TV Cream

Radio 1: The Jocks

RADCLIFFE, Mark

marklardMASTER of musically trainspotting drollery who first showed up as host and occasional presenter of Saturday Live, spent some years becoming Head Of Everything in commercial radio before filtering back, first as ‘Madchester’ correspondent, then helming reverentially-remembered proto 6Music Monday night slot Out On Blue Six, linking ‘alternative’ music from the sixties to the present with awful puns and anecdotes about student days landlords. Bannister reshuffle saw he and sidekick Marc ‘Lard’ Riley installed in weeknight slot, promptly rechristened The Graveyard Shift, promising two hours of “comedy, poetry, live music and A Boy Called Lard”. Hence three glorious years of all of the above plus endless parade of rotating regular contributors – Andrew Collins, Stuart Maconie, Mark Kermode, Katie Puckrick, Greg Proops, Mark Lamarr, Simon Armitage, Harry Hill, Stewart Lee, Richard Herring, Clint Boon, Steven Daly, ‘Joolz’, and far too many more to mention here – combined with eclectic playist and mammoth quantity of in-jokes. Unhappy spell as Evans-replacing Breakfast hosts with attendant ‘Pixie Dancing’ craze followed by renewedly successful move to afternoons, where he stayed until deemed ‘too Radio 2’ for new look Radio 1. Where he went, and promptly trounced the competition by more or less reviving The Graveyard Shift.

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  1. Matty

    June 10, 2013 at 8:37 pm

    I don’t think it can be said enough just how important “The Graveyard Shift” was to people of a certain generation. I always remember it as being the first radio show I heard people discussing in the union bar in that way people do about something they’re enthusiastic about. A recent chance to hear a few of the shows in full has also revealed that it isn’t just nostalgia – it really was that good. It’d be easy to say “they don’t make ’em like that any more” except that they never really did before Radcliffe came along either, it was a complete one-off. The more-popular Afternoon Show and the Radcliffe-Maconie partnership are often cited as having the spirit of the Graveyard Shift but that’s all they had and have, really, it’s not quite the same.

  2. David Bally

    August 29, 2014 at 7:44 am

    I will never forget those afternnon Mark and Lard shows, with Fat Harry White and the double-entedre. How they got away with it amazes me.. For example in one segment Harry’s freind opens a bakery, with a new range of herb-flavoured bread, ” I tried his parsley dough, and it was quite nice, i tried his chive dough and it was OK, but when I tried his dill-dough!”.

    Then there was the David Beckham diaries, and phone in competions with some really thick contestants, from whom they would take the piss mercilessly.

    “Fat Harry’s wife loved being married, she loved the feel of his ring round her finger”

    Fat harry’s freind who worked as a fudge-packer, etc etc.

    Pure filfth, but hillarious. Good times!

  3. Eight Ace

    October 21, 2014 at 1:18 pm

    I stopped listening to R1 the minute the Mark and Lard shows finished.

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