Radio Songs #65: The Day I Almost Lost My Job Over Robbie Williams

In the mid-late 90s, my role at the station was split 50/50 between programming and commercial production. The programming side involved working on the phone-in, cataloguing music and attending playlist meetings. These were held weekly to decide which new releases should be put on the A list, B list, C list (evenings only) or restricted to "specialist shows" such as chart rundowns or our weekly "anything goes" indie/rock show. Usually present at these meetings were myself, D (drivetime presenter and "Head of Music", still a good friend of mine so many years later), J (deputy programme controller) and (occasionally) "Tim Allen", my nemesis (see previous post). The commercial production side involved writing (and occasionally producing) radio ads. I'll talk more about that in the future, but for now it's enough to say that while I worked in that department, I had three of the best managers I've ever had: P, M & I. Each was different, but each understood the fundamental nature of the business: writing radio ads is an utterly ridiculous job, so let's get it done as quickly and easily as possible and then have some fun. They were, each of them, the complete antithesis of Tim Allen, and I'll consider them close friends to the day I die (even though M has completely disappeared off the face of the earth and I doubt I'll ever see or speak to him again... but that was just M).

Anyway, the playlist meeting where I almost lost my job because of Robbie Williams... Iffypedia tells me this story must have taken place in early 1998. We'd spent a couple of years by this point fighting to get the likes of Blur, Oasis and Pulp daytime airplay, with occasional victories, but I'd never expected my greatest defeat to come via Robbie Williams.

This day, however, Tim Allen had elected to join the playlist meeting to contribute his own distinctive brand of ignorance. Bear in mind, for those of you who weren't present last time...

This man had NO INTEREST in popular music WHATSOEVER.

He also had no KNOWLEDGE or UNDERSTANDING of popular music WHATSOEVER.

And so we come to Robbie Williams - Let Me Entertain You.

Now I'd ask you at this point to put aside your own personal prejudices (whatever they may be) concerning Mr. Williams and consider the fact that, at this point in time, his career could not get much higher. After successfully escaping Take That, he'd build a solid repertoire of solo singles which were threatening to eclipse his former band. His previous single, Angels, had been one of the biggest selling songs of 2017 even though it was released in December and ended up selling even more copies in 2018. It had been A-listed by every radio station in the country, so playlisting its follow-up seemed a no-brainer to everyone in the meeting.

Everyone except Tim Allen.

Tim Allen did not like this song because it featured "heavy guitars". It was, he said, "too rock - verging on metal". It was not suitable for our station at all. "I wouldn't even want it playing on your little indie show, it's too loud for that."

(For the record, neither myself nor D would have considered playing Robbie Williams on the indie show... although we may have given his cheeky, rocked-up version of Back For Good a couple of spins.)

At this point, I rather lost my cool with Tim Allen. I tried to explain to him that given the success of Angels, Williams was guaranteed another big hit with the follow-up (and although it didn't sell more copies, Let Me Entertain You did eventually achieve a higher chart position than its predecessor) and we'd be foolish to ignore it.

"No," he insisted, "it's a godawful racket. He's a one hit wonder. Beyond Angels, nobody will even remember him in 6 months time. He'll be back in Boyzone before you know it."

OK, I made that last line up for effect, but the rest of it is verbatim. Even two decades later, I remember this bullshit word for word.

It was the "one hit wonder" line that did it for me. After that, I stopped listening to him.  I may have tried to point out that Williams had had four Top 20 hits prior to Angels, or I may have just put my head in my hands and given up. For the rest of the meeting, I treated him with the contempt he deserved. I refused to speak to him. I refused to make eye contact with him. I sent him to Coventry.

Looking back on it now, it wasn't the most mature reaction, and much as I still loathe Tim Allen and everything he represented, I feel I could have been a bit more grown-up about it. But I was a young man, full of piss and vinegar, and he was an idiot.

Only much later did I learn that my behaviour in that meeting almost lost me my job. Apparently, on returning to his office, Tim Allen was so incensed by the way I'd treated him that he got straight on the phone to P, my other boss at that time (in commercial production), to demand that I was fired immediately. (For some reason, Tim Allen couldn't unilaterally fire me as I worked for two departments; it had to be a joint firing from both my managers.)

P, however, wasn't in. He'd gone out on a call. (Not that P would have fired me, ever - he would have fought my corner to the end. He had very little time for Tim Allen. Few sane people did.) A colleague took a message for P to call Tim Allen back, which then got lost, so P never even had the conversation. By the next day, Tim Allen had calmed down enough to decide he didn't actually want my head on a platter, though relations were even chillier than usual between us for the next few months.

Some years later, when Tim Allen finally left the station for pastures new, he remarked to another colleague, "I bet Rol's throwing a party to celebrate". And do you know what, reader? I did.

Here's a song I've never been able to listen to in the same way since. For all its pomp and cheese, I love it... perhaps just because Tim Allen hated it. What better reason could there be?