Listen to clips of artists performing on the latest series of Later with Jools Holland at the bottom of this story

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The cake has been sitting all day in the middle of Studio 1 at BBC Television Centre. But only ten minutes before the 200th episode of Later with Jools Holland is due to be recorded does someone realise that lighting 200 candles - and keeping them lit while the studio audience sings Happy Birthday - is easier said than done. The urbane ringmaster of terrestrial music television doesn't fancy his chances of blowing them out either, at least not without singeing his trademark dapper suit.

Fire extinguishers are mentioned before someone authorised to pronounce on these things decides that “it would be too dangerous”. Top rock combo Radiohead confer in a manner that suggests they didn't get to where they are today without learning a thing or two about health and safety. Soul diva Mary J. Blige, obviously nonplussed by the drama, walks over to Holland - with whom she appears to be very friendly - and engages him in intense conversation. Meanwhile, in the far corner, two poster girls of alternative America - Cat Power and Leslie Feist - guffaw long and hard at something on Feist's phone.

In the end, we may never know how the 200 candles on the Later cake were lit, but halfway through filming the glowing papier-mâché item is wheeled on. Having turned 50 himself this week, Holland's fuzzy logic decrees that this makes Later “250 years old, ladies and gentlemen”.

In TV terms, 250 years old is about right. For on-screen hours, only the late Top of the Pops surpasses Later for music TV longevity. Even more unusually, it's a milestone achieved with minimal tinkering of format. Take a look now at that first episode, broadcast in 1992, and the only obvious difference is the lack of an audience - suggesting that even as late as the Nineties a “serious” music show might have considered itself above the freighted-in levity of clapping punters. Perhaps it's just as well. With a line-up featuring the Christians, Nu-Colours and D-Influence, even an invited audience of starving seals would have been hard pushed to applaud their way through the maiden Later.

At the time, it seemed an anachronistic idea. The cavernous studio and the emphasis on “real” music implied an attempt to bring back The Old Grey Whistle Test by stealth. Fifteen years on, when Mark Cooper, Later's original producer and now the BBC's creative head of musical entertainment, suggests it might have been ahead of its time, he may have a point. “Music became less consensus-based, didn't it?” he says. “People's tastes have diversified. It's no longer unusual to simultaneously profess an affection for Orchestre Baobab, Kano and Duffy - and that suits Later's values.”

Asked to sum up those values, Cooper tells a story by way of illustration. When Babyshambles failed to show up during the most recent series, eleventh-hour salvation came in the form of James Blunt and his band. I suggest that the impact of Blunt's arrival an hour before the recording must have been faintly reminiscent of the time the former - as he was then - Captain Blount led his troops into Pristina.

“Well, exactly. It was worth it for all the 'Here come the cavalry' gags,” says Cooper. “But he won a lot of friends that day. Jools asked him if he had anything to say to Pete Doherty, and he just said: 'Thank you' - which was rather humble. More to the point, he did 1973, and he did it really well.

“And so, going back to values, it might simply be that good songs and performances are given the platform to shine, regardless of what preconceptions people might have about the performer. James helped us out, of course, but I think he also needed what Later could give him: an even playing field."

It works the other way too, of course. When a duff band appears on Later their duffness is laid bare for the whole world to see. Who can forget - or rather, who can remember - the arrival of indie-glam folly Gay Dad? “My idea,” concedes the current producer, Alison Howe. “I loved them at the time.”

Gallantly coming to her rescue, Cooper says: “There should be an element of what's happening in the world that week. You need to take those chances because, just as often - as with Battles or Foals, say - they spark something memorable.”

Of those there have been no shortage. An inspired Later performance is worth more than a hundred Sunday supplement features - a fact of which the teen-pop combo McFly seem acutely aware. Interviewed in these pages a few months ago, the group's co-frontman Danny Jones bemoaned the show's reluctance to book his band. “I even went up to Jools Holland's daughter and asked her to try to get us on,” he complained, “but it hasn't happened.”

So now I'm trying on their behalf. If there's one aversion that Later does seem to harbour - and this probably also accounts for the absence of Girls Aloud and Sugababes' signatures from the guest book - it's towards mainstream pop. Cooper and Howe aren't overwhelmed with sympathy for the “victims”.

“McFly courted a demographic,” says Cooper, “and the price they pay for that is that people don't necessarily perceive them as musicians. Also it's about timing. There may be a point at which to surprise people with McFly. But perhaps not now.”

Even if he is being harsh to McFly, his point about timing is supported by several unforgettable examples. In 1993 Paul Weller's thundering detonation of Sunflower effectively heralded his creative rebirth. Last summer, sandwiched between Paul McCartney and Björk, the unknown Adele - who, incidentally, was three when the show first aired - delivered an exquisite Daydreamer. Such was the instant ubiquity of that performance that a recent Observer review of her album claimed that “Jools Holland has virtually adopted her”. And yet the extent of her involvement in the show was just one song in one broadcast.

In the wake of Later, other shows have attempted to show music “in the raw”, but none has trumped Later's USP - that while one artist plays the others stand and watch until it's their turn. So much, then, for the widely held view that - with the erosion of tribal loyalties - music has lost the potential to spark conflict. That may be so in the wider world, but in White City a recording of Later is often a cauldron of barely suppressed rivalries. And it's all down to what Cooper refers to as the show's “gladiatorial” set-up.

For Howe the competitive element is the key. “The second time the Killers came on it was fascinating. There was a new band in the room - I think it was Air Traffic - and [the Killers frontman] Brandon Flowers was very much: ‘Who are these people, and are they going to steal our thunder?'”

Such moments of truth can be poignant. The previous time I turned up to a filming of Later also happened to be the previous time that Radiohead were on, alongside Zwan, Billy Corgan's short-lived post-Smashing Pumpkins group. Radiohead opened with There There. After Thom Yorke steered the song to a marauding, magnificent conclusion, the cameras swung round to Corgan's band - all of whom appeared to be willing the ground to swallow them up.

In the make-up room half an hour before this week's show begins, Yorke laughs off the notion that he may have helped inadvertently to trigger the demise of Zwan. “The format is designed to do that to you,” he says. “I went on a couple of years ago and did The Clock [from his solo album The Eraser]. Again, I was absolutely shitting myself. Directly after me, Red Hot Chilli Peppers came on and launched into Dani California. The moment the chorus started up and Flea hit the bass distortion pedal it was like a bomb going off.”

If it's somehow surprising to discover the extent to which Radiohead's frontman is a Red Hot Chilli Peppers fan, that pales in comparison to the shapes that Yorke goes on to throw when the hip-hop soul queen Mary J.Blige unleashes a pneumatically powerful performance of Work That. Only Cat Power's adoration for Blige appears to surpass his. After rehearsals the the previous day she had deliberately stayed behind for 90 minutes so as to give Blige a gift - a parcel of tea.

Then more surprises. When Feist and her band play Sealion, Blige and her band switch from polite head-nodding to fully engaged clapping and dancing. “That competitive sizing-up thing is what no other show has,” says Yorke. “It's the difference between it and The Tube."

The differences between Later and The Tube may also account for much of the criticism directed at Jools Holland. Among some viewers there persists a sense that, compared with his younger, edgier Tube persona, the middle-aged Holland is something of a let down. A typical complaint on the music industry message board Record Of The Day reads: “Jools is absolutely dreadful as an interviewer, often asking everyone exactly the same question and showing little ability to pick up on an answer and develop it.”

But musicians, almost without exception, seem to love him - from the truculent Van Morrison (who deals primarily with Holland when he appears on the show) to Jack White, who asked him to play alongside the White Stripes when they performed My Doorbell. Perhaps musicians love Jools Holland because he has finessed the persona of someone who loves all music. Every note of it. That it's merely a persona is, of course, what irks his critics.

Follow the sound of tinkling ivories after the show, to his dressing room. It's a charge to which his initial response is disingenuous. “If people take against me because I love everybody, I would be quite happy.” Then, pausing briefly, he switches to something more approaching candour. “I can see the point of what the music is. When you're younger, two bands in the same genre can sound wildly different to each other. You hate one but you love the other. When you get older, two entire genres can be distinguished by all the things they have in common. It's like holding a pair of binoculars. Do you want to see things up close or do you want to turn it around and see the entire picture?

“And that's the success of Later right there,” he smiles. “Some people hold it one way and some people hold it another. But everyone's up for having a look.”

Later 200 with Jools Holland is broadcast tonight on BBC 2 (11.35pm). www.bbc.co.uk/later

Listen to artists performing live on Later with Jools Holland

Click here to listen to a clip of Amy Winehouse performing Tears Dry On Their Own

Click here to listen to a clip of Kaiser Chiefs performing Ruby

Click here to listen to a clip of Gnarls Barkley performing Crazy

Click here to listen to a clip of Adele performing Daydreamer

Click here to listen to a clip of Seasick Steve performingDog House Boogie

Click here to listen to a clip of CSS performing Let’s Make Love And Listen To DFA

Click here to listen to a clip of The White Stripes And Jools Holland performing My Doorbell

Click here to listen to a clip of Razorlight performing America

Click here to listen to a clip of Paolo Nutini perfroming Last Request

Click here to listen to a clip of Ray Lamontagne performing Trouble

Click here to listen to a clip of Green Day performing American idiot

A compilation of performances from the latest series of the show, Later... live with Jools Holland, was released this week.

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