Can there really have been a time when I thought Noel Edmonds was funny? There must have been because, like a large chunk of the English nation in the 1970s, I was an keen listener of his breakfast show on Radio One which drew in a massive 12 million pairs of ears a week between 1973 and 1978. Back then there was little or no alternative to BBC Radio – even London didn’t get it’s own independent radio station until 1973 when Capital Radio went on the air – but I don’t remember ever feeling particularly deprived because we only had Radio One. Even when I got old enough to realize that Noel, Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and the rest were a bunch of twerps with bad taste, there was Kid Jensen and John Peel in the evening to keep me happy. Now we are less a nation together than a collection of different tastes and interests.

Harry Chapin’s “W.O.L.D” only made the UK top 40 in 1974 and I don’t know how much airplay it got at the time. Noel must have played it though, not just because it fit in with his Elton John/Gerry Rafferty-ish soft rock tastes but how could he resist a song written about his job? Chapin is better known for the dreadful “Cats In The Cradle” but this is a much, much better record. It’s about an itinerant disc jockey having a midlife crisis and trying to get back together with his ex-wife. Though it’s a tad maudlin the production is big and clever enough (I love the mock radio jingle touches) to turn this melancholy little tale into something epic and brilliant.

Noel has been through a lot of personal ups and downs himself but got through them by being “Positively Happy.” Not by being a smarmy twat then.

Download: W.O.L.D – Harry Chapin (mp3)