Read Online Disgusting Bliss by Lucian Randall - Free Book Online

wasn’t the comfort blanket the listeners were used to. At first his mates called in for the competitions until the show established a fan base.
    Morris might not have been playing in bands any more, but he diverted his undimmed passion for music into the records he played on the show. He delighted in discovering new music, was a regular gig-goer and gave mix tapes to friends. ‘His musical knowledge is phenomenal,’ says Nick Barraclough, who received a number of those tapes, ‘and [he] has a completely catholic taste. Absolutely open to anything.’ Morris shared his passions with the audience. Favourites included Nirvana and the Pixies and They Might Be Giants. While chart hits constituted much of the playlist, he had an instinct for the popular over the populist, though Matt Sica remembers being introduced to Michael Nyman’s Belly of an Architect and Philip Glass’s music for Koyaanisqatsi . ‘He used to play that in the office as well. He really liked the repetitiveness and the polyrhythms . . . Things like that would get played. For me, it was bizarre stuff for the radio.’
    No Known Cure could also be a vehicle to develop parodies of broadcasting clichés, but the heart of the programme was essentially a really good DJ show. Morris gave formulaic features, from competitions to interviews, an imaginative and subversive tweak. Rather than being asked to call in, listeners were expected to be ‘bothering’ the phones. All the features of a traditional DJ show were there, but each given an emphasis that conveyed the futility of the existence of the local broadcaster and the show itself. It was conspiratorial, drawing the listener in as if they had to make the best of the dross with him. He read out letters and dedications reluctantly, with palpable disdain and affected horror should a caller be gauche enough to sound happy to be talking to him. It looked just as extraordinary as it sounded if you happened to be in the studio with him. ‘It was completely new to me to see someone doing radio like that,’ says Matt. ‘You’re seeing somebody perform, doing something that is, in effect, verbal mime. Morris’s energy was quite outstanding.’ His jingles lurched tipsily, he dropped snatches of amusing vocal samples on to records or faded himself in playing along on a synth like a demented five-year-old. ‘You weren’t sure if he’d lost it! Or whether he was being funny ’cos it looked so odd. You’re only listening to one thing, but watching it – it was a mixture. You couldn’t quite believe what you were seeing, so you didn’t bother listening to it, ’cos it was more fun to watch it.’
    When the show went out on Fridays, Matt Sica recalls, ‘I had a particular job of going to the office where Morris worked in the daytimes, to record on cassette Week Ending , and that had to be religiously done. To go up, and sit and wait. All the other jobs downstairs were put aside, because I had to wait for the cassette to finish, turn it round and put it back in the player as quickly as possible . . . I think it fitted in to the genre of show that we were doing for a while. Whether or not it gave Morris ideas, or inspired him for ideas, I don’t know. It was more than a passion of just listening to Week Ending ’cos of being on while he was on air.’
    There were guests on the show, and some interviewees came from a comedy club that had opened in Bristol, Julian Clary and Jerry Sadowitz among the disparate bunch. ‘I don’t know if I went to see Les Bubb first, or Les Bubb came to see us,’ says Matt Sica, ‘but somehow I came across Les Bubb – and then he became associated with the show. Arthur Smith also became sort of “Listen to this – this guy’s funny” and strange poet Ivor Cutler.’
    In later years, Peter Fincham, the executive producer of many of Morris’s TV shows, would say that Morris’s humour came from working alone in the studio rather than honing a stand-up act himself in front