DJs. Well done, Matthew Bannisters, the most successful revolution since Castro.
In 2006 Chris Moyles was suspended for a week after he ran a phone in on his show where he asked listeners to kidnap passers by then ring the studio and get them to plead for their aggressor to release them with the phrase "Just put a Quaver up me bum" in a Yorkshire accent. It was not the first time Moyles had attracted controversy - In 2002 Moyles had conducted a live interview with Myra Hindley from prison where he repeatedly made references to his respect for her and even going as far to inviting her to become his new co-host (should she ever be released) following Comedy Dave's hospitalisation following a pressure cooker explosion in the studio.
The final straw came during the South African World Cup in 2010 when Moyles repeatedly referred to the country as a 'Crap hole' and was often drunk or smoking Heroin during the shows. Moyles also revealed that all the competitions on the show had been rigged apart from the one where he challenged listeners to leave their phone on hold to the station for 3 days costing contestants £60,000 each.
Following on from the allegations of phone in fraud, the BBC has tightened across the board. An internal investigation found that during 2006, on four separate occasions, white musicians were aired on Radio 1 whose names did not end in a phonetic 'y'. The head of Content™ made a public apology in a live broadcast, and vowed that only Geri, Kylie and Robbie were the only white musicians that would receive any further airtime, but conceded that, should any musicians spontaneously turn black, they would be played until you quite literally could not take any more.
To sum this all up, it turned into fucking shit no one cares about.
The current running order[edit]
WEEKDAYS
Greg James: Greg James is one of the younger Radio 1 DJs, having only just developed from an embryo. He actually says actually an actual lot. He also fills his shows with intelligent features such as "The Wind Tunnel (He farts, you guess what food caused it). TYPICAL INTRO: Hello, guess who i did up the boom boom last night!
Nick Grimy Grimestain- Nick is possibly the most exciting sounding person on Radio 1. He has a really exiting voice and is ultra enthusiastic about everything TYPICAL INTRO: Oooooooh myyyyyy Gooooooodddddd I want to kill myself. He once threatened to kill a rabbit live on air if 50 listeners hadn't broken a window in their own house before 8.30
Jo 'Ganster' Whiley: Has a really annoying voice like someone has just ripped off her face and plays music that no one likes. She sleeps around and seems like the sort of person who gets drunk at a Christmas party and gives Zane Lowe a blowjob in the back of a taxi on the way to get a kebab. TYPICAL INTRO: Yes Yes, who's got the shotties running tings of the straps. You get me.
Newsbeat: Like slapping yourself with a brick and then having someone shout at you for fifteen minutes. The woman presenter cannot somehow pronounce the word 'years' and always pisses people off saying 'yaeyres'. Newsbeat rudely interrupts your afternoon listening every day. What general Radio 1 listener seriously wants to listen to a 15 minute broadcast about shite? It has won many awards for the 'Most Condescending News Program' at the Broadcasting Awards only losing out to Newsround in 2005.
Edith Braman: It is unclear what Edith Braman is or does. TYPICAL INTRO: ArGgHhHEh HbbGEAOOK PDK Gsk MmKJ???HA h Ji jsb ?! The show is known for it's regular references to Buckfast and it's regular Phone In 'How Cheap Can You Find A Can Of Special Brew for in your town'.
Scottland: Scott goes around Scotland looking for people named Scott. Scott is also a keen woodsman and made Chappers out of used cups and a kleenex tissue. TYPICAL INTRO: Hai guis lets play the new choons. Follows awkward conversation with woman colleague and painfully avoiding any questions about his 'flat mate'.
Matt Edmondson: Takes the prize for having the fewest listeners of any Radio 1 Dj, something Edmonson is proud of. The show is mixture of celebrity gossip and records made by Stock Aitken Waterman in the 80s-90s. He is the son of former Radio 1 Dj Noel Edmonds.
David Dickinson: A specialist EDM showcase called 'David Dickinson's Tango Tizer Hour'.
Zane Lowe: No one ever listens to Zane Lowe because he looks and sounds like an annoying magician. He once sat in a box above the river thames but no one cared. TYPICAL INTRO: GET ON BOARD! (Followed by everyone turning off their radio)
Afterwards: A variety of DJ's play incomprehensible noise all night which arty-farty people pretend to like thinking it makes them look 'intelligent', even thought they don't have a clue what's going on themselves. They often speak in those voices that posh people use in their 20's when trying to sound street and uses phrases like 'Hold tight'.
Tim Westwood: A 50 something year old white man that plays grime and DnB, part of the BBC's scheme to embarrass kids to get back into reading and studying. TYPICAL INTRO: 'Yes it's ya boy Timmy Weezy (bomb sound followed by shattering glass and a punching sound, then a scream), Don't touch my coat boiiiiii'.
Grooverider: A DJ who was jailed in Dubai for riding a cow, the BBC then aired a overlong special sympathising with him, not quite how they treated Richard Bacon, wazzit?
Kelly Osbourne: Family connections....zzz. Her show is a cacophony of feedback and listeners dog stories.
Fearne Cotton: Big nostrilled and small breasted, this man never says a bad word about anyone. She caused controversy a few years ago by hijacking the Live Lounge and evicting Jo Whiley, who had been living there since she joined the station.
WEEKENDS-WOOOOOOOOP
Sara Cocks- Sara Cocks is a bit of a reject and has been bounced around the radio station. She is always having children and likes to talk in a longwinded fashion and the liseners not knowing what the hell she is talking about. She is named after the many Cocks she has been on. TYPICAL INTRO: I've had two hours sleep and i've just been sick so don't expect any music or nowt.
Vernon face- Vernon face has an amusing face and comes from Manchester. Most people block out what he is saying and just go online to look at his massive face. He seems to think it's acceptable to have a Northern accent and shout over every single song he plays. He's actually 43 but has been off the Radio 1 Age Police's radar for sometime as no one knows his show exists apart from his audience of 10,000 die hard listeners that are sworn to secrecy about the show.
Huw Stephens- Not many people know this, but Huw is actually Welsh. He incomprehensibly managed to get his own prime-time show on Radio 1 Weekends, a feat that has caused controversy among listeners, as nobody in their right mind would want to listen to this absolute nob talk about shit all afternoon. He once milked a cow on air, drank it then played Slipknot.
Jameela Jamil- Token Lady Boy, presents the chart show in which just less than 40 songs are crammed into 3 hours, meaning fortunately, she doesn't get much chance to talk. TYPICAL INTRO: Wanna see me Deepthroat the Top 40, ein zwei drei vier!.
OCCASIONAL PRESENTERS
Annie Macpc: Annie Macpc is a robot from the year 3420 to stop us destroying our ozone layer. Whilst here, she developed a keen knowledge of dance music and a thirst for potery. She once used a stun-gun on herself live on air during a heated debate on Foam Parties.
Nihal: Someone who looks like a homeless man wandering the streets of Mumbai in search of food and hope, somehow managed to snag his own radio show.
Miquita Oliver: When T4 was finishing up business, the bosses there decided that they would sell their remaining T4 Youth Culture bots to the BBC in a bundle deal. Despite being an aging model, Miquita was included in the deal.