Fourteen years ago, this newspaper ran a piece headlined “If I was in charge of Radio 4…”, in which media luminaries passed judgment on various programmes, and offered some sage advice. Julie Myerson found Poetry, Please “agonising”; Roger McGough, the host of Poetry, Please, wanted more sport; Clive Aslet wanted the 6.30pm sitcoms dispensed with; AL Kennedy bemoaned the “hyper-regulation and box-ticking”. (There was a lot of love for the station, too.) Alastair Stewart, the former ITV newsreader, wanted Saturday Live (and its Sunday-morning sister show, Broadcasting House) pulled “immediately”. He found it “unfunny, self-indulgent, contrived and, worst of all, twee”.
I don’t know what Stewart has made of the past 14 years of Saturday Live, during which time it was mainly under the stewardship of Rev Richard Coles and Nikki Bedi (plus various co-hosts), or whether he tuned in this weekend, but I’d wager his opinion hasn’t changed too much. Coles didn’t survive the programme’s move to Cardiff in 2023, while Bedi’s stint came to an end in July. So, on Saturday Adrian Chiles, an occasional co-host of yore, made his full debut as the new, full-time – solo! – host of the laid-back magazine show.
Saturday Live has always been a mildly controversial presence on Radio 4. A whimsical, presenter-led, chitchat-heavy, interactive weekend-morning show that would not feel out of place on Radio 2 or a particularly classy local station. The vibe has always been, “We know you’re having your breakfast right now and we don’t want to unduly bother you”, which doesn’t feel distinctly Radio 4. Hearing the co-hosts chatting cheerfully to each other about not-much-in-particular has always, to these ears, felt a little jarring.
Adding Chiles to the mix, albeit without a co-host, has only added to the sense that Saturday Live is a peculiar interloper in the Radio 4 schedules. And for the record, I like Chiles. I have always enjoyed his deadpan wit, lugubrious Brummie accent and idiosyncratic views on life.
He launched into his first proper show by playing Steve Winwood’s While You See a Chance, before asking the listeners to choose the intro tracks from here on in. And in case you’re thinking, “This sounds a bit like Sunday Love Songs”, Chiles was one stop ahead of you.
“Listen, this isn’t the opportunity to dedicate something to the love of your life on their birthday or something,” he said. “Sunday Love Songs is for that.” Yet with several minutes of pleasant chatter, in which Chiles uttered the inevitable Radio 2/classy local station mantra – “Thank you very much for joining us, wherever you may be” – the opening of the show sounded not too dissimilar from, well, Sunday Love Songs.
The format of the programme didn’t help Chiles much. Without a co-host, he was forced to use guest Michael Rosen as his chattering partner, with the conversation hopping hyperactively over subjects at 100mph. The surface-skimming nature of the show meant that Chiles found himself falling foul of the middle-aged male broadcaster’s curse – Alan Partridgisms. “Drystone walls. They are dry, are they?” he asked a drystone waller, before enquiring what her favourite wall was. When she said that she found the act of building a wall soothing, Chiles chipped in with, “I get a similar thing from stacking logs!”.
One should not be too unkind about Partridgisms – most of us would slip into them if we were asked to host a meandering 60 minutes of blather with a trio of disparate guests. And they are, after all, merely attempts at showing enthusiasm.
English author Michael Rosen was Chiles’s first guest on Saturday Live – Helen Weinstein
Chiles’s best moments were when he let his guests talk – such as Rosen’s moving story about his son, Eddie, who died aged 19, and his homemade joke book, or when the drystone waller, Kristie De Garis, had space to discuss the intricacies of her craft.
An hour can be a long time to fill, especially solo, but I would urge Chiles to leave regular sections alone, such as Inheritance Tracks or the segment in which listeners thank someone. By which I mean, move on to something else, don’t use them as a springboard for paper-thin chitchat.
After Oti Mabuse’s Inheritance Tracks, during which she said she hoped her daughter would not “live a life of fear”, Chiles and Rosen stumbled into a half-hearted conversation about “making decisions based on fear”. Yes, they’re not good decisions, said Rosen. “Loneliness… I dunno,” replied Chiles. Look, we’re having our breakfast, we don’t want to be unduly bothered, but this was ridiculous.
If I were in charge of Radio 4, I wouldn’t be worried about Chiles and Saturday Live just yet, but I would certainly urge him to learn from other Radio 4 presenters, who begin their shows by just getting to the point (how we will miss Melvyn Bragg’s bullet-train intros to In Our Time). There are plenty of other stations where cheerful waffle is the whole point, but Radio 4 is not one of them. I would also be inclined to use Chiles more. His documentary yesterday, Finding Elgar, was Chiles at his best – curious, humorous, plain-speaking, esoteric. However, Saturday Live and Chiles is a combination that may well be too laid back for its own good.
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