programme on the departure of Jane Garvey from the show:
We’d like to offer a permanent audio memento, the essential Garvey collection. Tell us about your favourite Jane moments – on the form on this page, or by leaving a comment below – and we’ll try to dust off the tapes and put together a compilation which you’ll be able to get online (there’s a couple of clips available here already).
Here at Biased BBC our favourite Jane Garvey moment, though there have been many, has to be from earlier this year, as she fondly reminisced with co-host Peter Allen about the morning of May 2nd, 1997, the morning when Tony Blair became Prime Minister (click play to start):
Peter Allen: I want to hear what you thought of when, in 1997, on May the 2nd…
Jane Garvey: Ah, well, I had been up for most of the night, er, but I was doing this Five Live breakfast programme with a colleague at the time,
Peter Allen: Oh, you remember…
Jane Garvey: It was a bloke called Peter Allen
Peter Allen: Yes
Jane Garvey: So, I had to get a bit of sleep, and I do remember I walked back into, we were broadcasting then from Broadcasting House in the centre of London, all very upmarket in those days, and the corridors of, er, Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles.
Peter Allen: (chuckles heartily)
Jane Garvey: I’ll always remember that, er, not that the BBC were celebrating…
Peter Allen: (still chuckling throughout) No, no. No. Not at all!
Jane Garvey: …in any way shape or form, and, er, actually, I think it’s fair to say that in the intervening years, uh, the BBC, if it ever was in love with Labour, has probably fallen out of love with Labour, or learnt to fall back in, or basically just learnt to be in the middle somewhere, which is how it should be, um, but there was always the suggestion that the BBC was full of pinkos who couldn’t wait for Labour to get back into power, that may have been the case, who knows? But as I say, there have been a few problems along the way over the last ten years. Wish I hadn’t started this now…
Peter Allen: Interested to hear people’s memories of May the 2nd 1997, you know the email, drive@bbc.co.uk, or text…
Classic Garvey indeed. I wonder if that’ll make it into John’s ‘permanent audio memento’ of Jane – feel free to nip over to the Editors Blog and suggest it!
To save yourself a copy: right-click on this link, Jane Garvey recalls May 2nd, 1997 at the BBC, select ‘Save As…‘, save it to your computer, and then play it using your choice of media player.
Update: My colleague Laban recalls:
Another golden moment was [Jane] asking the Chief Constable of Merseyside, as the Anthony Walker killers were convicted, “Has there ever been a white victim of a racist murder in this country?”
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Simon Taylor for the MP3 recording (adding new detail to our transcript) – our very own Biased BBC ‘permanent audio memento’ of Jane’s time at Five Lies – now promoted to our sidebar for posterity’s sake.
Thank you to Hotlink Files for free file hosting and mirPod for their mini MP3 player.
Has anyone ever kept a list of 5 lite presenters who are known Nu Labour luvvies?
although he didnt work for 5 live, Ben Bradshaw was a bbc employee reporter that became a nufascist…sorry nulabour politician
and didnt James Naughtie write a biography on Gordon Brown?
I’m very sorry to hear she’s leaving she seems like a very nice person, gsoh, and she and Peter Allan are the best double act on radio.
The incident of her ‘election’ moment shows her basic honesty. A lot of BBC people could a tale unfold but they keep shtum.
Another golden moment was asking the Chief Constable of Merseyside, as the Anthony Walker killers were convicted “Has there ever been a white victim of a racist murder in this country ?”
After much faffing around I’ve fixed a small glitch with the MP3 player – and upgraded to a newer and better Flash based MP3 player along the way. The earlier problem was an incompatibility with the original file encoding. I’ve also updated the (broken) link on Laban’s post back in May to point to this new MP3 location. Enjoy!
I’d agree with Laban about Jane Garvey – I’ve always found her line of questioning to be less PC than the BBC norm, more inquisitorial than confrontational.
She’s one of the BBC’s better, more balanced presenters – if you look beyond her election night gaffe, you’ll find she is a less typical BBC ‘type’ than most of her co-presenters.