Tim Johns

It was the most unlikely of scenarios. The former leader of the Labour Party was not only presenting a programme on Radio 2, not only interviewing the lead singer of Napalm Death, but was also having a go at ‘singing’ a bit of death metal himself (well, Grindcore to be precise). Here’s how it came to be.

Ed Miliband and Barney Greenway

The Press Release

I work on the Jeremy Vine Show. It’s a news and current affairs programme reaching 7.4m people a week. During the summer holidays of 2017 two prominent political party leaders, Ed Miliband and Iain Duncan Smith, took on presenting duties for a week each.

It was actually during the week before Ed was on, when Jeremy was presenting the programme as normal, that I’d first suggested the ‘metal’ item. I received a press release from Dan Tobin at Earache records to my personal email address. He was alerting me to the fact that for the first time ever the Glastonbury music festival would have its own extreme metal stage. His email read:

Wanted to make you aware of what is going on with Glastonbury at the end of the month, as Earache will have its own stage there

If you’re not aware of what Earache does; for many years we released most of the classic extreme metal and punk bands such as Napalm Death, Carcass, Morbid Angel and Godflesh

I get a LOT of press releases every day and it’s impossible to consider most of them. As for this one…why on earth would news of an extreme metal stage at Glastonbury be of any interest to ‘The Jeremy Vine Show’ on Radio 2?! I so so so nearly deleted it. But, I thought, we’d never actually covered the topic of extreme metal or explored for our audience why people love that particular genre.

The day I pitched this idea in our regular morning meeting it didn’t quite make it. Most of what we feature on the programme is decided in the morning based on the day’s news. However, occasionally, when we hit on a topic we’ve never covered before (eg. extreme metal) we scout around to see if it might be worth setting up for a future programme. That’s exactly what happened here, and it was the case that we were speculating on a date when Ed would be presenting the show.

The Guest

Full marks to Dan at Earache records. I phoned him to say that – oddly enough – we were really interested to feature the metal stage on Radio 2. And before I knew it he had rustled up a potential guest. It was not just any old guest. He was offering the lead singer of Napalm Death. Anyone involved in the metal scene will tell you how big Napalm Death are. Ed Miliband + Napalm Death = what’s not to love. We went with it.

The Interview

Barney from Napalm Death was completely brilliant. Genuine, sincere, articulate, grounded and willing to buy in to what we were trying to do.
What we were trying to do was two-fold:

1. genuinely shed light on the extreme metal movement for our listeners
2. get Ed Miliband to have a go at singing metal

It was part (2) that was more tricky because at no point did we want to trivialise in any way Barney’s profession or make light of an incredibly popular musical genre. Hopefully anyone who heard the full interview will agree that a long time was spent on serious and respectful discussion of the musical artistry and the purpose behind it.

Looking back, however, there’s no doubt that excellent-sport Ed ‘having a go’ was an exceptional, surreal, and brilliant moment of broadcasting. One that went, as they say, ‘viral’.

This Facebook video’s had 4.3m views at the time of writing.

And ‘in the moment’ this tweet captured the full ‘roar’ of Ed:

Ed Miliband just attempted to sing death-metal on Radio 2, tutored by the lead singer of Napalm Death. You’re welcome. pic.twitter.com/1gnZgSMU9O

— Tim Johns (@timoncheese) June 21, 2017

Ed and Barney were a centrefold pull-out poster in Kerrang Magazine.

Hey @Ed_Miliband we went & bought the new @KerrangMagazine especially so we could put the poster on the wall at Radio 2 pic.twitter.com/jo5RjIt4eL

— Tim Johns (@timoncheese) June 28, 2017

It was in all the papers.

And streaming of Napalm Death on Spotify supposedly shot up by more than 200%.

Radio Producers – Let’s Recreate This!

No. Impossible. It’s a great example of how sometimes it takes a fairly random series of events to produce a moment like this. Sure – you have to seize the opportunity, be open to all-sorts and produce the on air item as best you can – but ultimately in this case it took a huge number of random circumstances to come together and join forces to produce a bizarre and brilliant moment of broadcasting.

Oh – and check out this outstanding remix:

BTW

Don’t get me started on the dog grooming item…

Prince has died at the age of 57. Yesterday it was Victoria Wood. David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Ronnie Corbett…the list of cultural giants who have passed away this year doesn’t end there.

For a few years now I’ve been boring friends and colleagues with my theory that the rate of ‘celebrity-deaths’ (please pardon the crude phrase) is only going to rise over time. It’s almost too easy to point to 2016 as evidence of this – but I do think it provides food for thought. It also provides a reason for me to write the following: we need to start the discussion about how the media covers celebrity deaths in the future. Why? Because I worry that these deaths will become so frequent that the way we currently do it is not sustainable.

“We’re entering an era of mass celebrity death”

Not sustainable?

When these famous people lost their lives this year, the coverage has been, arguably, suffocating. If you’re a Twitter user there’s no point in looking at your feed for hours after the news breaks unless you want to read the same tributes a thousand times over. And unless C-listers who-sort-of-vaguely-knew-the-celebrity-in-question relaying tenuous anecdotes at length is your thing, you must avoid any radio/tv/online outlet which deals with breaking news. World leaders pay tribute. And so on it goes.

Of course – for fans of the person who has just died – this coverage will always be appropriate. I’m not saying any outlet got their coverage wrong this year. I just wonder if we need to think more about how it’s done in the future because I believe it will happen more and more. And what do we do when two massive ‘names’ pass away on the same day as a massively important news event (eg. EU Referendum day)? The news world could implode.

The rate of ‘celebrity deaths’ will increase

In the age of The Beatles there simply weren’t enough media outlets to facilitate many big celebrities. Since then…radio blossomed, TV became commonplace in every UK household, the numbers of channels increased, magazine publishing went into overdrive, the internet arrived, smartphones and tablets came on the scene, and blogs and vlogs have recalibrated how easily and quickly people could become significant celebrities and role models for an entire generation. There are LOADS of celebrities these days.

I know, I know…the likes of Bowie and Prince truly are unique due to their position in history. When there were fewer world-famous artists each one had a deeper meaning (arguably) to a greater number of people. But in the same way that humans are capable of having anywhere between two and 200 friends they know and care about, I believe we are all capable of liking and caring about a huge number of celebrities. And there are simply more celebrities now.

We’re entering an era of mass-celebrity-death

The only news that ever gets reported will be about death. We’ve had a taste of that this year – and it ain’t right.

Sorry, I don’t mean to sound crass. But if the ‘media revolution’ happened in the 50s and 60s – then the increased number of people we nationally love and care about are becoming more and more at risk of their lives coming to an end. Five, ten, twenty years from now that trend will increase massively. So if a daily ‘celebrity death’ becomes the norm – how should the media deal with it? Should there be rolling news coverage of each one? Should regular TV and radio programming be replaced by tribute programmes every time? Should big news stories be pushed aside for obituaries?

Of course – the answer will depend each time on who it is. Personally, I think the way forward is less blanket-coverage.

Immediate tributes – yes. Well-crafted and thoughtful obits on the evening news – yes. Hours/days of rolling coverage? No. A few years from now, if ‘celebrity death rates’ increase, I just don’t think that will be possible. Otherwise, the only news that ever gets reported will be about death. We’ve had a taste of that this year – and it ain’t right.

ps.

I’ve just listened back to last Friday’s episode of ‘More of Less’ (Radio 4, 15th April 2016).
They looked at whether more celebrities have died in 2016 than in other years, and discovered how many ‘official’ BBC obituaries have been run in the first quarter of this year compared to the years since 2012.

I was pleased to hear the BBC’s Obituaries Editor, Nick Serpell, sort-of agree with part of my argument. Here’s what he said on the programme:

Before television arrived in the early 1950s, the only really famous people that people came across all the time were movie stars – because they went to the cinema.

In the 50s we had television, that brought more famous people into people’s rooms. Music in particular; we had the growth of rock and roll. Remember The Who sang about ‘my generation’, hoping that they’d die before they got old. But whilst some of them did, the majority of them didn’t. And all these people, in the ‘rise and the growth of celebrity’, if you like, are now reaching that period in their 70s and 80s where they’re going to start to die, and I think that’s causing this.

Perhaps you’ve seen this image doing the rounds:

Since @OliverJamesUK posted it on 6th July it’s gone viral. Thousands retweeted it immediately, others nicked it and re-posted it, campaigners and celebrities like Frankie Boyle shared it, and it’s all over Facebook timelines.

But is it accurate? And where’s the picture from?

This is not about the pros or cons of the Work Capability Assessments. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest they’ve gone wrong in many instances, and the Atos contract is due to come to an end. This is about how a simple, powerful message can spread on social media even when people don’t really know what it is they’re sharing.

This picture was actually tweeted a few times over previous months, but never got much attention. It actually dates back to a rally against disability welfare cuts held on 28th September 2013. More pictures here… The fact that it’s gone viral this time suggests that the wording of the tweet was important.

The flowers are meant to represent “more than 10,000 people who died shortly after undergoing the Atos Work Capability Assessment“.

But hang on – the number of people who underwent the assessment is very different from the number of people who were actually declared fit for work, as the tweet stated.

So how many really was it?

The protest last September, and the ‘10,000’ people the flowers were for, are based on the table below, which comes from a DWP report from July 2012.

What does it mean? Those 10,600 people started the fit-for-work assessment.

• Of those, 2,200 never completed the assessment

• 7,100 were placed in the ‘support group’. These people were specifically deemed not fit to work.

The DWP states in that report:

“Those in the Support Group receive unconditional support due to the nature of their illness, which can include degenerative conditions, terminal illness and severe disability.”

• The remaining 1,300 were placed in a ‘work related activity group’.

From the DWP:

“Those in this group are not expected to work, but are provided with help and support to prepare for work where possible.”

And here’s the most important bit regarding our original tweet. From the last page of the report:

“Data on the number of ESA claimants that have died following a fit for work decision is not available, as the Department does not hold information on a death if the person has already left benefit.”

So is the original tweet accurate? Absolutely not. Do people sharing it think it’s factually accurate and shows a new, current picture? Almost certainly.

Confusing a desire for accuracy with giving an opinion

The difficulty with writing things like this is that people jump to the conclusion that you’re somehow arguing one side or the other on the issue itself. I’m not. Just because I’m pointing out that the tweet is misleading doesn’t mean I don’t agree with its sentiment.

This exchange on Twitter regarding the ‘flower tweet’ is typical – if you go looking there are many like it:

Politics aside, @guy_herbert is right that a number with no context is unhelpful. Statistics are an important business. But when you question them on such an emotive topic people become angry, as if because you want accuracy you don’t care for those 10,600 individuals who died.

If you believe in a cause and want to campaign on it, those in power will ignore you if your numbers don’t add up, or if your facts are not facts. So if you want to share things to further a social cause, I would argue that asking what exactly it is you’re sharing, and whether it might be accurate before you click ‘retweet’ can help.