“Please don’t stop the music,” Rihanna once sang. On Thursday, producers at BBC Radio 2 scrambled to oblige as Vernon Kay was forced to use CDs to play music on the station after its digital system failed.
The radio presenter, 50, was playing Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who towards the end of his show when the issue occurred. At about 11.30am, the track cut out and he came back on air laughing. He said: “This has never happened to me, where the computer system has just failed.”
He asked listeners to get in touch as the screen in front of him said the song was playing but he could not hear it in the studio.
At first, Kay appeared not to know for certain whether the broadcast was silent, saying: “I don’t think it’s playing out because it’s gone deadly silent in the studio, which is quite strange … but I’m fascinated by it because these things excite me when things go wrong on air.”
Jeremy Vine, whose show follows Kay’s at midday, said he had experienced issues in his studio when he was “practising” his weekday show.
They tried to play the next tracks but they also could not be heard, and Kay said they would instead be forced to do some “chatting for 30 minutes”.
A member of staff came in with CDs in a box while Vine continued to preview his show, which was to include general election coverage and him putting on an age simulation suit, which makes the wearer’s feet heavier and muffles sound.
Kay let Vine continue as he tried to help with repairing the problem, and he played the Harry Styles track Treat People With Kindness on a CD.
He joked that the Radio 2 team was “running down to the basement to get some cassettes and some MiniDiscs” to keep the music going.
After playing a recording of his interview with one of this year’s Glastonbury headliners, Shania Twain, which was previously broadcast on Sunday, he said the system was back “up and running” at about 11.50am.
A BBC spokesperson said there was “a technical fault which was quickly fixed”.