The Life Of Whiley
Jo Whiley talks to Stuart Clark about her crusade to make TV safe again for rock 'n' roll, and why she's pretty sure Bono was joking when he called Chris Martin "a wanker"!
Stuart Clark, 18 Nov 2011
It’s official: Jo Wiley is the hardest woman in rock ‘n’ roll to get through to on the phone.
After three days of busy signals, BT message boxes and strange static noises I finally get hold of the 46 year-old on her way home from recording the latest installment in her new Sky Arts music series.
“I’m so sorry – it’s just been mad these past few days – well, past few months –putting the show together,” she apologises. “No matter how much advance planning you do, there’s always somebody pulling out at the last minute or a guest becoming available that you’ve done no research on. It’s going really well though.”
That it is. Airing every Friday at 10pm, The Jo Whiley Music Show is based on the revolutionary premise of – get this – asking musicians questions and not editing the answers down to vacuous sound bites á la MbleedingTV.
“It is pretty revolutionary these days,” laughs the mother of four. “There was a period on (BBC) Radio One where you couldn’t go longer than four minutes in an interview without playing a record in case the listeners got bored – as you say, we were just getting tiny sound bites, which is such a waste of the good guests that, being the national music station, we always got.
“It’s so exciting to be part of something where we’re actually discussing music instead of just showing back-to-back videos or just having performances. I love hearing people’s opinions and stories.”
It’s not only the quality but also the combination of guests, which make The Jo Whiley Music Show such essential viewing.
“It’s great when you’ve got three people on the sofa with you who won’t shut up!” she laughs. “Noel Gallagher, Julian Lennon and Ricky Wilson were like that; so were Nicky Wire, Professor Green and Will Young who was incredibly candid for an X Factor-y sort of person and we’ve just done a brilliant show with Jake Shears, Suggs from Madness and Ms. Dynamite. You had Jake telling this story about first discovering Massive Attack in a very dark and sordid place while Suggs sat there enthralled, his jaw hitting the floor. Then we discovered that Suggs had judged a talent show, which Ms. Dynamite won when she was only 14. None of us knew this, it was just a happy accident of having them both on the show.”
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