Posse member David Easter (later of NME Thrills and, um, Z Magazine on R1) wrote a lot of them. Phil Cornwell dod some voices - Billy & Dave etc.

I have fond memories of the show, actually. SW is easy to sneer at, especially with his TOTP2 twattery, but I always found him quite likeable.

>I have fond memories of the show, actually. SW is easy to sneer at, especially with his TOTP2 twattery, but I always found him quite likeable.

God, I knew this would happen. I hated Wright, but I was heavily under the influence of Morrissey at the time. I've never been a fan of zoo radio. I think it makes yer DJ's job too easy to have paid-for acolytes in the studio. That doesn't necessarily mean it makes for worse entertainment, but I like my DJs to have it hard.

And I didn't think it was funny.

One day, Mike, we will reach a common ground.

Give me Wright over the hair-gelled Theakstonites clogging up R1 these days. You could hate him, but at least you knew *what* you were hating.

>Give me Wright over the hair-gelled Theakstonites clogging up R1 these days. You could hate him, but at least you knew *what* you were hating.

Well, I agree with the first point. It's just struck me how little I *do* listen to R1 these days. Wasn't it ever thus, though?

The second point sounds a bit like the same thing they say about Thatcher.

Where's Ben Elton when you need him? Fucking hell, where's this generation's Ben Elton?

I liked the John Cole impression, who always called him "Dave Lee Right."

Richard Easter. David Easter is in Family Affairs on - hey! - Channel 5. Richard Easter now does linking material for shows like You've Been Framed.

I do recall Wright starting to play some sketch before stopping it and saying "I'm not playing that because it's actionable". Huzzah!

The Gary Davies quads were my favourite. A very very accurate impersonation of The Tanned One.

In the Vox interview Andrew Collins conducted with Rob Newman in 1990, he claimed that Newman had been involved in material for Steve Wright's show. Not sure if this was writing or performing or both. Can this have been true? Have I remembered this properly?

Wasn't Coogan involved in some of the shows in the late eighties? I thought he did the Jagger and Bowie stuff.

It did seem to be a funny and inventive show in those days. Even the "another true story" slots were good with a healthy mixture of "true" stories (that had been in the papers that week) combined with some that must have been false. So you never quite knew where you were with them.

I read somewhere that Wright was obsessive about pre-recording everything and went to great lengths to reduce live material to a minimum. The items with the posse sounded different to the zoo format as used by Simon Mayo in the Breakfast Show and Chris Evans on GLR a couple of years later. I assumed this was because the Wright show posse were pre-recorded and heavily scripted.

>Wasn't Coogan involved in some of the shows in the late eighties? I thought he did the Jagger and Bowie stuff.

Phil Cornwell - still doing those very same impressions to this day, Stella Street-wise.

>It did seem to be a funny and inventive show in those days. Even the "another true story"

Now that was a good jingle. Another trooo storeeeeeeeee!

And there were those characters who always said things like "spatchlia" and "ambliance" instead of spatula and ambulance. And not forgetting the classic "I'll Be Back", which is one of the great comedy songs.

Although what were they thinking with that enviromental b-side?

"If it is now after 3pm and you have your studio booked, switch on Radio One and listen to 'Steve Wright In The Afternoon'. Viewed from a certain angle the man is a genius. Find that angle and view. He is the most popular DJ in the country. He has been the heartbeat of the British psyche since 1985. You don't even have to like him to be awed by him.

"This above paragraph is not an attempt at obvious irony, it is for real. If you can't find that angle, then I am afraid you have wasted your money in buying this manual."

-- Bill Drummond, "The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way)", 1988

>The Gary Davies quads were my favourite. A very very accurate impersonation of The Tanned One.

Yes! - and, long before Smashie and Nicie, seemed to be an impression tinged with enormous disdain...

A friend once told me they knew Mr Angry. He was just a man who worked in an engineering plant of some kind, had met Steve Wright at a roadshow and impressed him with his comic characters, and phoned in his contributions during his lunch breaks. Can that be right?

A friend of mine who worked at BBC Radio in East Anglia a few years ago said he was working as an engineer for the BBC. I think that's right.