I’m never sure if I’ve seen BBC4 music documentaries before due to the fact that they seem to film hours of footage of the same people pontificating on whatever we’re watching a programme about. I’d love to know who is behind all these programmes as I have never been asked to share my opinions, maybe I should go against my DIY ethos and get an agent. The reason I bring this up is that BBC4’s ‘thing’ tonight is records that the BBC have banned in the past, and I suddenly realised that I had the perfect contribution, something I’ll come back to.

It’s strange to look back with our 21^st century outlook at the way the BBC used to hold itself up as the moral guardian of the country and take it upon themselves to ban certain songs to protect us, the licence payer who should really have been able to decide for ourselves. When you look back at what went on behind the dressing room doors back then, (remember, Jimmy Savile wasn’t the BBC’s first paedophile, the voice of children’s radio Uncle Mac was also at it) you have to wonder at the audacity of the organisation. It’s okay to molest youngsters who trust you and love your show, but don’t play ‘My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock’ by George Formby because that’ll really upset people. Nothing changes really, people still complain about things they see on television or hear on the radio due to the fact that they either don’t have an off switch or they missed the programme in the first place (therefore giving them no right to complain) but have accessed it thanks to the Daily Mail’s helpful link to it. Most songs don’t shout about their true meaning anyway; who remembers the episode of The Sunday Alternative when Penny and I invited listeners to contribute to the topic of songs they didn’t get the first few times they heard them?

What’s really funny is the reason for some of the bans. ‘Lola’ by The Kinks had to be changed because the song about a transsexual prostitute mentioned Coca-Cola and the BBC couldn’t be seen to be advertising. Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ wasn’t banned because nobody really knew what the American expression ‘giving head’ meant, and despite the rather un-PC use of the word ‘coloured’ it still gets airplay now. I don’t know if the BBC think we need protecting, as ‘Boom-Bang-A-Bang’ was one of the songs banned during the Gulf War in 1991 because it sounded like bombs going off (?), yet I heard ‘Leaving On A Jet Plane’ on Radio 2 on September 11^th 2001 (don’t know when I’ll be back again), so who is making these rules?

Last year Margaret Thatcher died. Way back in my Sherwood Radio days when reports of her declining health made the news, I had ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ ready every week. In November 2012 I left Trent Sound and returned in April 2013, the day before Thatcher died. There was a big furore about the fact that ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ had entered the charts (thanks to subversion caused by the ease of the download rule – who was it predicted that back in 2007?) and that it would be disrespectful to play it on the radio. I’m sure if the download rule had been around when Hitler died then everyone would have sat at their computers the whole day downloading ‘Colonel Bogey’ just so they could sing about Hitler’s other ball at the Albert Hall, so the fact that we weren’t allowed to celebrate just isn’t fair.

Incidentally, on the same day that Thatcher died, the lyricist E.Y. Harburg would have celebrated his birthday. All the BBC had to do was to play the song in tribute to him but with the underline message about Thatcher, but they didn’t. On the Sunday night of that particular chart show, April 14^th 2013, the BBC refused to play it. Straight after the chart show at seven o’clock I kicked off The Sunday Alternative (I was really annoyed that Thatcher died the day after my comeback show the previous week) by playing ‘Over The Rainbow’ by Eva Cassidy (another E.Y. Harburg song) and making a joke about not knowing what the fuss about playing a song from The Wizard Of Oz was all about. I then played the Klaus Nomi version of ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ followed by ‘I’ll Dance On Your Grave Mrs Thatcher’ by John McCullagh and ‘Margaret on the Guillotine’ by Morrissey. I didn’t receive a single complaint.

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