BBC bosses ‘tried to offer Steve Wright his Radio 2 slot back’ weeks before he died after axing his show
Steve was shocked and confused when his show was brought to an end
THE BBC tried to lure Steve Wright back to Radio 2 just days before he died, a close friend has claimed.
Mark Wells alleged station bosses begged Wright, who died last week after 69, to return to his afternoon slot full-time, however, the BBC has denied this is the case.
The TV executive, who had been pals with the legendary DJ since the Nineties, told the Behind The Scenes with Colin Edmonds podcast: “This is absolutely the truth, and the BBC will deny this.
“But this is what Steve said to me last Friday (9/2 in this instance)
“He said you’ll never guess what happened this week. He said ‘I got a call from Radio 2, and they very quietly asked me how I would feel about going back to do afternoons.’
“I said ‘Oh my God, what do you think of that?’
“Well, he thought he was funny as well. And he said, ‘I don’t know whether you should ever go back in life though, do you?’
“And then we talked about something else and moved on.”
However, a spokesman for the BBC explained that further shows on Radio 2 were never proposed.
They told us: “This isn’t right. We spoke to Steve alongside other presenters about our plans for the new Radio 2 DAB+ extension, which we announced last week, including simulcasting his Sunday Love Songs on the station and agreed to discuss further content ideas in due course. There was no mention of afternoons or Radio 2.”
In September 2022 bosses handed the afternoon slot to Scott Mills, leaving Steve with just his Sunday Love Songs programme.
He personally thanked Wells, who was former head of programming at ITV, during his final broadcast.
Discussing the impact of his cull, Wells said: “Steve was extremely surprised that it happened.
“It came as a bolt from the blue and that’s why he couldn’t understand it.
“He felt that the show was still extremely popular and there was no drop in the number of listeners he was reaching.
“He felt creatively and editorially, and from a production point of view, the show was still hot.
“He was still working as well as ever on the show – the show felt as good as it ever felt.
“So he couldn’t rationalise why suddenly there was this desire to make any change.”
He added: “I think Steve was just shocked in the way it was handled, which I think was brutal, but he was determined publicly to appear very stoical about it, which is why he said what he said at the time, ‘Sometimes they want you, sometimes they don’t’.
“Steve loved and hated the BBC and equal measure is the truth of it.
“He loved the organisation and what it stood for.
“He hated the bureaucracy and nonsense he had to put up with – the interfering.
“The things he would get most irate about were things that were standing in the way of him doing his job.
“He tried hard to have good relationships with management, but at the same time, he was doing the show on his terms, and if they didn’t like it, that was their problem, because he wasn’t doing it for them.
“He was doing it for the listeners.”
Wells added: “He worked very hard on maintaining a good relationship with the current Radio 2 management, despite the way he had been treated.”
Radio host Paul Gambaccini revealed last week that he had also recently spoken with Wright about a new offer from the Beeb.
On Wednesday, Paul told This Morning: ““I was due to talk to him tomorrow because of the subject of the new BBC radio stations they were producing and we were the only two people mentioned in the news release.”
Wells continued on the podcast, which aired on Saturday: “Obviously, every major radio group in the country were on to him, offering huge amounts of money.
“We talked about each of the offers he got in tremendous detail.
“In the end, Steve chose to stay with the BBC.
“I said to him, ‘Why, after the way you’ve been treated, why would you do that?’
“He said, ‘If I go to commercial radio, they want the idea of Steve Wright, they’ll want to say they’ve got Steve Wright, they want the listeners that Steve Wright can pull in. But I don’t know whether they’d give me the freedom to make the show I want to make – I don’t know whether they’d let me choose my own records.’”
In the wide-ranging tribute, Wells also opened up on Steve’s health battles, including his heart bypass surgery.
Wells said: “He told me that he had a heart operation after he finished Steve Wright in the Afternoon on Radio 2, which had gone well.
“I think he was more ill than he was letting on. The recovery from that had gone pretty well.
“Obviously, the events of the last couple of days would suggest that was probably what came for him in the end.”
