"As they say"
If you haven't already, you simply must hear this radio interview by Les Ross of BBC West Midlands with the fine, upstanding Hardeep Singh Kohli, and weep.A bit of background: Les Ross is "a West Midlands radio legend." In 1965 he apparently become National DJ of the Year, beating Johnny Walker into second place, aged 15. This sounds hard to believe, but it's what it says on his BBC biog, so how can it not be true? He moved around from BBC Radio Birmingham to Radio Tees, then BRMB (he replaced Adrian Juste, which will give you an idea of the sort of territory he broadcasts in). He has "breakfast" written through him like a stick of radio rock. Now he's back at BBC WM, where, let's say, his many years in commercial radio are easy to hear back in a public-service environment. (Oh, by the way, he's won three Sony Awards, and now hosts the afternoon programme, 1-4pm.)
Anyway, just have a listen. Hardeep is in a London studio, there to talk about his food memoir Indian Takeaway (Canongate, £16.99). Les Ross may possibly not have seen, let alone read the book. This, as you will hear, is not his crime. (NB: The person who posted this on YouTube likens Ross to Alan Partridge, which is a bit unfair.)
posted by Andrew Collins @ 10:25 AM
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33 Comments:
This was incredibly painful to listen to and the ending sounds almost scripted... I think the problem is that Kohli's something of an intellectual, despite his daytime TV persona and Les sounds intimidated.
He also sounds like he's massively distracted by the turban and slips into an inept mess, focusing like a meathead on irrelevant cultural differences from the off - which is bound to put Hardeep SK on the backfoot.
Car-crash radio, if there is such a thing.
Well, being Scottish I can confirm that Hardeep Kohli does appear on just about everything and seems to consider himself an expert on everything from films to religion to politics to high and low culture in general.
He's also been a failed film director, sitcom writer, columnist, tv presenter and now it seems memoirist. He's maybe a nice enough guy, I've no idea. But I'm sick seeing him on tv, hearing him on radio, trying to avoid reading about him in newspapers.
So, if you will appear on just about anything, talking about just about anything, you will inevitably end of talking to ill-informed, disinterested guys like Less.
Reminds me of this (which Graham Linehan picked up a while ago)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk1EOcFv3s8
Charliemingles: I recoil from casual use of the epithet "failed." Because Hardeep started out as a director and moved into writing and then presenting, why does that make him a "failed" director and writer? Using the same logic, I am a "failed" magazine editor and a "failed" soap scriptwriter. Maybe you think I am! Since Hardeep's column is still running in Scotland On Sunday, he's hardly a "failed columnist" either. And since he's on The One Show, that's a pretty poor attempt at being a "failed TV presenter" too. You don't have to like him, but he's smart enough to know that being a Glaswegian Sikh gives him the advantage. (He "ticks all the boxes," as he himself says.)
That said, you're right, the more interviews and radio appearances you do, the more interviewers and presenters you will meet. Did you not think he handled himself with a great deal of dignity against Les Ross?
AWFUL. I couldn't bear the way that Ross just giggled throughout the whole thing, as if everything was a big joke. And starting off on the 'are you asian scottish, etc' question was just pathetic. And then he moves on with 'I agree with you' - agree with WHAT? That didn't even make sense.
Everything I hate about commercial radio.
Everything you hate about commercial radio ... on the BBC!
(The old, "I agree with you" line was rather transparent, wasn't it?)
aaaarrrgh, that made by skin crawl!!! What an idiot. His voice got so high towards the end he was practically Cheggers.
Zoe
PS Just finished That's Me In The Corner and I loved it, I thought it was really entertaining and enjoyable. So, thanks!
The only time I've come across Hardeep is on the Mark Kermode film podcast, and I just don't find him spectacularly charismatic as a presenter. If you compare him to Kermode or even Mr Collins here, he just comes across as a bit too pretentious and unable to laugh at himself.
That said, he's obviously an intelligent man, and I think he'd be better suited to a Louis Theroux-style documentary than anything.
And I do feel slightly sorry for Les Ross, he's just doing what he's always done. He just doesn't seem to realise that it's 2008, not 1965.
I caught this on the Grauniad website. It's awful. Just awful. All the stuff about self-identifying and fish and chips was jawdropping. Aside from the car-crash of it, what I found interesting is that both men clearly have big but totally differing egos. Ross bragging about never doing his homework on guests was just a brazen admission of how his career has been Smashey and Nicey coasting. Kohli did handle is with dignity, but only up to a point. Both of these men are broadcasters, and as a listener, I expect professionalism from both. No matter how much of a chump Ross was, Kohli terminating the interview made him come across as a higher-brow-than-thou diva. He shouldn't have had to endure such a crap interview, but neither did he come out of it as the better man. If he'd been more gracious and explanatory in the interview I'd have warmed to him and his book. But instead he let an idiot get under his collar. It didn't do him any favours.
That said, our licence feed pay for Ross. WTF?
Anna
Growing up in the Midlands as I did, Les Ross' was a common-heard voice in my household. Gladly I moved away aged 20 and hadn't heard his name since until this week.
I heard this recording a few days ago on another radio show and it is horribly cringe-worthy but for me there is some small victory in that a lazy, smug and complacent presenter has been found out. I'm no fan of Kohli but I'm glad he called Ross on this one.
Hello Andrew, I'm afraid I'm just having one of those irritable days. I just meant that he's on everything way too much and does strike me as something of a rentaquote. I dont bear him any ill personally, I've never met the man.
I dont think he handled himself any better than any intelligent grown man would have done with such a interviewer though, no.
I thought les came over as quite a likeable if doddery old buffer. he seems pretty par for the course for local radio, in my experience.
I'm with Suzie on this one. I grew up in Birmingham myself, and Les Ross was a familiar background character on the kitchen radio.
Listening to this toe-curling rendition it was easy to imagine him plucked directly from the eighties and dropped, wide eyed and desperate into a multi cultural exchange that he was ill equipped to deal with. I almost felt a bit sorry for him. Almost.
I would have felt sorrier for him (I can, after all, see both sides of the coin, having been interviewer and interviewee) if he hadn't been sniggering throughout. Whether this was nerves or embarrassment, it must have been mightily offputting in Hardeep's headphones.
As for the "walk-out". He put up with it for four minutes. I feel sure the slot was probably a short one, or else Ross might have looked twice at his notes, so it was well enough timed, and he never lost his cool, even when doing the radio equivalent of throwing down his lapel-mic (aaaaah, John Nott and Robin Day!)
Ross sounds exactly the same as I do when I'm in the middle of writing an e-mail at my desk and somebody asked me a question, which I then answer without stopping typing, thus failing to talk sensibly or coherently.
That is a very uncomfortable listen!
On the subject of uncomfortable listens - Andrew, please no more live podcasts! Not because of the quality of the chat - that was at it's usual level. But I had to stop listening five minutes in, due to my in-built aversion to the sound of a laughing audience recorded. It makes me squirm - they always sound like snickery teenages. Does that make me terribly snobby?!
I was on Les Ross on behalf of an organisation I belong to a few years ago. Not only had he done no research, didn't understand what we were on about, didn't *try* to understand what we were on about, but he said something fairly uncomplimentary about us after we'd left the studio, little knowing that my Other Half was recording it at home (for private use of course) and caught that bit too. Grrrrr.
BTW I have "That's Me In The Corner" on Mt TBR too... I'll let you know when the review's up on my little known and minority interest book blog, if you want!
HSK did show dignity in the face of an appalling display of buffonery, but if I was his agent (before I saw this clip go viral, obviously), then I would have been furious that he hadn't taken the opportunity to *tell* the idiot and his listeners what the book was about and to sell it regardless. That said, I thought that Les handled the (very polite) walkout like a spoiled child, not a seasoned professional.
And that's on the BBC?
Who listens to local radio, by the way?
ST
I struggled to get through that. Horrible memories flooding back of when I did a stint at at a BBC Midlands radio station (not that one) in the 80s. There were 'characters' like Les lurking around every corner. They were appallingly rude about the young Asian kids who made up much of their listening public ("awright, Sanjay, thanks for calling in...yeah..send you a pen."(off mike:"you squeaky little shit"). Horrible, horrible.
I'm not a fan of Hardip Singh Koli as a broadcaster, though. That 'bored detachment' style doesn't do it for me at all. I get bored and then I detach by turning the radio off.
I'm not proud of it but I once walked out of a job interview because the man leading proceedings clearly hadn't read my letter of application and he was much more interested in me hearing his answers to his questions than he was in listening to mine (even when they were the same). Sometimes you've just got to get away from people who are taking the piss. I think Hardeep gave Les long enough to get his act together.
To be fair, Les sounds like a man who was working when he was fifteen, and who is very aware that he's talking to someone who wasn't. That's not his fault, of course. I guess he's giggling because he really doesn't know if the Asian funny man - who's Asian - is being funny in an Asian way, or a Scottish way, or perhaps even a British way. Or even if he's being funny at all. That's not his fault either, I suppose. It's not even a crime that he hasn't read the book. All he has to do is ask, "So what's the book about then?" Instead he tries to tell us how familiar he is with HSK's work, when he really isn't. And you do get a sense that after 40-odd years on the radio, he'd quite like a go on The One Show himself.
I don't know if the ending has been edited at all, but I like the fact that Les gets his "Bye!" in first, as if he's cutting HSK off. I imagine there may have been talk of some people not having a sense of humour afterwards too.
speaking of terrible interviews, here's 6Music's George Lamb annoying Ray Davies-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx5oGJD0QdE
"Closer to the Music that matters", eh?
Simon Mayo's interview with Ray Davies on 5Live "the home of news and sport" was actually music related.
what's happened to 6music?
the interview was recorded and, amazingly, they decided to broadcast it later on... so editing is not out of the question, and it might even have been worse.
I gather he came out of the last Celebrity Apprentice thing with a reputation for being hard work and I haven't always found him easy to warm to but I thought Hardeep handled that very well.
The walk out didn't sound stage managed and he gave poor old Les a chance to get things back on track but the idiot couldn't take it
Entertaining, but I think Kohli has a bit of a history of dramatic walkouts, as we saw on the Celebrity Apprentice, when he flew off the handle over something Kelvin McKenzie said to him (or some other Sun-related person.) He's a nice guy, but he's also a bit 'drama, drama'.
Note to Les Ross: if you feel uncomfortable talking about ethnic identity, avoid talking about it on radio.
on the subject of cringe-making interviews I'll add this link and make no further comment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsMuRaT9zjg
I heard this on Chris Moyles show last week. Mr moyles enjoyied it very much, and said how funny hardeep was ! Which I find even funnier as HSK called in a 'C*NT' in an interview with your good self [in think] in Word.
Am I right?
backtoblack
That Nicky/Richey interview above was painful. Why would you interview someone with a toy dog?
As a massive Manics fan I found your bits in That's Me in the Corner about them fascinating Andrew. You mentioned everyone else's take on the 4Real incident but what was your own? Would you have published the picture if you'd have been editor at that time?
Zoe
If only they could swap places for a while. A week in Dictionary Corner might be enough to satisfy Les and a week attending to Les's listeners might teach Hardeep some people skills.
That was funny. I ended up feeling a little sorry for Les. Wouldn't have cost Hardeep much to just play along with the old eejit.
Does anyone else find it quite hard to interpret the word verification?
i-b-something-something-h-a-something-m. Pain in the ass!
Any chance you could just turn it off Andrew? What's the worst that could happen?
nb: I actually got it wrong. Am I just an idiot? Now it's given me an easy one - qdekz. Virtually a word. Here's hoping...
musters - if you got the word verification wrong then you're obviously not human. You must be a machine. Maybe a Cylon? Some Cylons don't realise they're not human for quite a while you know.
This one is good fun, radio version of 2 mountain goats banging heads...
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/0831_razer.mp3
HSK is tedious with that mock whimsy shite.
Thanks Tristan. I strongly suspected that nobody but me had any issues with the word verification. It's good to have this confirmed. Maybe I am a Cylon, whatever that is, or a Cypher.
In any case, three cheers for word verification, keeping unsuspecting blogs free of pesky non-human bloggers. ojntvcar
Les Ross here reminds us, and particularly Andrew, that caffeine and microphones don't mix. Stay on the oat milk sir.
If anyone cares my Australian example just got herself fired...
http://www.theage.com.au/national/razer-sacked-from-abc-arts-program-20081002-4sv0.html
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