Management style

Extracts from an interview with Simon Mayo, about to start Scala Radio, for the Mail on Sunday magazine...

How did he first find out about the change? ‘It’s Lewis, bless him,’ he says, referring to Lewis Carnie, the head of Radio 2. ‘He goes to my agent, then my agent rings up and says: “Lewis says you’ve got to have a co-presenter.” And I said, “Oh, really? That’s interesting.”’

So even after presenting his own show in various forms at the BBC for 31 years, his boss did not ring him up directly to say it was over. How did he feel? ‘It was not how I had imagined the end of my career at Radio 2 would work out! I certainly had no intention of going anywhere. I had thought I would stay there until I was 94, then retire and drop dead. But it didn’t work out like that, so it was an uncomfortable period.

‘I came across a German word last year, Verschlimmbesserung, which means an attempted improvement that makes things worse. If you work in education, the NHS or the BBC you’ll go, “Yeah, we’ve all come across that.” They were trying to make things better. They thought it would be an improvement and make the network more contemporary. They made a mistake.’

Did he think about walking out straight away? ‘Yeah. There’s an inevitable thought: do I throw the toys out of my pram at this point, or do I hang on? But before I got to that I made the suggestion that if they were serious about it they would have to have someone like Jo Whiley in mind, because she’s a proper broadcaster. I had this horror of them plucking someone from local radio and going: “You’re gonna co-present with this person.” And then I would’ve walked. But they talked to Jo, and she said: “Fine, OK, I wasn’t expecting that, but let’s try.”’

‘It is certainly true that a lot of people found it an awkward thing to listen to, although the audience figures were fine actually. We were still doing good radio work, still doing interviews, the music we played was still good. But we were being played out of position.’