"THIS FRAGILE FLOWER OF BROADCASTING"

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to pause here a moment and address one issue if I may.You know over the last few weeks, this Show and this Network have been in the Newspapers more than once and not always in a necessarily positive light.

I don't know if this is the time or the place to say it, but here goes anyhow. You know next to the National Health Service, Radio One is the most precious thing we in Britain possess and saying recent weeks have not been easy for me, Well I think that goes without saying.

I want to say a big thank you to everyone out there for the messages of support I've received; those carelessly thrown words of kindness, comfort and spiritual balm. Likewise all the flowers and gifts and good-luck charms that have been dropped off at the main reception.

You know taking over a new show here on Radio One is a daunting enough task in itself, without the attendant spotlight that naturally goes with it. Filling the boots of some of the mighty, mighty, guys who have so recently and so publicly exited this building was never going to be an easy task and so it proved.

Yet when people ask me - "Had enough…..are you ready to quit?", I say "Yeah I'm ready to quit, when there's no longer one studio, one Producer or one microphone on the face of this earth that I can have access to!"

"I'll quit when there's no longer one single person ready to get down on their knees and demand a show in the name of right!"

"I'll quit when the stars no longer shine and the smiling faces of little children beam up at me and say "Daddy, entertain us".

Yeah, that's when I'll quit.

But until that day you'd better get out of the road, because I'm hauling a heavy show behind me, bound for your antenna. Where I'll do what's best, what's right, what I came here to do;

....and what I came here to do, is to take this fragile flower of popular broadcasting and nature it into the blossoming, zealous, hedgerow of true cultural worth. That's what I'm about.

Okay D.L.T. had darts, I've got something a little stronger, something you might have heard of, a little thing called heart.

Yes heart, a pumping, thrusting, beating, fistful of offal, that was built to stay this course - all of our courses.

Now and forever, henceforth for you, for me , for tomorrow.

As Gary Gilmour said just before they shot him: "Come on, Lets Do it!"