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ON THE ROPES (4)
But are you saying that even when you were doing - and it's
a silly word to use in this context - but the more respectable
or mainstream end of broadcasting, the Radio Five Live…………
I disagree with you there you see……
Wait for the question. That even when you were doing something
like that, which obviously has a nation-wide audience and
has the BBC as it were behind it and the BBC obviously has
certain standards to uphold.
Certainly, yeah…..
...........for perfectly good reasons and you're on a programme
like that, behaving in what many people regarded and still
do as in a irresponsible way. Are you saying that it never
occurred to you that perhaps you were going too far?
No
……..and it was the rest that have to come into
step with you?
All right, say if you take the show I was actually fired
for, ah….
Let's just remind listeners what that was all about.
Well extensively and again in capital letters, it was because…..
it's become anyway, the idea that it was a Chelsea Leicester
game which, it's sounds so dopey talking about it after the
event, but sports shouldn't be like that, you can't talk about
football dispassionately. It is this big passionate thing
and you can't put a lid on it and you can't be fair. I never
wanted to do that, it should always be a broadside, never
a forum and I just thought the referee had incited crowd violence;
I thought he had incited it and I just thought it had gone…….with
the backing of the BBC by their coverage. They'd gone too
far…
But then you went too far by inciting the audience…..
I said if I had his address, I would give it out and if people
went…..What I said….Hopefully I'm not an idiot and
I know how to pick my way through……I know what good
radio is and I thought, this is great! This is really good.
Believe me, it's sounds awfully phoney, but I knew it was
really good radio. The lines were going crazy for and against.
This wasn't a groundswell, it doesn't need a groundswell to
get you out. But the lines were going…….I thought
this was great radio and what I said was and you can play
it back in as rough language as you like, but what I'm saying
is, 'cause I know what is legally, remember I didn't libel,
I didn't incite anything, but what I said was, "If a
crowd gathered outside his house tonight, you would only have
yourself to blame Mr. Reed, because I believe these people
have taken, we've gone past the era; football is too big and
too dangerous now, to have one individual, an erstwhile van
driver from Yarmouth, to deal with those emotions and if people
turned up at your house and began stoning it, I would have
to say, you've brought that on yourself…."
Well, that's going very close isn't it, to encouraging people
or at least inciting…
No! Because if anyone had. I've had people say, you told
'em to go round. Nobody would. You have to know football supporters,
you gotta trust football supporters. They don't do that. They
don't do that! Now you can say, football supporters, they've
done this, but football supporters don't, they don't listen
to radio and say quick….It's not Frankenstein, they're
not all going to light torches and all be round the referee's
house. It wasn't also as direct as that. I didn't say, Oh,
let's go and stone the referee's house. It fits the headline
to say that's what was happening, but anyone who's heard the
shows and knows how I am…that was a perfectly legitimate
view which I'll stand by. I would do that again. If I'm ever
given the opportunity, I would do that kind of radio again,
that's great! To me that's great radio.
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