Friday, 29 Mar 2024

Stuart Maconie: As it turns out…nanny really does know best

Less than an hour later, Radio 2 re-broadcast the first episode of Maconie’s series,The People’s Songs, which tells the story of modern Britain through 50 hit records.The tune under the microscope? We’ll Meet Again. Could it be that, like so many of us, the Queen is a fan of the affable presenter’s work?

Perhaps she noticed the programme when flicking through the Radio Times, made a mental note of it and thought a mention of the song would work in her speech.

Maconie believes it was simply “sheer coincidence – pure chance that when I was writing that series I chose to start withWe’ll Meet Again”.

But another of his projects also has an unexpected resonance right now. His new book,The Nanny State Made Me, is a defence and celebration of the welfare state and public ownership. Each chapter takes a particular aspect of “big government” – the NHS, unemployment benefit, public transport, municipal parks, for example – and explains, with a mix of history, personal memoir and, occasionally, polemic what makes it so great.

Maconie wrote the book believing the welfare state to be under threat, a position many might have agreed with before coronavirus.When he submitted the manuscript to his publisher in 2019, Covid-19 had not yet been identified. But by the time the book was published last month, the world was a very different place indeed. Within days of it hitting the shelves, the Government had announced it would pay 80 percent of the wages of those not able to work during the crisis.

The State is now keeping the trains and buses running. Public parks have become treasured oases which we pray can stay open for the duration of this national emergency.

And as for the NHS; well, every week we are literally cheering on its incredible work in the Clap for Carers campaign and our applause has drowned out critics. The welfare state appears to be out of intensive care and Maconie’s arguments look remarkably prescient.

“Yes,” he acknowledges with a chuckle.

“Everyone is starting to say that we need the state more than we’ve ever needed it and that private industry can’t solve all our problems. Exactly the things I’ve been writing about it.

“The really weird thing is that in the last chapter of the book I chose to use Eyam, the Derbyshire plague village, as an example of selfless community and public service.”

In 1665, bubonic plague arrived in Eyam, carried by fleas on fabric that a tailor had ordered from London.The village voluntarily quarantined itself to stop the disease from spreading.

No one entered or left. Food was left for inhabitants by neighbouring villagers at boundary stones. But this early example of self-isolation, Maconie writes, was far from depressing “because the story it tells about humans’ capacity for selflessness and altruism is powerful and positive”.

In fact, he says, it’s exactly the sort of community spirit we are currently seeing from supermarket staff and refuse collectors and bus drivers and other sorts of workers who have perhaps not always been as celebrated as they should have been.

“I’m always wary when people say we’re going to emerge as a very different country because people have short memories but I don’t think Priti Patel will blithely be saying anyone who earns less than £25k is not skilled any more,” he says. “I think that might disappear for a few years from political discourse.

“I think this crisis will make people realise what’s important and what’s not. I think our slavish admiration of ‘the entrepreneur’, which bugs me all the time – Dragons’ Den, The Apprentice and all of that – won’t look very good. I think we’ll recalibrate our views about who the most useful members of society are.A nurse, for example, is a lot more useful than Alan Sugar.”

He describes himself politically as “that most dreaded of things, a centrist. I’m a centre-left person. In this country, most of us used to be either moderately left-wing or moderately right-wing. I like that phrase that Billy Bragg used, ‘the progressive patriot’. I think it was George Orwell who said you can see some people on the left are motivated by a loathing of Britain and what it stands for. That’s not me. I love this country.”

Maconie, 58, lives in Birmingham with his wife Eleanor, a special needs education consultant. He is probably best-known as a radio presenter, having worked his way through all of the numbers of the BBC’s national radio stations, presenting shows or one-offs on Radios 1 to 6. “I’ve lost more gigs and shows than I care to mention,” he quips. He currently has two regular berths on Radio 6 Music. On weekend mornings he co-presents Radcliffe and Maconie with Mark Radcliffe, an amiable mix of music and meandering chat. And in Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone, on Sunday evenings, he explores the stranger shores of experimental music.

“Somewhat hilariously, given that my job involves going on the radio and playing pop records and talking about eating crisps, I’ve been declared an essential worker,” he says.

“I’m weirdly proud.They also serve who just chat about records.We’ve had a lot of feedback from listeners who say they really love that we’re just doing the normal things and that it’s making them feel more normal.

“And the management – who sometimes I give a bit of flak to – have told us that we’re fulfilling a vital public role.You can almost hear the stirring music swelling in the background when we have meetings.”

In addition, Radio 2 is repeating his 2013 series The People’s Songs, the show of which he says he is most proud. Episodes are available on BBC Sounds. And from May, he will also be hosting a new Radio 4 quiz, My Generation, about culture, politics, sport. His first writing job was at the music paper, the NME, where, in the early 1990s, he wrote a spoof trivia column called Believe It Or Not for which he invented a series of “facts” that endure to this day as oft-repeated urban myths: David Bowie invented Connect 4; The Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant is a fully-qualified rugby league referee and, the greatest of them all, Blockbusters host Bob Holness played the saxophone solo on Gerry Rafferty’s classic song Baker Street.

He’s a prolific and witty author and has written books about music, the North (he is from Wigan) and his love of walking. He’s president of walkers’ organisation, The Ramblers, and is out trekking when we speak on the phone. “‘I’m in the woods near my house,” he says. “I am getting out most days for a walk. I can’t understand why the Government is reluctant to tell people they mustn’t go for a walk. Just getting some fresh air on your face is important.” Under normal circumstances he spends as much time as he can fell-walking in the Lake District. When the crisis is over, he won’t be heading to Cumbria for his first big outing. He says his favourite walk is at the northernmost limit of Britain.

“I’m besotted with Shetland.There’s a walk called the Ness of Hillswick circuit – it’s wild and spectacular and that’s the one I want to do. I say that feeling terribly guilty about the Lake District.”

Another big difference the lockdown has brought to his life is in his reading habits.

“Anthony Beevor’s monumental The Second World War is finally getting read, having been glaring at me disapprovingly from the bookshelf for two years,” he says. “And next it’s going to be Mark Lewisohn’s massive book on The Beatles.”

Meanwhile, a growing number of people are reading and talking about his own book. What message does he want them to take from it? “I really hope readers will come away with the idea that everyone pulling together – like they are now – is a very good thing.”

· The Nanny State Made Me: A Story Of Britain And How To Save It by Stuart Maconie (Ebury, £20) is out now. For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or expressbookshop.co.uk Delivery may take in excess of 28 days due to coronavirus.

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