The Decline of Western Civilisation?

You can always tell when a writer/journalist/TV commentator is getting middle-aged and out of touch, when they start going on about some aspect of current popular culture signifiying the 'Decline of Western Civilisation'. Most recently, I encountered such a crie de couer in the pages of the Guardian's weekly listings guide a couple of weeks ago - one of their writers was decrying current standards of radio DJs, claiming that under Chris Moyles, the Radio One Breakfast Show was an example of said decline. He went on to lament the passing of the 'great days' of Radio One back in the 1970s and 1980s. Whilst everyone is entitled to their own opinion about Chris Moyles, it was when he expressed these latter sentiments that I knew the writer was sinking into sad middle age and had totally lost touch with popular culture.

As someone who well remembers the horrors of Radio One (and every other station playing youth-orientated popular music) in the 1970s and 1980s, I really must take issue with such bilge! Is this guy really asking us to believe that the likes of Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travis and Mike Read were inany way superior to the current crop of Radio One DJs? I remember cringing in embarrassment at listening to that bunch of middle-aged would be swingers and hep cats sycophantically billing and cooing over each new dreadful record released by their showbiz pals, (who included the likes of Phil Collins and Rick Wakeman). In particular, I vividly remember being trapped in a car travelling back from Telford, with the radio tuned to Simon Bates discussing - in hushed tones - with some toady, whether the U2 Joshua Tree film was 'the greatest rock and roll movie ever made'. Yes! Simon Bates actually asked, with no hint of irony; 'have we just seen the greatest rock film, ever?'! And that bunch of bumptious out-of-touch idiots was followed by an even worse bunch, including Nicky Campbell, Steve Wright and the unspeakable Gary Davies.

To be honest, the current line up on Radio One is, by and large, the least offensive I remember. The fact is that time moves on and tastes and fashions with it. There is no way the youth of today (at whom Radio One is primarily aimed) would tolerate for one moment the shower that presented on the station twenty or thirty years ago. Far from representing the 'decline' of civilisation, it merely represents the 'evolution' of civilisation. But that's what happens as you become older and feel that you can't keep up with the pace of change - you try desperately to cling to the old and familiar. Sadly, far from being reassuring, this just tend to make the people concerned increasingly dislocated from the real world, and increasingly unhappy. Like it or not, you've just got to move with the times.

Having said all that, whilst out shopping the other day, I encountered several 'people' (I'm loath to accredit them human status), who made me think that the Decline of Western Civilisation was imminent. In Sainsburys there was a group of youths in front of me at the checkout loudly discussing their imminent holiday in Spain in a combination of monsyllables and old-fashioned grunting - most of the 'discussion' seemed to centre on how drunk and how much venereal disease they weregoing to get. God help us all, I thought As this gormless looking bunch paid for their several litres of vodka, if this is what we're exporting these days! No wonder the rest of Europe has such a low opinion of us. A few minutes later, in Tesco, I had the misfortune to encounter this idiot who had his shaven head tattooed. I gathered from said cranial decorations that he was a football fan and followed both England and Charlton Athletic. Now, if I was of an earlier generation, this is the piint at which I'd start apoplectically sputtering 'I didn't fight a bloody war just so the the likes of them can paint their bloody heads like savages and go and throw up in someone else's country - and get your bloody hair cut while you're about it! You can't park there!' and so on.

Thankfully, I got a grip and reminded myself that I'm still down with the kids and on top of developments in this ever changing world in which we live in (as Paul McCartney and Wings so sagely observed). Hell, I thought. I remember Radio One DJs saying that punk rock was the harbringer of the apocalypse, but we're still here. Come to think of it, my father thought that Glam Rock heralded the end of the world as we knew it, and thanked God that his father hadn't lived long enough to hear the word 'fuck' uttered on the BBC. Now, that really did mark the Decline of Western Civilisation...