Radio 2’s new series The Radio Revolutionaries (Tuesday, 8.30pm) allows us to get misty-eyed for a time when listeners weren’t deserting the BBC because of Sara Cox, but because of its lacklustre pop selection.

In the Thirties Radio Normandy invented the disc jockey to challenge the BBC’s Reithian gloom-ridden Sabbath schedule. In the Sixties, pirate ships such as Radio Caroline were forcing Auntie into a mini-dress. In the Seventies and Eighties, neglected soul, reggae and acid house inspired a new breed of London towerblock pirates. Nowadays the capital’s airwaves are so crammed that drum’n’bass and UK garage radio rebels broadcast from the suburbs.

Of course it’s easy to romanticise the pirates — they are knowingly breaking the law, possibly disrupting emergency services’ wavelengths and failing to pay royalties. But they are tapping into a niche audience of 15 to 30-year-olds that Radio 1 is struggling to hold.

Nowadays this age group can satisfy their musical cravings through digital stations and music TV, and the ultimate in DIY radio, the iPod, on to which your whole CD collection can be downloaded — and without the babble of daytime presenters.

If the job of daytime radio is to provide background noise while we do something more interesting, then Radio 1 may be doing its job. But Radio 2, in which genuine characters talk intelligently while playing music from a variety of genres and eras, has seen its listenership rise above 13 million, which might say something about how to spin the platters that matter to its audience.

Certainly the pirate stations, which by their nature attract strange characters, are capable of throwing up some fresh voices. DJs currently beavering away in semi-obscurity such as Dom Da Bom, Miss Giggles and the optimistically named Aylesbury Allstars might one day join such pirate-spawned luminaries as Roy Plomley, Kenny Everett and Trevor Nelson and get a national radio gig.

And they probably won’t even need to change their names. Unlike John Ravenscourt, who found that Radio London wanted a snappier moniker — but at least we got John Peel.

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