It is rare that a radio programme leaves the listener wishing it had come with pictures, but next week Jo Whiley is giving us one.
The radio rock chick’s rock chick is taking her Live Lounge on the road (Radio 1, Monday to Friday, 10am), knocking on famous doors and asking the occupants whether she can set up the broadcasting equipment for a little impromptu balladeering. And we don’t get to see what those A-list lounges look like. How frustrating.
On Monday Whiley and her coyotes are going to be down with Lily Allen on her houseboat moored on the Thames at Bermondsey. Now anyone who has done their research — ie, read the tabloids — will know that Lily Allen is a woman whose pad might be so dishevelled that even Pete Doherty would wrinkle his nose in fastidious disdain — but we won’t be able to check it out for ourselves, will we? Perhaps the front room, chez Allen, is a vision of polished brassware.
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On Tuesday Whiley visits the former Brighton residents the Kooks, now in London, while on Wednesday she’s off to Brighton itself for the Heat gig of the week. This is where Preston of the Ordinary Boys and his lovely lady wife Chantelle of Celebrity Big Brother have set up home. An Essex girl in the heart of boho Sussex, and we can’t see what she has on the wall, or what the well-read Preston has, well, read.
Will yet another Brighton resident and BB alumnus, Pete — also a musician, similarly bereft of half a name — pop in to duet with Preston? And if he makes his usual tumbling entrance through the door, how will it play in sound only? On Thursday everyone’s off to Pontypridd for a session with the Lostprophets in the front room of Ian Watkins, the lead singer. And Friday’s show? That’s a bit of a mystery, a broadcast from the lounge of a surprise “megastar guest”. Who can it be?