FEATURE:
Station to Station
PHOTO CREDIT: BBC Radio 6 Music
Part Thirteen: Craig Charles (BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 2)
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FOR a Station to Station feature…
PHOTO CREDIT: Channel 5
I spotlight a terrific broadcaster who is among the most influential out there. I focus on British radio talent, as I do not listen to too much international radio. In most of the people I include, there is so much more to the bow than radio. That is especially true of Craig Charles. An actor, comedian, D.J., journalist and all-round hero, Charles is one of my favourite broadcasters. I will bring in some interviews soon enough. Before getting to that, here is a little bit of biography regarding Craig Charles:
“As well as his early appearances on shows such as Radio 4's Loose Ends (1987–88), and Kaleidoscope, in the early 1990s, Charles could be heard on the London Radio Station Kiss 100 (Kiss FM) as the Breakfast show presenter. In 1995, Charles played the Porter in Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, on Radio 4.
Since 2002, Charles has been a DJ on BBC Radio 6 Music presenting The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show, on air on Saturday evenings 6pm to 9pm, where he plays a diverse range of funk and soul music, from classic tracks to the latest releases, and provides publicity for less familiar bands. Charles explains the context for the music and carries out interviews with guest musicians. He was with the station at its launch, and while it was being tested during the previous year, under the name Network Y. Charles has also hosted the station's Breakfast Show (2004), and sits in for other presenters including Andrew Collins, Phil Wilding and Phill Jupitus and Radcliffe & Maconie.
From January until November 2014, Charles also broadcast the Funk and Soul Show live on BBC Radio 2, immediately after his 6 Music show. He regularly sits in for Janice Long, Steve Wright and Jo Whiley, and has presented numerous programmes on the station, including The Craig Charles Soul All-Nighter (2011), which he hosted continuously for 12 hours, and the Beatleland (2012) documentary on The Beatles. Charles has also chosen music as a guest of other broadcasters such as Ken Bruce on Radio 2 and Liz Kershaw on 6 Music. Charles covered for Graham Norton on Radio 2's Saturday mid-morning show during Norton's 10-week 2015 summer break. From 16 April 2016, Charles presents the House Party on Saturday nights on BBC Radio 2, with the show airing between 10pm and midnight. For eight weeks from April–June 2020, he also presented Craig Charles At Teatime between 4pm and 7pm on weekdays on Radio 6 Music. The show was sometimes billed as Craig Charles Weekend Workout on Fridays”.
I listen to The Craig Charles House Party on BBC Radio 2 and The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show on BBC Radio 6 Music. Charles is so effusive, passionate and joyous to listen to! He has so much love and commitment to music - and he really wants people to hear the tunes he spins. I hope that we hear Charles on the airwaves for decades more. He is a tremendous talent who is warm, witty and cheeky!
I think it is important to source some interviews so that one can discover more about Charles. In 2015, The Guardian sat down with him. We learn more about his upbringing and career:
“Son to an Irish mum and West Indian dad, he grew up on the Cantril Farm estate in Liverpool with “a thousand white families and us. We couldn’t help but stand out. Liverpool was quite a racist place in the late 60s.”
His CV is full of relative oddities, too; TV and radio gigs you might suspect would be interesting niche items or straight-up flops, that have gone on to be huge hits. Robot Wars, in which Charles enthused wildly about wonky homemade robots blowing each other up, became one of the biggest shows on BBC2 at the time. Takeshi’s Castle, in which Charles enthused wildly (you might spot a theme here) about Japanese gameshow contestants diving headfirst into rocks, was a huge cult hit. The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show on 6 Music now boasts 250,000 listeners, making it one of the most popular shows on the station. Even Red Dwarf, the show that made Charles’s name as Lister, the last human in the universe, was hardly a mainstream proposition; everyone said sci-fi and comedy couldn’t mix. It broke ground in other ways too, being one of the first TV shows to feature black characters who didn’t discuss race. “We’ve done it for 30 years nearly and the colour of our skin hasn’t been mentioned once,” says Charles. “Black comics will talk about being black, and I think that’s important to their comedy. But we tried to take it out of that racial lineage. Kind of the opposite of Richard Pryor when he said – and I’ll clean this up for you – ‘Anyone seen that new show set in space? Logan’s Run? Ain’t no blacks in it … someone’s planning on us not being around!’”
As a teenager, Charles displayed a gift for spoken word – another way to make himself stand out in working-class Liverpool, and he used his quick wordplay to talk himself out of sticky situations – “Making people laugh and charming them,” as he puts it, which is basically what his job title is these days. Buoyed by a rising punk poetry movement that included the likes of John Cooper Clarke and Attila the Stockbroker, he began to make a name for himself on the burgeoning Liverpool alternative scene.
It was an exciting time, with many Scouse bands – the Teardrop Explodes, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Echo and the Bunnymen – making inroads into the mainstream. Charles was originally in bands himself: his group were due to play at the Temple club one night when it got cancelled because Teardrop Explodes needed it for a four-night homecoming gig. He was so pissed off, he leapt up on stage before the band was due on and recited a poem about their singer Julian Cope. It’s a poem he can still rattle off in full now, and he does so at manic speed, ending with a flourish: “Ladies and gentlemen, the Teardrop Explodes!”.
I can well imagine a film or documentary about Craig Charles’ life, as he has been through so much and there have been so many phases. It would make for a compelling and inspiring story. Beloved by so many people, he makes for truly essential listening. I have discovered so much different music listening to him. It is like an education hearing Craig Charles on the radio!
Before coming to another quite big interview, there was a nice interview that YorkMix conducted in 2015. Among other things, Charles discussed his phenomenal then-new compilation, Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club Volume 2:
“When did you fall in love with funk and soul?
I suppose it was when my dad came over to England in the late Fifties, kinda with a bagful of records and a pocketful of change. I spent my whole childhood listening to people like Ray Charles, Louis Franklin, Otis Redding and Nat King Cole, that kinda stuff, so I guess I got into it at a dead early age.
Then in the early Nineties when Kiss FM became a legal radio station I hosted the breakfast show there and started to build up my record collection.
Then of course the BBC 6 Music show [Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show] started about 12 years ago, and it’s been going ever since.
Tell us about your new compilation album.
It’s called the Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club Volume 2. It’s doing really well I’m pleased to say! I’m really proud of the music that’s on it, it’s 18 pure party starters. What we tried to do with the album is recreate the feeling you get when you’re in the club, and I think that came across.
It’s great putting the compilations together. It’s not a history lesson – although the radio show’s rooted in the golden era of black American music from 1960 to the 1970s, a lot of the music I’ve chosen is the European response to that music.
So it’s bands that are recording now, touring now, performing now, like Cookin’ On Three Burners, The Bamboos, Take Five, The Excitements, bands from all over really”.
Prior to coming to a recent interview Charles did with The Guardian, there was a quick-fire one from Vice that was published in 2017. Whilst I prefer a deeper interview, I do like what gems are offered up when slightly random questions are posed:
“What would your specialist subject on Mastermind be?
Funk and soul. But like, it's such a big genre, so you'd have to trim it down. Specialise in a kind of soul, like northern soul, you know.
What's the best fact you know about funk?
I know so much. I'm not an expert, but I know a few things. I think someone did a Mastermind about Red Dwarf. We did a special called Universe Challenge, where we had four fans against four members of the cast, and they battered us. They knew what time it was on a clock in the middle of a scene. How shit must our acting be if they're looking at a clock at the back of a wall?
What would your parents have preferred you to choose as a career?
They wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or some profession. When I told them I was going to be a poet, you wouldn't have wanted to witness that conversation. "I'm going to be a poet, mum!"; "Get the fuck out of here." They wanted me to go into a profession, lawyering or doctoring or something like that. They didn't want me to be a showman”.
I will wrap up soon. Whilst the pandemic has been tough for everyone, I think a passionate D.J. like Crag Charles has felt the pinch! He would have loved to have played festivals and gigs, but there has not been the availability and opportunity this year. Last year, he was interviewed by The Guardian. There are a lot of really interesting segments from the interview. I have selected those which caught my eye:
“He cites as an example Curtis Mayfield’s Pusherman, which includes the N-word in the lyrics. “I played it at a 6 Music live event, and then when it went on to the BBC Sounds app there was a warning saying some people might find this offensive.”
Charles is baffled by the culture wars – and cancel culture. Is it tough as a comic to be told what you can and can’t make jokes about? “Sometimes I feel I don’t want to stick my head above the parapet,” he says. Isn’t it dangerous if somebody like him becomes scared of saying what he thinks? He smiles. “Simon, I’ve been scared to say what I think since I was born.”
He’s not joking. And this is what makes Charles fascinating – so outspoken in some ways, cautious in others. “You choose your battles and choose them wisely,” he says.
A moment later, he’s talking about Black Lives Matter, and he’s certainly not holding back. “I don’t mind take the knee, but they are just gestures, and I’m not that big on gestures. Once you’ve finished gesturing, you need to do something about it.” Take casting, he says – there’s plenty to be done. “We need people in positions of power to turn round and say, when you’re reading the script, stop thinking in white and black. Most parts can be played by a white woman or black woman, a white man or black man. Stop thinking of Caucasian actors. And especially these days posh, Caucasian actors. I think it’s very difficult for working-class actors and performers to get a foot in today on telly. It’s all just posh bastards. D’you know what I mean? It really is.”
Charles is still not done with worrying. He fears that live music may never return to what it was. “I’m taking bookings for next summer, but I’m doing it fairly halfheartedly because I don’t think people are going to be comfortable enough to go partying and raving and mingling all those body juices in a nightclub or at a festival any time soon. I think it’s going to take a long time.”
As for his biggest ambition, that’s simple, he says. “I suppose it’s a slog trying to stay relevant. I just want to be relevant, you know. I don’t want to be a footnote. I’m more tired, I’m saggier, and this is a young man’s game. You’ve got young thrusting bucks who want my job, and they’re probably cheaper than me. So it’s a struggle to just stay on point, and you gotta fight for your right to party.” And now the smile is back on his face, and he’s singing. “The Beastie Boys were never wrong,” he says”.
I really love Craig Charles and make an appointment to listen to his radio shows as much as I can. Even though Charles wants to stay relevant and has a lot of competition, there is something he offers that very few others do. His combination of deep knowledge and a truly addictive personality (one full of verve, humour and delight) are the reasons why he has remained so popular. The magnificent Craig Charles is…
NOT going anywhere anytime soon!