Desert Island Discs slipped up over Wan
February 8, 2010 by John McKie · 16 Comments
Gok Wan. Picture: Ghetto-Shiz
His point was well-made. There’s no real value in people getting up to accept a Lifetime Achievement speech if getting up isn’t already a challenge for them. If they have all their own teeth, forget it. They’re not ready.
That’s why flipping around the radio on Sunday morning produced a moment that jarred.
Radio 4 was playing Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl. That was jarring enough, once the immediate thought that I’d pressed Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs on Radio 2 had passed. It really was Billy Joel on Radio 4, it was Desert Island Discs and it was the choice of Kirsty Young’s guest, one Gok Wan.
Yes, Gok Wan.
Star of How to Look Good Naked. Author of How to Look Good Naked: Shop for Your Shape. Frequent user and abuser of the phrase “You go, girlfriend.”
Gok Wan is 35 years of age and is far too young to be on Desert Island Discs, which celebrates a life’s achievements. Recent guest Morrissey, at 50, is too young, even for all his great records. You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby.
Unfortunately, under the aegis of Kirsty Young, the guests on D.I.D. have been getting younger and younger. The three Davids – Walliams (38), Tennant (38) and Mitchell (35) – may have done fine work but their finest artistic years should be ahead of them.
You appreciate they can’t have Dame PD James or Dr Jonathan Miller on every week but they shouldn’t be asking Gok Wan or any of the three Davids at this stage in their careers. And even if they’re asking, all four should be turning it down.
The boyband Menudo used to see members asked to leave once they got too old – say, about 18. The inverse rule ought to be true for any of Kirsty Young’s castaways.
The BRIT awards, which has doled out Outstanding Contribution awards to Oasis, The Spice Girls and this year Robbie Williams, have no real credibility to lose. Similarly the National TV Awards appear to give the same award to the person whose ITV contract is due to expire – Michael Barrymore, Caroline Quentin, even Ant & Dec.
Desert Island Discs is different.
Its success is built on a rich heritage of artistic, literary and political giants relaxing with their favourite music and a lifetime of anecdotes. The guestlist from Gielgud to Dame Alicia Markova to Michael Powell is stunning.
When the guests, as they were in 2009, include Piers Morgan and Richard Madeley, there has to be what our friends in the marketing world would call “brand taint”.
The South Bank Show dug its own grave with shows on the likes of Will Young, The Darkness, Little Britain and the lyric-writing of Bernie Taupin. Melvyn Bragg should have said “then again … no” to greenlighting those.
The SBS nevertheless has the excuse of looking at young artists working on their craft. So when it curates a show on someone like Jamie Cullum or Craig David, they’re allowed to take a punt. Well, they were allowed.
The guests on Desert Island Discs should be at the end of an illustrious career even (dare I say) close to being washed up.
Whoever chose Gok Wan for a 2010 edition of Desert Island Discs … well, that’s just, like, so, not this season, darling.
Related posts:
- Nifty nomination for acid croft pioneers Congratulations to the Edinburgh-based band Shooglenifty, veteran pioneers of the...
- Radio One’s second mid-life crisis t was front page news in all the red tops...
- New Yorke, New Danger or all those moaning about his havering on the Lisbon...
Gok Wan???
Who?
What??
And most importantly, Why???
And …. on the subject of Why – Kirsty should be asking “why” so many successful women are prepared to have all the expression surgically “lifted” from their faces?
Too much money or too little self esteem?
Slainte Mhor
Report This Comment
I absolutely agree that these young people must wait despite their remarkable achievements.
I have been expecting Miley Cyrus to be giving us the benefit of her years and wisdoms on this show any day soon.
Report This Comment
Why do you need to be a certain age to pick some records? I’m not aware of any age limit on being shipwrecked.
Report This Comment
This is another sad case of “bullet-point definitions” — they’ve reduced the programme’s formula to the superficial details, identifying “pick some songs” as the core aim.
However, song choice is, as the author tries to make clear, just a conceit to give the people in the studio an excuse for a fairly free-flowing, aimless conversation, and a mechanism for reeling the conversation back in if it goes to far off on a tangent.
The problem with bringing in (relatively) younger folk isn’t that they aren’t capable of having a free-flowing conversation, but that most of the time they’re either don’t want to or aren’t allowed to — everyone who is relatively active in their showbusiness career will have something to plug, or some agenda to peddle. The programme gets a little too obsessed with the present, rather than mistily meandering through the past.
The reason for all this is a misguided attempt to appeal to a younger audience, on the grounds that the older audience suffers from… ahem… “natural attrition”, but this is more than a little short-sighted, because as the audience ages, so do the studio guests. By the law of averages there will always be an audience for the DID way of things, because the young people will always grow older in their turn and start to enjoy reminiscing.
So no, you don’t need to be a certain age to pick records, but that’s not really the point of Desert Island Discs.
Report This Comment
I share Mr McKie’s reservations about Ms Young’s tenure on Desert Island Discs. She often gives the impression of liking her guests, which is surely wrong. She is also very lax in the matter of which luxuries should be allowed on the “island”, leading me to think that she sees the place as a kind of holiday retreat – Necker, without the risk of Mr Richard Branson popping in.
As to Gok Wan, I was under the impression that he was a Chinese cabbage. I have yet to be convinced otherwise.
Report This Comment
It’s not about age – it’s about life experience. You may not have enjoyed the music that Gok picked but his stories and memories were beautiful and interesting.
Report This Comment
As a frequent but not constant listener to Desert Island Discs I am unsure of where it is written that an invitation to appear is akin to a Lifetime Achievement Award. Isn’t the whole point that it features people of different backgrounds, different professions AND DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS? I may agree that Gok Wan might not make the most interesting of subjects, but would he be any more interesting in 30 or 40 years time? Lord preserve us from a policy that allows only Septuagenarians and older giving us a weekly diet of Count John McCormack and Dame Nellie Melba, and preserve us too from artistic snobbery that can see no merit in the talents of anyone under 60.
Report This Comment
That is why pro celeb golf worked in the 80’s; the golf was incidental to the jokes and anecdotes as people walked around.
Kirsty would be wise to learn that we want to hear the life and stories from the guests, with the music as an acceptable background.
Report This Comment
I remember when David Hassoloff was on This is Your Life, not only an American on an appreciation of English talent but he was about 30 years old at the time. Cringe worthy. TV/Radio execs with stupid ideas it’s nothing new. We just get to laugh at their stupidness. All that Gok Wan represents is revolting. None of the women look good naked, they are fat & ugly and a confidence boost doesn’t change that. Gok Wan is a twit. He makes my skin crawl.
Report This Comment
@Rev Campbell and @PeterLynch – you make similar points and so I’ll try and answer both.
I don’t think there should necessarily be an age limit on the programme, nor that guests should be 70+, but that anyone chosen should have a rich life experience to share with the listeners. For example, a sports star might have done all the interesting things they’re going to do in their career by the age of 34 or 35, unless they pursue coaching.
The jury is not out on Gok Wan. It has not even convened. He would definitely be a better guest in 15-20 years’ time when he has travelled more, collaborated with more people and achieved more in his chosen field (whatever that is). If he’s disappeared off the radar by then, that’s an easy way of deciding whether or not he should be picked as a castaway. Little is learnt by choosing him now, other than making the show look a little desperate to be seen as “with it”.
All your comments are thought-provoking, and @Eleanor, I must admit to finding The Hoff’s This is Your Life a guilty pleasure. Hope that doesn’t torpedo my entire argument,
John
Report This Comment
Sorry, what was the remark (in response to Gok Wan) about facial surgery posted here for?
Gok Wan, in case you’ve been on a desert island yourself for the past few years, is the absolute champion of the natural woman; untucked, un-botoxed and just as she is.
I’m in my forties and I love Gok, not just because he reminds ladies of 40 upwards to the end of their life to enjoy their femininity and expressiveness, but because my 17 year old niece loves him – and that says a lot to me when shockingly high numbers of teenagers are on a diet and hate their bodies.
Sorry, but the fact is, some people can achieve a lot in just 35 years of life – helping millions of women to truly enjoy their bodies and style, whatever their size and age, in such narcissistic, body facist times, is an achievement that deserves to be celebrated. This is why I dislike so many forums! – where’s your back-up and depth of thought?!
Report This Comment
@ruth I take your point and can see why Gok Wann appeals to so many folk and is seen as important at boosting the esteem of many ladies from 17 to 70. I’d just have delayed a little before giving him the accolade of being a R4 castaway. he will have more tales to tell when he’s older.
Report This Comment
Totally agree. Young employed all of her deep, gravelly Scottishness to muster something approaching gravitas, but … come on! … this was just vapid rubbish. He’s a TV presenter. So what?! I want to hear about a life of achievement, of incident, hell’s bells – something vaguely interesting … not ‘today Kirsty, I am wearing a longline black knit and a waffle jacket’. I had to switch off this self-congratulatory nonsense, as I feared it wouldn’t be long until Ms Young described him as – wait for it … an ‘icon’ of British television. Tell me she didn’t??!! PLEASE!
Report This Comment
Castaway?
Huh!
I’d like to see what even Gok could do with me and a palm tree!
Oooer. Did that come out wrong?
Report This Comment
“The guests on Desert Island Discs should be at the end of an illustrious career…”
I disagreed with this the first time I read it. Then I heard this week’s interview with June Spencer. More than 90 years of touching anecdotage. Gok Wan’s was five minutes of worrying about his weight stretched out over a whole show.
Report This Comment