Disgusting Bliss by Lucian Randall Read Free Book Online Page B

remembers Morris using rather unorthodox methods to solve a problem during an outside broadcast one freezing February. ‘The mast on the radio froze solid – it couldn’t be raised to send a signal back to base,’ he says. ‘Legend has it that Morris climbed up on the top of the vehicle and pissed on the mast to release it.’ He was also beginning to pick up on the gulf between news and every other type of programme. ‘News regard themselves as the anointed ones, the real reason for the existence of the radio station,’ says Nick Barraclough, ‘and they see local radio as news bulletins with some waffle in between. So they were incredibly puffed up, self-important . . . and Chris was watching.’
    In 1994 Morris told Melody Maker about a journalist he called Pat who ‘knew all the tricks, how to chat up the police, etc. One day, he came rushing into the studio, shouting, “Chris, Chris, you’ve gotta listen to this: ‘Police are out in force today as the county’s roads serve up their traditional pre-Christmas cocktail of carnage.’” I said, “Pat, you can’t say that.” When he did the news, he read, “The roads have served up their traditional pre-Christmas menu of mayhem ,” smiled at me through the glass, and carried on.’ 16
    Nick Barraclough promoted Morris’s promising show to Trevor Dann, who presented a Sunday-night show on Radio Cambridgeshire for new and alternative music. At thirty-five, he was an established name with a career including stints as a Radio 1 producer and on BBC2’s The Old Grey Whistle Test . Within five years, as one of the managers tasked with founding the BBC’s London station GLR in 1988, he would be on the lookout for DJs with distinctive styles – by which time Chris Morris would have stepped a considerable distance along the hard way.
    Even at Radio Cambridgeshire, Morris was evolving a clear idea of how he wanted to work, as fellow presenter Valerie Ward discovered when they briefly collaborated on an arts programme. ‘I think they thought that, as I wanted to produce and Chris was keener on presenting, we would make a good team,’ she says. ‘We didn’t. I wanted to write everything, script it, time it, craft it, include interviews and location packages. Chris just wanted to go with the flow.’ They tried to work separately and bring their pieces together. But by the time they met, Morris had often still not decided what he wanted to do. ‘I was reduced to tears,’ says Ward. Ian Masters recalls, ‘Even then Chris’s approach to broadcasting was out of the ordinary. Some people asked me if he was a little too “zany”. My response was always that I would rather have broadcasters who tried new approaches – even if those approaches failed sometimes. I liked his bright tongue-in-cheek style and his wry humour.’
    Morris would use listeners who called in as props for his own sense of humour, rather than draw out their own stories. He wasn’t unkind, but he wasn’t patient. ‘I think he did find it hard to put himself in other people’s shoes perhaps,’ says Rachel Sherman. ‘He was always one step ahead of them, but that wasn’t always funny. Sometimes that was a problem. He can make you feel stupid even though he’s not meaning to. If you aren’t very secure in yourself, if you don’t feel up to matching what he’s doing, you could end up feeling a bit pathetic.’
    His style was more readily understood by his colleagues. Morris would enthusiastically bound around the studio and had a flippant, public-school sense of fun which made him a popular figure. The absurd constraints of time and budget on the station encouraged a black humour in the creative teams which, as he had on the market stall, Morris fitted into comfortably. He employed his observational skills to capture almost everyone in the station perfectly and without mercy. Ian Masters’ headmasterly style and tendency to be pompous made him a particularly rich source of humour for