The Spice Girls and The Smiths: A Week in Radio

Richard E Grant, who appeared alongside the Spice Girls in their movie Spice World, presented the hour-long reminiscence. He was as close as the programme got to a primary source. No Spice Girls were bothered in the making of it.

Mostly, it was down to celebrity fans – Zoe Ball, Mollie King of the Saturdays, KT Tunstall and Olly Murs (he gets in everywhere) – and the odd collector and commentator, to tell us all about Sporty, Baby, Posh, Ginger and Scary.

“All” might be stretching things in that last sentence, admittedly. This slight, nostalgic romp through the pop culture history books was comfort listening for fans and interested parties, though it did offer an interesting take on the idea of Cool Britannia that was forming at the time.

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And I’d forgotten that Geri’s Union Jack dress (a tea towel stitched onto a Gucci dress) worn at the Brits in 1997, also had a CND symbol on the back. It was a different time.

Earlier that same night Simon Armitage jumped back a decade earlier when he chatted to one of the greatest musicians of the 1980s in the first episode of his new series, The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed on Radio 4.

The guest in Armitage’s shed was Johnny Marr, Smiths guitarist, songwriter and all-round good egg.

It was possibly a symptom of the middle-aged men that they are now that the conversation began with the two of them talking about roads and the best routes to Yorkshire from Lancashire.

Still, there was method to the middle-agedness here. Armitage learned that Marr had travelled over Saddleworth Moor to get to the shed. And Saddleworth Moor has associations with the Moors Murders and in turn with The Smiths who wrote a song, Suffer Little Children, about that particular horror story.

“God, we’re into that pretty quick,” Marr noted, before revealing that Suffer … was only the second song he ever wrote with Morrissey, “and therefore about 20 minutes into our song writing career because the first one took about 17 minutes and then I would have stopped to have at least one cigarette and then we did another one. We were off to the races pretty quickly.”

Marr was just 18 at the time. The whispered conversations he’d heard as a kid about the Moors Murders, he says, was “the first time I had a sense of depravity.”

Despite that morbid beginning, what followed was a lovely, serious chat about song writing, craftmanship, collaboration, notions of home and awkwardness, even musical tribalism, all decorated by Marr picking up his guitar and playing gorgeous lines from Smiths’ songs. Half a Person, Back to the Old House, Accept Yourself. Even Get the Message for Electronic fans.

I always enjoyed the Spice Girls. I even had my favourite Spice (Baby, because she was a Spurs fan) and a favourite song (Too Much), but really when it came down to it, I just liked the cultural noise they made. The music I could take or leave.

The Smiths, though, oh, the Smiths were my band. I adored them then, adore them now (whatever nonsense Mozz comes out with; and, anyway, The Smiths don’t belong to him alone).

So, I was always going to love this. Partly because I’m a man of a certain age, too. I can happily talk about roads if you ask me. But mostly because Marr is a decent, articulate man with a huge talent.

What did we learn? That the greatest guitarist of his generation doesn’t like Aeros. And that his favourite Smiths song is Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me. Just goes to show, his taste is still exquisite.

Listen Out For: Soul Music, Radio 4, Wednesday, 9am Bronski Beat’s Small Town Boy is the song at the heart of the first episode of the new series. Expect to have your heartstrings tugged.