‘I worked with Steve Wright for 30 years. The BBC has tarnished his legacy'

Yahoo

04-08-2025

Later this month, BBC Radio 2 will broadcast a tribute concert for Steve Wright – the adored DJ, who died last February. It will feature the bespoke jingles that were such a crucial part of shows such as Steve Wright in the Afternoon and Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs, but the man behind those jingles, Anthony James, is not involved. Since Wright's death at the age of 69, James says he has been dismayed by the BBC's handling of his friend's legacy – and haunted by what he sees as mistreatment by the corporation in the years leading up to his death.
The pair first met in 1986 when James (known professionally as AJ) was a teenager. He had already begun working in local radio, composing unique musical idents for the station's presenters. A fan of Wright's BBC shows, James sent him a 30-second piece of music, with his 'cold pitch' resulting in a phone call to his home soon afterwards.
'My mother picked it up and ran upstairs and said, 'Oh my God, it's Steve Wright on the phone.' I thought it was one of my friends doing a prank,' James reflects, but it was Wright, promising that he would play the tune on his show at 3pm that very afternoon.
So began a partnership that James describes as '50-50 friendship, 50-50 like a father figure'. At the outset, Wright appeared to him 'like the Wizard of Oz: he was this great big celebrity on one of the biggest stations in Europe'.
When James moved to New York in the late 1990s to continue his career as a composer (still writing around 100 jingles a year across Wright's shows), their friendship continued to develop: 'He would tell me a lot of personal stuff, which was great. But first, he would always want to know what was up with me, what was going on in my world… He was very sensitive, very conscious of how I was doing.'
Wright visited James in New York often; they spoke on the phone two or three times a week. He remembers Wright's levity during their calls. 'I miss that, big time. I would always get off the phone with Steve and I'd have laughed so much, because he just found humour in everything.'
In the years leading up to his death, however, Wright would suffer a series of personal and professional setbacks. The first came in 2022, when Steve Wright in the Afternoon was axed by the BBC. Wright called a tearful James once the news broke; both saw the move as 'crazy; our numbers [were] through the roof'.
Wright admitted that he had been told of its cancellation and sworn to secrecy by the organisation nine months prior, but was reassured by promises made by Helen Thomas, the head of BBC Radio 2, that the show would live on via a yet-to-be-created digital channel. When that prospect began looking increasingly unlikely, Wright approached Tim Davie, the director-general. According to James, Davie told Wright: 'I can't believe she fired you… I wouldn't have fired you myself.' The BBC has, however, denied this.
James believes that the axing of Steve Wright in the Afternoon was part of a push to banish broadcasters considered too 'pale, male and stale' from the airwaves, and to create a kind of conformity at direct odds with Wright's verve. 'They just wanted it a little bit more like wallpaper,' he says of Thomas's decision to 'do something different in the afternoons'.
'They thought that this idea of personality [displayed in abundance by Wright] is old style; it's not cool anymore, we should make Radio 2 cool,' he says. 'But who gives a s--- about cool? It's about being entertained.'
The effect on Wright was devastating. 'He didn't really stop to accept it. I think it ate him up,' James tells me. 'It got worse, and his health got worse.' Wright had heart surgery a year after the show was axed, and the medication he took in its aftermath led him to put on even more weight.
'He told me, 'I'm just really not well. I'm trying to lose the weight, I think I'm going to have a gastric band.'' James says that Wright also considered using Ozempic.
Despite Wright's best attempts to get better, James recalls that: 'There was something about our last meeting [in November 2023]. There was just a look in his eye. I told my partner [afterwards] that something was really wrong.' Then, the following February, Wright died, leaving James overwhelmed with grief. 'I was not on this planet,' he says of that time.
The groundswell of public affection went some way to easing his sadness, but that was quickly dismantled by the actions of the BBC. 'The painful truth is that the same BBC leadership celebrating Steve publicly is the one that disregarded and undermined our work privately,' says James.
After Wright's death, James feels that they tried to 'delegitimise' his and Wright's relationship. 'I felt disgusted by that,' says James. 'Our relationship was so successful and it lasted for 38 years, and I feel like they're just s---ting on it.' And on Wright himself: a man who attended the studio at nine o'clock each morning to prepare for his afternoon show, and was dedicated to his listeners to the last.
In response to questions about the treatment of Wright, the BBC said: 'Steve was deeply loved by the Radio 2 family and listeners, and we all miss him dearly. For almost three decades he hosted a raft of brilliant shows on the network.
'Steve's Sunday Love Songs had been on air since 1996 and he was excited to take on the legendary Pick of the Pops alongside a variety of specials on Radio 2 including Steve Wright: The Best of the Guests, Steve Wright's Summer Nights and Steve Wright's Love Songs Extra on BBC Sounds.'
Thomas wrote to James in autumn last year asking for permission to play his music in the BBC tribute concert for Wright, which was recorded earlier this year (ahead of this month's transmission). He agreed, but when he rediscovered a recording of Wright railing at the poor internal handling of his show being axed, 'I just got more and more angry.'
James talked through the matter with Wright's son, before telling Thomas that he no longer planned to attend. Then, in the week before the concert, she let him know that 'the great and the good will be there', which James took to mean: don't miss an opportunity to network. 'And I said, 'I'm not f---ing networking; this is not about networking. This is about a tribute to my friend.''
James thinks this last-minute push was driven by fear that his absence would 'look bad' for the BBC. 'It just started stinking towards the end of it, and I thought, 'No, I've given my music, my music will represent me, and that's it. I'm not going,' he says.
When I put James's thoughts to the BBC, a spokesman replied: 'When inviting AJ to the recording of the celebration of Steve's broadcast career, where new arrangements of his work would be played live on stage, Helen's sole aim was to make sure AJ did not miss what promised to be, and indeed proved to be, a very special event, with many of Steve's friends and colleagues in attendance.'
It is clear that James feels both he and Wright have been wronged by the BBC. The outpouring of affection from fans since Wright's death, compared with what he sees as shoddy treatment by the corporation now openly celebrating him, has made the past 18 months particularly challenging.
Wright would have turned 71 on August 26, and his birthday will spark 'very intense' feelings for James as he remembers their friendship and their creative partnership. 'I miss all that,' he says, 'and that makes me very emotional.'
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