Little Richard

When I was in the embryonic stages of my career, my boss used to get a copy of The Sun delivered to the office everyday so that we could keep a finger on (or hold two fingers up to) popular culture and whatever else it represents. I used to read Richard Littlejohn's Monday morning ramblings just to make myself angry enough to shake off any lingering weekend lethargy. It never failed.

Then the hypocrite jumped ship to the Mail, who clearly felt they just weren't offensive enough at the time and needed that little extra edge of repulsiveness to truly cement their following. Actually I think it was about the time the Independent went tabloid and started eating into their circulation - The Indepedent, that is, edited by ex-Mail man Simon Kelner. Who says the leopard can't change his spots, or in this case his political leanings?

So last week the great oaf finally put an expectant nation out of its misery but revealing his opnion of the BBC 6Music saga - "an obscure radio station beloved by a vociferous minority" as he put it. "Why" he continued "should the common people be forced to pay for alluent pop stars like Pulp's Jarvis Cocker" to play their favourite records on the radio. Aside from the artfully-done (in that there are no inverted commas or clumsy "gag alert" signposting) play on the title of Pulp's famous anthem, this sentence had me seething. That's the whole point of the BBC - it exists to cater for all, including niche interests that don't get served by purely commercial operations. And the funny thing about musicians is, they tend to know quite a lot about music. So it's actually quite nice to be able to sample their muscial preferences in the reasonable hope that we might learn something to further our own appreciation of the art form.

His name might be Littlejohn, but it's hard to envisage him robbing the rich to give to the poor.