by Steve Wright, who has died aged 69, hosted the anarchic breakfast show on Radio 1 for a year before moving to Radio 2, where he was a garrulous weekday evening event with pop -middle of the road hits, interviews and mixed features. with interjections from his regular on the air of subordinates as mouth, a format called “zoo” radio.
When he suddenly quit Radio 1 in January 1995, Wright was said to be taking over Talk Radio, Britain’s first commercial national all-talk station, and it was widely expected that the BBC’s pop network controller would follow. , Matthew Bannister, it. the station lost 4.5 million listeners the year before.
Wright’s unhappy year on the breakfast show was seen as an example of the changes Bannister made to Radio 1 when he took over the station in 1993 and, at the behest of ascetic director-general John Birt, introduced more talking points. .
“Steve Wright stopped being fun when he took his job to the breakfast show and talked to them more than us,” complained Telegraph radio critic Gillian Reynolds. “Radio 1 has allowed it to run riot. What a shame, what a waste.”
Wright was widely regarded as a clever operator at the microphone, the most inventive of his idol Kenny Everett. “He’s not smart enough, though, to stop reminding us how smart he is,” she said.
Although Bannister survived, Wright’s sudden departure upset Radio 1. He was installed on the breakfast show at the start of 1994 to help revive banner ratings following the axing of the station’s aging disc jockeys such as Dave Lee Travis and Simon Bates. .
When he surrendered his spot on the breakfast show to Chris Evans after just over a year, Wright did indeed aim for Talk Radio, but listeners didn’t take to it and he left after a few months, returning to the BBC in 1996 for two weekends. shows on Radio 2 featuring “amazing” facts (later rebranded as “factoids”), celebrity gossip, royal tittle-tattle, TV soap stars, horoscopes and travel news.
His Sunday morning show, Sunday Love Songs with Steve Wright, was very popular, featuring classics from the genre, dedications and true romance stories.
In 1999 he took on Ed “Stewpot” Stewart on the relaunched weekday afternoon slot under the title The Big Show. He was joined by his zoo staff, and a variety of Wright’s own characters, notably Mr Angry, commenting on the phone from Purley.
Like Kenny Everett, Wright had a constant obsession with radio, and he diligently watched other shows in search of ideas. In the pre-internet age he wouldn’t think of flying to New York to hole up in a hotel room for a weekend tuning in to the radio.
When he succeeded, he lived with his American wife and their two children in a house at Henley-on-Thames. But when his wife left him suddenly, Wright became known as something of a loner, sleeping during the week in a small flat around the corner from Broadcasting House and living on a meager living, despite a reported salary of over £500,000, on a diet of microwave TV dinners, mini bottles of white wine, crisps and chocolates.
Sometimes he instructed the staff to book him into the luxury hotel across the road for the night. In the office he would send a minion to queue for his rail ticket to Surrey for weekend visits to his mother, and other minions would be sent to get sandwiches and junk food from local cafes. Over the years he struggled to control his weight, which sometimes reached 18 stone.
Stephen Richard Wright was born on 26 August 1954 in Greenwich and raised in New Cross. When the family moved out to Essex, he attended Eastwood High School, near Southend-on-Sea, leaving with just three O-levels, but after working in marine insurance and as a local newspaper reporter met six ambitions to join the BBC to get a job in the gramophone library at Radio 2.
His first foray behind the microphone came in 1976 at Radio 210 in Reading (now Heart Thames Valley) alongside Mike Read on The Read and Wright Show.
After a disappointing spell at Radio Luxembourg, he joined Radio 1 in 1980, presenting a Saturday evening show, then taking the Saturday morning slot, before moving to the evening from 1981. He launched a Sunday morning show in 1984 and two years. later returned to weekdays with Steve Wright in the Evening.
The show became something of an institution, known for its madcap cast of telephone characters, but they were later dumped in favor of a “zoo” format, new to British radio, with spoof guests and comedy sketches, a “posse” of radio producers and staff participating in gambling.
As well as Mr Angry, those who played Wright on air included Gervase the hairdresser, Damian the social worker and Barry the elderly lifestyle guru from Watford, who were mostly played by actors. .
In 1994, after being persuaded by Radio 1 controller Matthew Bannister over breakfast at the Savoy, Wright and his job moved to the breakfast show. It soon became clear that the layout was not working for this time of day; Wright appeared and tended to ignore the computer-generated music playlist. With the hearing figures falling free, he feared for his own reputation and told Bannister he wanted to quit.
His evening program on Radio 2 consisted of a non-stop sequence of trivia, interviews with famous people (usually a TV or film personality, or an author plugging a new book) and various nuggets of information he preferred to call “factoids”.
Wright pre-recorded Sunday Love Songs on Fridays, which featured traditional dedications, requests for partners in same-sex and heterosexual relationships and various letters or emails from listeners, always including the mantra “Love the show, Steve”.
He announced that he was retiring from his weekday show at the age of 67 in July 2022, with Scott Mills, formerly of Radio 1, taking over the slot, then in October of that year last time he took over Pick of the Pops from Paul Gambaccini.
Wright was very unremarkable on television, but hosted Home Truths, The Steve Wright People Show (1994) and Auntie’s TV Favorites (1997), as well as Top of the Pops and the retro TOTP2 (1997-2009 ).
He was appointed an MBE for services to radio in the 2024 New Year Honours.
Steve Wright married Cyndi Robinson in 1985; they had a daughter and a son but divorced in 1999.
Steve Wright, born 26 August 1954, died 12 February 2024
