The Nation's Favourite: The True Adventures of Radio 1

by Simon Garfield

Five years ago, BBC Radio 1 gained a new controller. Matthew Bannister said he was going to reinvent the station, the most popular in Europe. But things didn't go exactly to plan. The station lost millions of listeners. Its most famous DJs left, and their replacements proved to be disasters. Radio 1's commercial rivals regarded the internal turmoil with glee. For a while a saviour arrived, in the shape of Chris Evans. But his behaviour caused further upheavals, and his eventual departure provoked another mass desertion by listeners.
What was to be done?
In the middle of this crisis, Radio 1 bravely (or foolishly) allowed the writer Simon Garfield to observe its workings from the inside. For a year he was allowed unprecedented access to management meetings and to DJs in their studios, to research briefings and playlist conferences. Everyone interviewed spoke in passionate detail about their struggle to make their station credible and successful once more. The result is a gripping and often hilarious portrait a much loved national institution as it battles back from the brink of calamity.

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction, Biography

Paperback

First published February 1, 1999

About the author

Simon Garfield is a British journalist and non-fiction author. He was educated at the independent University College School in Hampstead, London, and the London School of Economics, where he was the Executive Editor of The Beaver. He also regularly writes for The Observer newspaper.

Reviews

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love 'The Wrestling' by Simon Garfield. I was not aware of 'The Nation's Favourite' until I heard about it recently on an episode of the wonderful Backlisted Podcast, on which Simon was a guest.

'The Nation's Favourite' is now a period piece. Simon was embedded at BBC Radio 1 in 1993 when Matthew Bannister was appointed its new controller and tasked with ridding the station of its horribly outdated Smashy and Nicey image. During this upheaval the station allowed Simon unfettered access to management meetings and to Radio 1 staff.

'The Nation's Favourite' is a succession of quotes, like the Wrestling, so we get to hear first hand from all the major players. Simon Bates and Dave Lee Travis are as puffed up and ludicrous as you'd expect. It documents an extraordinary period that saw new DJs like Chris Evans and Zoe Ball arrive accompanied by enormous media interest. The parts featuring John Peel and his producer John Walters are very poignant in hindsight.

Overall it's a compelling read although I could have done without some of the detailed management sections where the management team obsess about listening figures. Overall though, and for people who can remember this era, it's an interesting and illuminating account - and I say this as someone who very rarely listens to any radio and who cannot bear most DJs despite being a music obsessive.

In a weird occurrence of history repeating itself, having read about Zoe Ball replacing Chris Evans on the coveted Radio 1 breakfast show in the 1990s, the exact same thing has just happened again. Zoe Ball is poised to replace Chris Evans on the coveted Radio 2 breakfast show in January 2019.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

4/5

[Ade · Rating 2 out of 5]

How I loathe almost everyone in this book, but then I hate most radio, especially daytime and most expecially breakfast shows. So much effort to pump out endless inane drivel to more listeners than the other inane drivelists are reaching. So much mutual backscratching and stabbing between broadcast and print media, for events and shows that would be forgotten within a week even if they'd taken place in an endless void. And everyone involved is either a coked-up egomaniac or an unapologetic narcissist or, in one highly specific individual case here, both at once. What's Radio 1 like now? Who even cares??

[Nickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

100% pure bitchfest. Simon Garfield was allowed to sit in on management meetings and interview all Radio 1 DJs during Bannister's reign. So you've got Peel, grouchy and underappreciated in his radio banana republic, Evans raising havoc, Zoe Ball pissing herself with nerves about her breakfast show. Not 100% four stars but more four than three...

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this at the time (gulp) 27 years ago. At the time is it was a great fly on the wall look at the end of the Smashie & Nicey era, as Roger Bannister* tried to (rightly) jettison the aging audience in knicker factories etc & give Radio 1 back to da yoof.

I flicked around a lot radio wise growing up - Laser 558, Power FM even on to 5 live - so wasn’t an avid Radio 1 listener, but I think I was at this point. Huge Mark & Lard fan of their evening show. Liked Mayo, couldn’t stick Slimey Bates & Steve “never knowingly funny” Wright in the afternoon or any other time.

Reading this is now is odd, as this is now history (as the Cold War would have been at the time). A time of indecision & fear at the BBC as licence renewal came round (no change there). A time when the charts mattered, the playlist mattered. Pre-streaming, pre-social media, a fledgling internet (Google started as the book ends). A different world.

So the cast. Bannister never got music, but he got the task. Trevor Dann comes across all told you so. Chris Evans as the loveable rogue whose massive ego gradually wrecks his own career. Mark & Lard pushed under the bus to shore up breakfast - a slot even we fans knew just wasn’t them. Zoe Ball as human as you imagine, Kevin Greening sadly a bit part player as we always was. The old guard are as arrogant & out of touch as they probably still are. Some still have that chip on their shoulder in 2025.
Others (Kershaw, Westwood, Peel) have bigger shadows over their careers now.

You probably had to have been around at the time to really get this book, but if you do, Garfield (still a great compiler) weaves a fun tale. Then rewatch Smashie & Nicey, mate.




*stop.
Carry on.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent coverage, through the eyes and comments from those involved, of the period immediately following Matthew Banister's arrival as controller of BBC Radio One. Simon Garfield documents the subsequent fall-out as the station embarked upon the change from the "Smashie and Nicey" era of the late Eighties/early Nineties to the more confident, 15 to 24 year old appealing, Britpop-loving station of the late Nineties. As Matthew Bannister observed on beginning the job:"It really should have been changed 5 years previously,so when we got to 1993 and it hadn't, I knew we had to move fast..."

[Gari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloody marvellous. But to paraphrase Michael Legge, It's a shame it died in the end.