Jeremy Vine and his team – living proof that men can multi-task

Never let it be said that men can’t multi-task.

The midday news is being read on Britain’s most listened-to current affairs and music programme. Jeremy Vine is alone in a transparent booth with only three colleagues – his editor, producer and engineer – for company at the other side of the glass, along with this writer and Radio 2’s head of publicity. He is firing off questions the way RAF squadrons fire off tomahawks. “Has he been jailed for 25 or 27 years?” “When’s Geoffrey coming in?” “Do we have someone outside the Apple Store? Is he first in the queue?” Vine’s editor for the day, Tim Collins, and producer Chris Walsh-Heron, do their best to answer their questions – but once the news is finished and travel has been consulted in the next room, they have to bear in mind that the first record, Dexys Midnight Runners’ version of Jackie Wilson Said is seconds from finishing. When it comes to a phone-in on a subject like Delroy Grant, you cannot phone that in. The so-called Night Stalker was responsible for largest ever rape investigation undertaken by the Met, taking in such sunny topics as gerontophilia, over 100 attacks and four life sentences.

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This programme has six million listeners, and is the place some of them get their only fix of current affairs. So Vine has to be on point, get his facts right, check who is calling in. Collins, meanwhile, has to think 15 minutes ahead to the next item – a man who is outside the Apple store to buy the first iPad 2 in London after queuing since 7am the previous day – to check his sound levels, look at the playlist to make sure nothing is inappropriate (Rumer’s Goodbye Girl is cut), while Walsh-Heron has to print out callers, taking them to Collins for a quick appraisal before he runs them in to Vine. All three check the Press Association for the latest news, as the story is unfolding. Vine only has to speak to Fred West’s biographer Geoffrey Wansell and Glaswegian criminologist David Wilson, take calls from the general public and ask for other contributions. The second discussion – about early adopters with Jewels Lewis, the man at the head of the iPad 2 queue, featuring a man in Ipswich who camped overnight to purchase the last Harry Potter book to read to his nieces in America, and a marketing expert – looks like it will be less intense than the earlier one. There remain hidden speed bumps, however. A caller rings in to mention Sainsbury’s three times, which prompts nervous concerns about the sneakiest form of product placement. In some ways, Vine’s biggest skill is to make the gear-changes seem imperceptible – as opposed to the way that GMTV, say, clodhopped from a rail crash to a holiday giveaway. All around this, he fits a variety of records from Cee Lo Green, Chic and Abba, to T-Rex, Tori Amos and Elvis Costello & The Attractions. This was only the first hour of the programme. Straight into the second hour was an absorbing interview with Chris Evans, talking about his two children, born 20 years apart. During the first 60 minutes, Vine – who took over from Jimmy Young in 2004 – is at his most animated off-air when nodding his head to Costello’s No Action from This Year’s Model. “That has to be the first time that record has been played on daytime radio,” he said gleefully between air-drums. Vine's Wikipedia entry claims he has seen Elvis Costello 13 times in concert, although that may need to be updated.

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