Steve Wright has died.

[ginasevern]

I had no idea he was ill. Condolences to his family.

It's so sad. I listened to him on radio 1 then radio 2. Must have been listening to him for 25 years. Like everyone else, much as I obviously didn't know him he felt like a friend of an afternoon. Have had some proper belly laughs at his show.
Jeremy vine broke down today and I ended up shedding a few tears. Bless him, he seemed like a really great guy and I'm glad there's such an outpouring of tributes for him. RIP Wrighty. You were a legend.

I didn’t even know he had a new show on Sunday mornings. I would have listened. I gave up listening to radio 2 when he was fired from his weekday show.

He's been doing Love Songs on a Sunday morning since 1996! Hardly a new show.

Oh I see . He kept his old slot .

I disagree. People should leave jobs when they can’t do them any more. As far as I’m aware, Steve’s show was still hugely popular. BBC2 were still reeling from the fiasco of changing the drive time show a couple of years earlier, which was an embarrassing disaster. You’d think they’d know better than to destroy another old favourite. Eventually Steve’s show would have become dated and lost listeners, and that’s the time to change things. But he was driven out prematurely, and as far as I can tell, the only person who has benefitted is Scott Mills (and even he probably feels a bit shit about it all).

The Sunday love songs slot is very popular so I hope they find someone to host it who the public like!

It’ll be Alison Hammond.

Just announced that it will be Liza Tarbuck this Sunday and it will be a celebration of him and the show he presented. I think she's a great choice

I think she's a great choice too.

I listened to Steve Wright in my bedroom in the 80s, when I was a lonely and troubled teenager. In recent years, I listened to his Radio 2 show while I was at home with my young child. Both times in my life, he provided me with much needed company, cheered me up, and helped me to feel less alone in life. I've been reading all the amazing tributes to Steve over the last couple of days and they are really moving. He was obviously a very genuine and kind man. I really hope he knew how loved he was. May he rest in peace.

I didn't listen to the Sunday show as a regular( only ever now and again if Dh put it on) but I think Liza will be great. It was always an easy listening slot with lots of loved up people on there ! Sweet really in a troubled world

Lots of speculation on his cause of death. I really hope it wasn’t what it’s looking like 😕

I've seen nothing that suggests anything other than an "incident". Please don't add your own speculation by saying "really hope it wasn’t what it’s looking like" You have no idea what it's "looking like" which is pretty much the same as the rest of us!
This is how rumours start and I'm sure his grieving family can do without that, on top of him passing unexpectedly!

Well said.

I’m not sure his family will be reading Mumsnet.

How on earth would you know that?

He was a great DJ

RIP Steve

And that's your excuse for posting your comment?! Makes no odds whether they do or they don't, your post was out of order. Simple.

Oh goodness. The clip of Vernon Kaye introducing the bbc concert orchestra has just popped up. I’m in bits 😢

Stirred up by people like you 🤬

I’ve been listening today (while working) to the shows from earlier in the week and it’s so touching how sad they all are. I have experienced two sudden deaths in my family and it’s such a kick in the stomach. They all did really well to get through it.

That got me too.

Liza is a great choice. Maybe she’d be prepared to take it on permanently -although she has a weekend show already.

She has Steve’s warmth and humour but the humour is a different kind, so it won’t look as if she’s trying to be Steve#2.

I think it's awful the stick Helen Thomas is getting on SM, mainly X, Formerly Twitter. Threats and calling her all the names under the sun. She wanted to try something else in the afternoons. He'd done 25 years and knew himself he couldn't stay forever in one slot. Scott Mills has lot 1.5 million listeners but couldn't have predicted that nor could she have foreseen this.

POTP with Gary Davies on Saturday.

I agree. I loved Steve Wright but he'd done that show for a long time and social media was full of people who were clearly fed up with him and/ or the format. There were threads on here too. I think it's fair that they want to bring in 'younger' djs (people in their 40s and 50s mainly!).

I used to be on the popmaster fb page and it was full of older white men who were hugely angry that they were bringing in younger DJs and doing the talk of 'box ticking' and all that rubbish. Of course they ALL hate Rylan and Richie Anderson (but Moira Stuart didn't seem to get slated which is interesting- I'm assuming her accent helped her).

Times change and bosses have to do what they think is right. Steve wasn't sacked and he clearly wanted to stay at Radio 2 as the commercial stations would have taken him on in a heartbeat.

I'm also very uncomfortable to see "blame" attached to the BBC executive who made the decision. It had to end some time and he was 69 and had had a tremendously long career with the BBC. And he still had Sunday Love Songs and latterly POTP, taking over from Paul Gambaccini (who is 74). R2 is pretty good at keeping on people who would be on the scrap heap in real life. Ken Bruce is 73. The Beeb has to give younger people some work.

I've seen some mawkish reports about SW being "heartbroken" at losing his afternoon show, I don't know if that's the case, but I sincerely hope he was more sanguine about it than some of the papers are suggesting. He wasn't an unintelligent man, far from it. I like to think he felt grateful for his long, successful and very lucrative career at the BBC. Hopefully he did. I'm sure he had a longer, happier and better paid career than probably 99% of his listeners.