TALK TALK TALK
HELLO kiddywinkies, and we’ll kick off with a large and incredibly sincere vote of thanks to the great Mike Read, who daily brightens our waking hours with chirpy chatter on Radio 1, for his courage in assuming the role of keeper of the nation’s social conscience.
Well, with Mary Whitehouse hooked on Channel Four and Cliff Richard off playing tennis all the time with Sue Whatsit, somebody had to pick up the cross and shout “ENOUGH!”
We refer to the dastardly Frankie Goes To Hollywood and that nasty record “Relax”.
Mike has quite rightly taken a stand against the sexual innuendo of the lyric (something about coming and going) and has decided to invoke a one-man censorship campaign, refusing to play it on his breakfast show.
“I just find the lyrics overtly obscene” he says.
Well, would you want your children subjected to this sort of depravity?
His stand is not in vain.
Radio One played “Relax” 15 times last week, but station controller Derek Chinnery is now curbing its airplay (it wasn’t played on Sunday’s chart countdown) all of which further delights Paul Morley and his ZTT churns having already got a massive hit and some handy sensationalist publicity into the bargain.
Morley now admits he fully expected the Beeb to ban the record from the outset… the fact that they didn’t reveals once again the sparsity of pop knowledge from most of those holding the reins at the Beeb.
Anyone with even a fleeting knowledge of Frankie Goes To Hollywood knew their whole promotion campaign was based on outrage and that they would exploit it to the full.
AGAIN it’s all down to double standards. Village People never had this trouble as we recall, and if you’re going to ban Frankie Goes To Hollywood for vague sexual references, why not refuse to play Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” because it incites violence or Paul McCartney’s “Pipes Of Peace” because some loony might interpret it as a drugs song.
And why not ban Snowy White’s “Birds Of Paradise” or Barry Manilow’s “Red ‘Em And Weep” because they’re such appalling records?
We’ll never every know…
CHAP OF THE WEEK
ROBERT RICHLAND. Robert who? Yeah, well, we’d never heard of him, either, but anybody who wipes the smug smiles off the faces of Radio 1 deejays is okay by us, and Robert has been doing that with a vengeance, seemingly spending every waking hour phoning up all their quiz shows and instantly answering every question they’ve flung at him.
He even had the splendid temerity to complain on air about the “glaring errors” in the Paul Gambaccini/Mike Read Guinness Book Of Hit Singles.
Totally incorrigible, Robert has challenged Gambaccini and Read to a showdown pop quiz challenge, an offer which the typically yellow-bellied jocks declined to accept.
Even more entertaining was the row Robert’s admirable cheek inspired between Mike Read and Mike Smith. Robert’s criticisms of the book prompted Smith light-heartedly to refer to it as the Guinness Book Of Inaccurate Hit Singles, a comment that incensed Read.
Great stuff, Robert. A very large drink awaits you in the Oporto.