What the hell is Radio 1 'shock jock' Chris Moyles playing at, exactly?
Last night there was an advert for his hilarious new project, 'The Chris Moyles Parody Album'. That's right, for £9.71 of your hard-earned, you too can own a copy of musical history, as Moyles and his team slightly change the words to some recent pop records. Brilliant. It even says on the blurb online that as well as the parodies, he's written a series of new tunes exclusive to the album. I'm no pedant, but I'm pretty sure material you've written yourself doesn't constitute a parody, ergo it's not a chuffing parody album is it?
When he barrelled onto the scene in the mid-90's, he was labelled 'controversial' and other terms which make middle Englanders shit themselves, because he wasn't a banal airhead. I didn't mind Radio 1 back in the day, but after 4 or 5 years, I realised that they had absolutely no intention of keeping it fresh so I gave up and switched to FiveLive. From then on, my Radio 1 listening came via being a reluctant passenger in the car of someone who thought he was ace (such folk exist, apparently) and an interesting thing became clear. Over the years, not only did he bang out the same features (Carpark Catchphrase still? Really?), but he'd also become a corporate lackey, dropping his obviously fake shock persona in place of being a board-friendly inoffensive drivel-merchant. Gone are the edgy comments and low-level bad language, replaced with banality which would make a regional Real Radio operative feel grubby.
Now, a certain amount of blame can be levelled at the BBC itself, as broadcast guidelines were tightened in the light of the Brand/Ross scandal, meaning he had to scale down his supposedly controversial views to prevent someone wearing a cardigan having a panic attack. The thing is, though, he wasn't exactly Howard Stern at the worst of times, and his listenership knew what he was like and were unlikely to suddenly think he was offensive and call for him to be spectacularly terminated. All of which leads me to think that he's realised the sum total of his powers is to sit on his arse taking the piss out of his sycophantic team, so he's put his feet under the table and is staying for the duration. Classic gravy train material.
To be fair to him, he has tried to crack television, with a level of success comparable with Robbie Williams' attempts to break America. Despite James Corden paving the way, he doesn't exactly fit the profile of a hip and happening presenter, so maybe he's realised that his future lies in slightly rewriting tunes currently in the hit parade and ambling up a mountain because Gary Barlow told him to.
Either way, he'll end up a millionaire.
No comments:
Post a Comment