“LOOK, I’m going to be frank with you. It’s my first show. I slept for under six minutes,” Claudia Winkleman told us right at the start of her first Saturday morning Radio 2 show last week. “So, I really only have one word for it,” she continued while cueing up Help by the Beatles. I’m not sure she really needed any.
You could see Winkleman’s appointment to take over the reins from Graham Norton on Saturday mornings as another example of Radio 2’s obsession with TV personalities, but the truth is Winkleman has long been a Radio 2 veteran. And anyway, as Norton, Paul O’Grady and Lisa Tarbuck have already all proved on the station, being a TV star doesn’t preclude you from being a good radio broadcaster.
In fact, you could argue that the station sees itself very much as the radio equivalent of prime-time telly. Certainly, the guests on the first show – Sir Tom Jones, David Walliams and Ant and Dec – were drawn from ITV’s Saturday night line-up.
Which made the presenter’s insistence on speaking to Rupert Holmes, still best known for his 1979 yacht rock classic Escape (Pina Colada Song), easily the quirkiest choice of the day. Holmes told us he has written a musical about Andy Warhol and is getting through lockdown by binge-watching Midsomer Murders if you’re interested.
Read More: Graham Norton says goodbye
Read More: Is Boom Radio a hit or a miss?
As debut shows go it was all pretty smooth and professional, the odd first morning nerve apart. I’m never sure basing a regular feature around talking to kids on the phone is ever a good idea (there was the inevitable monosyllabic answers on display). And I wonder if those Radio 2 listeners who have spent the last 10 years listening to Graham Norton will miss his occasional waspishness. Winkleman, by contrast, was on best behaviour here. Hopefully she’ll loosen up as the weeks pass.
As someone who has largely sworn off Radio 2 in recent years (first they came for Janice Long and then Simon Mayo …) I’m not sure Winkleman will change my Saturday morning listening habits, but one show in she already seems a safe pair of hands.
Listen Out For: The Christopher Boy’s Communion, Radio 4, Monday, 2.35pm. The British premiere of David Mamet’s thriller.
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