BTw I’m not actually defending Steve Wright- when I did listen to him, I was initially too young to realise that with characters like Gervaise he was taking the piss out of people like myself. By the time I was old enough I had by and large stopped listening to him. And I’ve not touched the Radio 2 show on account of it being incredibly boring. So no doubt, he’ll be playing lots of Depeche Mode. I don’t think he’s really worthy of being part of a slightly iffy mythology connected with a classic song.

More recently Antony out of Antony and the Johnsons guested on his R2 show and you could hear Wright’s chair audibly squirm with embarrassment as Antony spoke of the pop with which he grew up in the eighties and how radio at the time always either took the piss out of it or didn’t bother to play it at all.

It was on the first news break in Janice Long’s show on Radio 1 that we started to hear about power stations in Sweden and Finland measuring increased radioactivity, apparently coming from the Soviet Union. Nothing was known about the nature of what was happening, much less the scale of the event. The name “Chernobyl” and “WORST NUCLEAR ACCIDENT EVAH!” had yet to be attached to the proceedings. It was just some mysterious radiation. Big enough to lead the news, but not big enough to dominate it.

We got that, some other items, and then back to Janice Long playing George Michael’s “A Different Corner”, which was number 1 at the time. Nothing dramatic. The amount of drama subsequently attached to it suggests a great deal of 20/20 hindsight on Morrisey’s part.

And really, I have to ask, what would have any DJ done at the time? It’s not as if it was an immediate disaster like the death of Diana or 9/11. News filtered out bit by bit. The scale of the disaster probably would have have become apparent by the time John Peel was playing, but I don’t remember anyone scouring his playlists to see if what he was playing was “correct” for the times. And to be honest, I find this whole ethos of playing the “correct” record or saying the “right” thing in times of crisis to be, quite frankly, nauseatingly conformist.

Incidentally, according to that Johnny Rogan book, another target was Steve Wright, who famously refused to play Smiths records on his afternoon show because he didn’t think they belonged on daytime Radio 1. Or at least, he did until “Panic” was released and he proceeded to play it to death! At this point in his account, Rogan allows himself a little smug chuckle: oh ha ha, look at the silly DJ playing this record which slags him off- and he doesn’t even know it!!! I think Steve Wright would know exactly what he was doing- he could appear like like a “good sport” whilst at the same time nullifying Morrisey’s beef with him. It of course helped that it was a nice tune as well. (Even if the tune in question was largely “Metal Guru” by T-Rex.)

(heehee he is not our cliff richard he is our FLASHMAN) <—- oh to substantiate THIS!