Meghan Markle has been offered her own show on Magic Radio. After the Duchess of Sussex claimed the station was one of the things she missed most about the UK, Magic’s content director revealed: ‘We had conversations with the Sussex team and if the duchess would like to add radio presenter to her CV there is an offer on the table.’ The station added that it had ‘been in with her team and offered her a show.’ Of course it has. If you know anything at all about UK radio, this was almost inevitable.
The first qualification to land a plum job as a radio presenter is having absolutely no experience; the second is being a celebrity on the wane
In recent years, the first qualification to land a plum job as a radio presenter has been having absolutely no experience as a radio presenter. The second is being a celebrity on the wane.
Bizarre, isn’t it? Broadcasting used to be as meritocratic as any other industry. The best people worked their way up by demonstrating their excellence on smaller shows before being rewarded with one of the big ones. Occasionally, if you were an exceptional radio broadcaster like Chris Evans, Terry Wogan or Noel Edmonds, you’d make the leap and become equally exceptional on TV.
Now it’s the same but in reverse. Once your TV ratings start to slide, you can be offered a big radio show regardless of whether you’re any good or not. Zoe Ball, Vernon Kay, Liza Tarbuck (who, to be fair, is very good) and Fearne Cotton are all perfect examples. It’s unlikely that any of them would have been handed their shows on Radio 2 without their then faltering TV careers.
Meghan Markle’s Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, has not, to put it mildly, been an unalloyed success. In many ways, then, she is a good fit for a show on Magic. The broadcaster already has Gok Wan doing its breakfast show; Heart has Amanda Holden on theirs. So why not have the King’s daughter-in-law pretending to enthuse about Take That? After all, authenticity is not a requirement for a presenter on commercial radio, so the Duchess of Sussex would be perfect.
This is the most anodyne and tightly controlled sector of British entertainment. Woe betide any presenter who doesn’t play and say exactly what they’re told to. This is why UK radio is so awful. Hopeless celebrities aside, other presenters are largely interchangeable nonentities. I still shudder at the bland young man I once heard on Heart, chirping: ‘Cheers for choosing us!’
You have to feel sorry for these DJs. Their careers will go no further because the stations give the best shows to inexperienced people who were once famous for doing something else.
Talented, young radio presenters can no longer progress from smaller stations the way Johnnie Walker, Simon Mayo or Mark Radcliffe once did. Especially since the BBC has now decimated local radio. Neither is there room for the next Bob Harris, Robbie Vincent or David Rodigan: music obsessives who took to the airwaves simply to share their record collections with a large, loyal and grateful fanbase.
All three are still going strong but they’re now in their 70s, and nobody is developing talented and musically literate broadcasters to replace them. Younger presenters on commercial radio, only allowed to speak for a regimented number of seconds per hour, are no longer afforded the freedom to flourish.
Instead we have the prospect of Meghan Markle on Magic Radio, introducing Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl (mandatory on all commercial radio playlists) with a faux-coy comment about it being ‘H’s song for me’. Because now, if you’re a famous failure, you’ll be given your own radio show. As if by magic.
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