It’s the little things in life that matter

by Rick Johansen

It was the great bard – actually, keyboard player and occasional singer with Toto – Steve Porcaro who wrote these words for the song Little Things on the band’s 2015 long player Toto XIV (their 13th album – yes, I know, I know):

I’m in a trace of your smile in a photographWhen I’m down and we talk and you make me laughThat reminds me it’s the little things in lifeOoh, that matter

Obviously, the big things in life matter, too, but I know what Steve, who also wrote Human Nature for Michael Jackson, meant. You can also, justifiably in my case, make a case that little things please little minds because a little thing has happened today that makes me very happy indeed.

Have I ever told you I spend most of my waking hours listening either to my own music or BBC Radio 6 Music? I think I just may have done and it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. From dawn until dusk, at least in the winter, I rarely shift the dial from 6 Music. To me, it’s worth the TV licence fee all on its own. Except for one daytime slot: the mid morning show.

Until today that show was hosted by Mary Ann Hobbs, a veteran DJ who certainly knows her music and plays an astonishingly eclectic. But I cannot stand the sound of her voice. No one talks like that in real life and while I know she is a vastly experienced broadcaster, every show she hosts sounds like amateur hour. At precisely 10.30 am every weekday morning, I switch the radio off and do something/anything else. But as I said, until today.

The breakfast show presenter Lauren Laverne has had to take time off her breakfast show in order to be treated for cancer. Happily, she is now cancer-free but she is not returning to the breakfast show, but she is the new mid morning host, taking over from Hobbs. It’s win win for me, added to the fact that ex Radio 1 great Nick Grimshaw is the new permanent 6 Music breakfast show host.  A daytime line-up which also includes Craig Charles and Huw Stephens – how will I get anything else done? Why would I need to?

Regular radio listeners will surely have felt something like this at some time? Who hasn’t loved a particular DJ and felt sad and disappointed when they moved on? I was heartbroken in the 1970s when Johnnie Walker left Radio 1, gutted when Shaun Keaveny left 6 Music; I was even sad and disappointed when Tony Blackburn left the Radio 1 breakfast show and that was back in 1973. The great DJs talk to you as if they are talking to just you. This may sound mad, and not a little sad, to those of you who don’t do radio, but the likes of Lauren Laverne, Mark Radcliffe, Stuart Maconie and Huey Morgan, the Fun Lovin’ Criminal, come across as friends. It’s a gift.

Imagine being so excited by a simple change to a radio station’s scheduling, but I am. My mood lifted from a sense of impending dread as the time started to approach 10.30 am when Mary Ann Hobbs would start her show and I turned off straight away. But that dread disappeared when Nick Grimshaw not only introduced his special guest this morning, the fit and healthy again Lauren Laverne, he announced that she was taking over from Hobbs and Grimmy himself was taking over the breakfast show.

Little things mean a lot. That’s the truth. What means next to nothing to someone else, means the world to someone else. My Thursday 9th March 2025 is so much brighter, thanks not just to the beautiful blue skies above, but also because the daily soundtrack of my life is about to get better and longer. I’ll take that.

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