Love You Bye: My Story by Scott Mills

Author:Scott Mills
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781405517324
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2012-08-29T23:00:00+00:00

The prank call is as old as time – or, at least, as old as the telephone – and all of these features were hugely popular with our listeners, but in October 2008 something was to happen that would totally change radio.

On Radio 2’s Russell Brand Show, Russell and Jonathan Ross famously left a message on the actor Andrew Sachs’s answer-phone, in which Russell claimed that he’d slept with his granddaughter.

What followed was an immense media storm in which, among others, both Russell Brand and the controller of Radio 2 resigned. The fallout was huge. The papers were gunning for the BBC and everything we did was being heavily scrutinised by our bosses as well as by the media. Radio 1 told us to play everything extremely safe and make sure nothing in any way contentious happened on the show.

I was initially angry and there was a feeling that Russell and Jonathan had messed things up for everyone. If someone was going to cause this much trouble, at least let it be for something funnier than ‘He fucked your granddaughter.’

But, looking back, I feel quite a lot of good has come from the Sachsgate fallout.

None of the pranks we did were particularly malicious, but the public were clearly the butt of the jokes and, although we had permission to air them, listening to them now, some of them do make me feel uncomfortable. The whole mood changed and made me realise that we could be warmer in what we do.

We had new constraints and I always believe that constraints are good: they make you work harder to come up with better ideas. We needed new ways to be funny and I think the show has improved for it.

A while later prank calls were back on the show, but with a difference. We had realised it was funnier if the butt of the joke was the person actually making the call, especially if this was Beccy. She was really bad at trying to trick anyone and would soon start laughing at her own incompetence. Beccy, the world’s worst prankster, led to the creation of characters like Timmy Trendy, fashion guru to the stars. Beccy’s inability to fool anybody was hilarious; the joke was on us and it was funnier.

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