There was one extra sung syllable in the name jingle – “Ver-non Kay!” instead of “Ken Bruce!” – but the new host, stepping in after his predecessor’s 31-year reign, seemed keen to reassure Bruce fans that the new regime would not be too revolutionary.
After variously exclaiming: “Right, here we go! The adventure! Let it begin! Let’s do this!” the first two tracks were U2’s hit Beautiful Day and Chic’s Good Times, both of which he called “absolute classics”, possibly seeing off the social media fear-smear from Bruce devotees that the new man would fill the show with the sort of grungy stuff 49-year-olds like Kay are into.
The biggest new feature – Vernon’s Vault, featuring selections from the BBC archive – is also decidedly retro, even leading to a rare Radio 2 airing these days for Frank Sinatra, whose death 25 years ago this week was one of the things Kay vaulted. Remarkably, a later track was 70 years old: Doris Day’s Once I Had a Secret Love from 1953, played for Kay’s mum’s birthday.
Kay can have only a limited number of older relatives to leaven the records in this way, but “producer Phil” was trying to throw any Radio 2 veterans who tuned in to post fingers-in-ears emojis as the vaporwave and witch house tracks banged out. The first guest on Tracks of My Years (a Bruce-era holdover) – Suggs from Madness – began his career when Kay was two. Such a slick anecdotalist was another reassurance to wavering listeners and Suggs’ first selection gave a second play of the day for Sinatra, with his 1961 recording of a 1937 song, A Foggy Day in London Town. That provided BBC balance to Kay’s opening mission statement: “We’re not going to be London-centric: this show is about you!” which risked confusing listeners in London.
Proving his status as a Radio 2 trouper, Gary Davies, the interim presenter between Bruce and Kay, was the emergency breakfast show fill-in for Zoe Ball and so, not considered hot enough for a permanent slot, had to spend the last part of his segment reading out motivational texts to Kay from listeners.
Between Kay’s early tunes, there were also motivational voicenotes from new airwave mates Ball, Scott Mills and Jo Whiley. Kay mentioned that he had worked with them at “’tother place” – code that perhaps acknowledged complaints from older listeners about Radio 1 being recreated on Radio 2.
At 10am, Kay could have done anything he wanted, while the nation’s media corps watched ITV’s This Morning to see if Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, co-stars reported in wild weekend headlines to be on Gallagher-brothers-like terms, would agree to share their sofa. (They did, choreographed to sit closer to each other and gaze into each other’s eyes like a dating app advert.)
As Bruce opened his Greatest Hits Radio show with Blondie’s 1979 single Heart of Glass, Kay went with something younger: Abba’s Lay All Your Love on Me, from 1980. Throughout the second hour, Kay, texters, contestants and weathercasters and sportscasters kept telling each other they were “smashing it”. Touchingly, Kay was still nervous enough to answer his own cry of: “How good is that?” with: “Brilliant!”
Producer Phil needs to find him a better 10.30am quiz. Ten to the Top, a pop trivia quiz, is, compared with PopMaster (which Bruce took with him to Greatest Hits Radio), like listening to Blue after the Beatles.
Audibly relaxing in the final stretch, Kay made two minor slips, suggesting that he listens to Greg James’s Radio 1 breakfast show (the bosses will get him on Ball) and giving Bruce supporters one of their few victories of the morning, when he yelped embarrassingly over one intro: “Check out the slap bass on that. That was fu-un-kee!”
But true to what seemed a classic-rich playlist strategy, he finished the first show with the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction, from 1965, nine years before he was born; he would be justified for feeling the emotion that Mick Jagger hymned.
Kay had described following Bruce as equivalent to taking over from Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. Ferguson’s replacement, David Moyes, won his first league game 4-1 (Kay came out at least 2-1 up), but failed to complete the first year of his contract. In music radio, as in football, the trick is relentless consistency – which is the DJ’s next post-Bruce challenge.
