Are We Live? (6 page)

Many of us might think of radio as a genteel world, home to veteran presenters, afternoon plays and competition phone-ins. But as the following tales will attest, exhausted hosts, nutty members of the public and clueless politicians have made for some radio-mishap gold!

Imagine the scene: you’re fifteen, you have no money and you’re really,
really
bored. You’re sitting in the kitchen with your best friend while a terrible local radio station plays in the background. Suddenly, you get an idea – what if you rang the station for a dedication and called yourself by a funny name?

‘OK, let’s get to our first dedication: “Dear Chris, please say a big hello to Connie Lingus, who’s sixty-nine on Tuesday. She’ll be enjoying my meat and two veg on Sunday at twelve. Wish her all the very best and tell her I look forward to seeing her when she comes.” And that comes from Ivan Ardon.’

BBC Radio Leicestershire, April 2006

For inspiration, here’s a list of the most popular names used during prank calls:

It’s not always the listeners who like to pull pranks. Canadian radio duo The Masked Avengers (or
Les Justiciers Masqués
), Sébastien Trudel and Marc-Antoine Audette, pulled a spectacular joke on Sarah Palin in November 2008. Posing as the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the pair managed to keep Palin on the line for almost six minutes.

The Masked Avengers managed to dupe a giddy-sounding Palin into believing French crooner Johnny Hallyday was Sarkozy’s Special American Advisor and French Canadian country singer Stef Carse was the Prime Minister of Canada. The highlight, however, had to be their announcement that Sarkozy’s wife Carla Bruni had written a song for Palin called ‘
Du rouge à lèvres sur un cochon
’ (translation: ‘Lipstick on a Pig’).

A handsome salary, countless freebies and free entry to glamorous parties are just some of the perks of being a DJ. But sometimes those early starts can play havoc with one’s decorum.

‘… And the last word today – Enoch Powell:  the best prime minister we probably never had.’

Former BBC Radio 2 DJ Sarah Kennedy, airing her somewhat misguided support for Britain’s most famous opponent of immigration

‘It’s the Queen Mum’s birthday today. Ah, she smells of wee but we all love her.’

BBC Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox, broadcasting live from Ibiza

‘Hurry up, folks, and deposit your letters now. We’ll be waiting for your droppings in the box.’

A radio announcer encourages listeners to write in to the show

BBC Radio 2 host Dermot O’Leary made a bit of a blunder when he insinuated his fellow host Sarah Kennedy had a problem with drink. When Alan Carr told O’Leary that he prefers to drink vodka because it can’t be detected on his breath, O’Leary quipped, ‘The Sarah Kennedy get-out.’

American radio host and popular personality Casey Kasem is best known for hosting the
American Top 40
show. But he’s also quite famous for his radio rants, and not least for his most famous blow-up, which happened when he was trying to record a dedication for a listener’s dead dog.

In a rant of ever-increasing ire, Kasem lambasted his producers for failing to provide appropriate music to lead into the sad story. He finished his piece with the following summary of his thoughts: ‘I want somebody to use HIS FUCKING BRAIN to not come out of A GOD-DAMN RECORD that is up-tempo when I’ve got to talk about a FUCKING DOG DYING!’ No doubt that was them told.

In October 2008, tousle-haired lothario Russell Brand and his BBC Radio 2 co-host Jonathan Ross got themselves – and quite a few other members of BBC staff – into lots of trouble when they broadcast a series of naughty messages they’d left on actor Andrew Sachs’s answerphone.