Vote of confidence

I might have to eat my hat, having declared not so long ago that BBC 6 Music would not be much missed if it were cut from the schedules. Recent audience figures from Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research) have revealed a huge jump in listeners in fewer than three months from just over 600,000 to one million and rising. It’s an astonishing vote of confidence for the station, not to say a convincing majority, won by the ardent campaigning of its DJs and followers, including our own Marcus Berkmann and a cohort of Spectator bloggers. A coalition with Five Extra or even One Extra should not now be necessary.

Coincidentally, the station’s most celebrated DJ, Jarvis Cocker, in the same week won a coveted Sony Award as the Rising Star of the radio world. Dutifully, I tuned in to his two-hour show on Sunday afternoon, described in Radio Times as ‘hip music and thoughts’. I doubt whether I would ever have qualified as a ‘hip’ listener (and am certainly now way beyond the target range). Nor do I have much of a clue what ‘a mega mix-off’ should sound like. Yet there is something very engaging about Cocker’s manner of delivery, and his idiosyncratic version of life.

Cocker began with Dylan (whom he much resembles). You might think this was too predictable. But his choice of track, ‘Tangled up in blue’, was neat. As he suggested, ‘That one’s going out to Nick Clegg.’ Adding, ‘We’ll all be tangled up in blue for the foreseeable future.’

Dedicated followers of R3 would have been horrified by his next choice, ‘Blockbuster’ by Sweet, which Cocker mystifyingly described as ‘one of the most perfect singles ever made’. But actually his mix of music was rather energising: one minute Burt Bacharach, the next a distinctly weird version of the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ by none other than Liberace, all swooning violins and racing arpeggios.