TV Cream

Radio 1: The Jocks

JUSTE, Adrian

Tearing the soul out of this page...TIME-HONOURED wacky-thumbs-aloft character, with permanent helium-hysterical microphone voice, who linked funny comedy clips (Steven Wright et al) in an unfunny way (interrupting every other line of routine with a jokey “Oh, really?”, “So what happened?” etc) on a Saturday lunchtime, between DLT and a documentary about Steve Lillywhite. Also regularly to be found manning those ‘technically complex’ occasions like Bank Holidays, assembling weekly highlights show Radio 1 More Time, and seeing in the New Year with a ‘Bong’-straddling, Jive Bunny-anticipating mashup of the hits of the past twelve months (invariably billed by the Radio Times, in textbook Juste Humour fashion, as “the show that lasts two years!!”). Sacked over the phone when about to go on air just as Bannisterisation took hold, and has never missed an opportunity to stick the boot in ever since. Love him or hate him, the man basically WAS Radio 1 at one point.

16 Comments

16 Comments

  1. Mike Reynolds

    May 4, 2010 at 12:43 am

    He now does idents for various commercial radio stations. He still sounds like a total prat. when our station used his voiced idents they were dropped after a month because everyone hated them.

  2. THX Kling Klang

    February 5, 2012 at 8:40 pm

    Say this for Adrian, he did notice when Lionel Richie released non-hit Sela, he had a bigger hit in his back catalogue with Hello. Put them together and you got “Hello Sela!”

  3. tinhatter

    August 3, 2013 at 3:49 pm

    Used to love his R1 program on a saturday in the 80’s. Good onya Aidos, didn’t realise you were a Lcs lad.

  4. Glenn A

    October 2, 2017 at 9:19 pm

    A kind of Kenny Everett for the eighties, listening to clips of Juste on Radio 1 Vintage, I’d forgotten how funny his weekend shows were. Bob Dylan Does Bucks Fizz, a Radio 3 concerto played on night storage heater, classic BBC comedy clips, and he once made a comment about Janice Long being replaced by a sack of spuds. I reckon Adrian Juste was underrated then and is now.

  5. Droogie

    October 3, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    The Bob Dylan does Buck Fizz piece was a Radio Active sketch. Juste’s own performed pieces were noticeably less funny than other people’s sketches that were played. If you ever saw the classic Blood On The Carpet documentary about Radio 1 when new controller Matthew Bannister took over and ended the Smashy and Nicey era, it’s also difficult to forget how bitter and sad Juste came over when interviewed.

    • Glenn A

      October 8, 2017 at 12:44 pm

      I still think Juste’s show was good, particularly the Sunday morning show, when he was given a bigger slot. Might I be right in thinking, when Noel Edmonds took six months a year off to do television, Juste took his Sunday morning slot.
      As for him being bitter about being ditched by Radio 1, I think you could say millions of listeners were, as Bannisterisation saw 7 million people ditch the station and its Stalinist obsession with new music. ( Jo Whiley’s Lunchtime Session might as well have been called let’s play the most tedious indie music on earth).

      • Richard16378

        October 9, 2017 at 9:25 pm

        One of the problems around the Bannister axe was that popular music was having a shake up stylewise. Madchester had reached the end of it’s natural lifespan but Britpop hadn’t gone mainstream. Grunge had peaked in terms of mainstream popularity, never making as household as hairmetal did. Even teenypop was in an odd place, with Kylie ready to throw off her chains & Take That still on the long slow climb to the top.

        All this & Radio 2’s reluctance to cater for the under 50s meant listeners had to turn to the local stations or Virgin. It’s no surprise Atlantic 252 hit it’s peak at this time.

        • Glenn A

          October 11, 2017 at 9:35 pm

          @ Richard 16378, there was a problem that the music during 1993 and for most of 1994 just wasn’t very good as trends like grunge, hardcore rave and shoegazing fizzled out. Britpop didn’t really happen until later on in 1994, while the charts were dominated by commercial dance records, people like Meatloaf having a second comeback, and Take That. Radio 1 obviously wanted to avoid this, with its elitist new music policy and hiring serious presenters like Emma Freud, so its ratings plunged and stations like Atlantic 252 that played the mainstream hits did very well and people wanting to hear old pop and rock songs flocked to stations like Virgin and gold stations.

  6. Droogie

    October 11, 2017 at 8:26 pm

    I found listening to Juste amusing as a kid, but by the time I’d reached 12 in the early 80’s his show just sounded naff with the canned laughter at his own corny puns. For younger listeners like me, the Bannister years of Radio 1 were wonderful. Getting rid of the ghastly likes of DLT and Gary Davis playing Phil Collins on a loop in favour of talented DJs like Danny Baker and Mark Radcliffe instead was brilliant.

  7. Glenn Aylett

    June 21, 2018 at 8:30 pm

    @ Droogie, Radio 1 was in a difficult place in 1994, when the cull of old presenters was at its height, compared with 1984. In 1984, Radio 1’s only serious competition was from ILR stations in the major cities, in a large part of the country it still had a monopoly and people had no choice if they wanted to listen to pop music. By 1994, Radio 1 had far more local commercial stations to face, Atlantic 252 had taken a chunk of the audience away with an all hits format, and Virgin had won over some of the older listeners with its classic rock format. I think they had to make the station distinct by ditching Juste and his friends, concentrate on breaking new bands and presenters and appeal to a more discerning listener than a housewife who listened to Our Tune,

  8. Richard16378

    June 23, 2018 at 1:19 pm

    While watching the TOTP repeats I’ve been taking note of the presenters.

    It’s interesting which Radio 1 DJs havn’t turned up, Adrian Juste certainly been conspicuous by his absence, unless he presented shows we’ve had to skip over.

  9. Droogie

    June 23, 2018 at 1:36 pm

    The only time I saw Juste on TOTP was when they let him pop up on one of the Christmas specials to do a link and thinking ” so that’s what he looks like.”

    • Glenn Aylett

      June 23, 2018 at 3:46 pm

      There were some DJs who refused to do TOTP, or appeared very rarely in the seventies and eighties. Paul Burnett was a known non presenter, as he never felt comfortable in front of a camera, but there were other refuseniks like Anne Nightingale, Adrian Juste, Adrian John and Pete Drummond.

  10. Richard16378

    June 24, 2018 at 10:39 am

    Paul Burnett presented a few TOTPs in the late 1970s early 1980s.

    Anne Nightingale was a regular presenter on the Old Grey Whistle Test.

    • Glenn Aylett

      June 24, 2018 at 2:20 pm

      @ Richard 16378, for a DJ with such a high profile show, Burnett wasn’t seen much on TOTP or the other BBC entertainment shows Radio 1 DJs were expected to appear on. I think he just wanted to do his radio show and be left alone. Also he was quite good and was unfairly axed and pushed into obscurity when he still had another five or ten years left on Radio 1. I can only remember PB doing a stand in slot for David Hamilton in 1984 and then releasing two novelty records that flopped.

      • Geraldo

        July 3, 2019 at 9:52 am

        @ Glenn Aylett according to his Wiki page “Burnett became a regular presenter of Top of the Pops, and presented the Radio 1 Roadshow during the summer”. With regard to the two novelty records he released – both collaborations with the god-awful Dave Lee Travis as I recall – one of them, “Convoy GB” reached No 4 in the charts. Hardly a flop…

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