I've been meaning to post this for some time but this week's British visit by Aung San Suu Kyi has finally prompted me.
I'm going to say nice things about Dave Lee Travis.
Like any of the veteran presenters who still had programmes on Radio One when the BBC had its Night Of The Long Knives in the mid-1990s, he was painted as an anachronism, the very sort of creature that Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse set out to mock with their Smashey'n'Nicey sketches.
The reality is rather grubbier. Workplaces aren't supposed to be run on a basis of whose face fits, and the BBC is no exception. Take a look at this. If I worked in a place like that, I'd think it ugly too.
The own goal in the remodelling of the station, regardless as to its musical intentions, is that the replacements were no better. Travis may have had a few gimmicks but he had a deep-rooted love of music that showed through - much of it period stuff, admittedly - whenever he was given a bit of freedom on air. I have never once thought this about Chris Moyles.
The other side to this is that I have come to have a bit of respect for old school entertainers. Dave Lee Travis, when he first heard that his old programme on the BBC World Service was a boon to Aung San Suu Kyi while she was under arrest, was quite public in his surprise. He doesn't "do" politics, and never has. My teenage self would have taken this as evidence that he was part of the establishment, a puppet of The Man. Thirty years of Bono later, I've come to admire any public figure whose beliefs are their own and who has the self control not to beat others over the head with them.
Going on at this rate, it'll be Terry Wogan next.
