TV Cream

Radio 1: The Jocks

CAMPBELL, Nicky

Ohhh, er... Virgo?SELF-APPOINTED late-night one-man intellectual outpost with clever-clogs quizzes, serious guest roster (Edward Heath, Paddy Ashdown, Frank Zappa, pre-stardom REM etc), about six Van Morrison tracks every night (this may well have been the ‘musical plan’ that his jingles promised), ‘guessing’ phone-in callers’ star signs, doing funny pretend Doug E Fresh-era raps over the few dance tracks that made it under the wire onto his show (“Have you noticed all these dance records all sound the same? Here’s Deacon Blue”), irrational dislike for The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Blur, insistence on billing himself as Nicholas Andrew Argyle Campbell, and the mighty combination of sub-Week Ending satire and rock snob boredom incarnate that was The Teasingly Topical Triple Tracker. Also the architect of a legendary April Fool’s Day stunt in which it was announced that Simon Bates had been made Minister For Pop, rewarded for his efforts with a bottle of Moet from station controller Johnny Beerling.

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. Glenn Aylett

    June 13, 2009 at 7:38 pm

    A grade A bore whose idea of a joke was to make jokes about a rapper called Doug E Fresh for 12 years and probably wishing he could present The World At One instead of a Radio 1 show. Retirement largely unlamented by Britpop loving kids at the time.

  2. David Pascoe

    June 27, 2009 at 4:44 pm

    I loved his mid-afternoon show. “C.R.A.P World Television News – Give us half an hour and we’ll give you the world!”

  3. Matthew Rudd

    August 1, 2009 at 10:59 am

    An astute and droll broadcaster whose numerous detractors were merely jealous of his ability.

  4. George Adamski

    August 1, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    I liked the way on this nighttime programmes he would welcome the more “out there” guests as well as the usual suspects, so his first weekly show had a discussion about UFO abduction (hey, it was the 90s) which included a man who said he’d been taken aboard a spacecraft and met fellow abductees there, one of whom he’d caught up with in, erm, real life. “Ufologist” Timothy Good was a regular guest too.

    That might have been why his Saturday night show used to end with the Star Trek theme, now I think of it.

    Plus his interview with Frank Zappa was genuinely fascinating.

    “Hey, Slick Nick!”

  5. David

    August 29, 2014 at 3:34 pm

    One of the things I will always remember about his late evening shows were his live interviews with the much-missed comic Frankie Howerd, including the phone callers who would ring up to give their impersonations (OOOOOHHHHHH!!!!!! Titter Ye Not!!) and ask the great man questions. He’s still a class presenter now he’s on 5 Live.

  6. Gavin

    August 31, 2014 at 12:37 pm

    I’d love to hear those interviews he did with Frankie. He even appeared in the Heroes of Comedy episode about Frankie.

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