Passions: Mark Ellen and David Hepworth are the groovy, with-it big brothers I never had

David Hepworth is a former host of The Old Grey Whistle Test and Live Aid

I still remember the shock. Other cherished periodicals had closed previously – Hornet, Hotspur, Whizzer and Chips – but never while I was still avidly reading. Never while I was scouring eBay for a replacement for issue No 5, lost in a flitting. Never while a bespoke bookcase was being constructed with shelves the exact dimensions for the complete collection. But without warning in July 2012 there it was next to the Word’s masthead: “Final edition.” What now?

Thankfully Word-ending hasn’t quite been world-ending. There’s a podcast. Music and more, much more, besides. If Mark Ellen and David Hepworth get their freak on, it pops up weekly. Not that they’d use such a phrase. Ellen is 70, Hepworth 73. My kind of musos.

These two wrote for the “inkies” - the music weeklies - then teamed up on Smash Hits. They hosted The Old Grey Whistle Test and helmed Live Aid. Separately or together, they were involved with other mags (Q, Select, Mojo). The Word, though, was their favourite child, a New Yorker with added Bob Dylan (Ellen’s obsession) and compulsory mentions of the Beatles (loved by them both, Hepworth once insisting that the greatest band of them all were actually underrated).

Never trust a man with a small black moustache. Wise words from PG Wodehouse. Well, as far as I’m concerned, never trust rock writers who don’t love Wodehouse (there was another of his bon mots on the cover of the last-ever ish) or Molesworth or The Day of the Jackal. I’ve splashed a small fortune on their recommendations. These two are the groovy, with-it big brothers I never had.

The podcast, called Word in Your Ear, with Ellen in his messy man-cave and Hepworth in front of a groaning wall of vinyl, usually begins with the “Stackwaddy Game”, origin obscure, where for instance one will challenge the other to correctly distinguish between Cocteau Twins song titles and Farrow & Ball paint colours (Dead Salmon? Nancy’s Blushes?). Then they’ll pluck stories from the news about rock stars, invariably being preposterous, and have fun with them.

Music was better when they were young gunslingers. They know this but don’t hammer the point. Ellen was in a band at uni with Tony Blair but doesn’t bang on about that. I might be familiar with the yarn about that Valkerie of veganism, Chrissie Hynde, arriving late to the dinner party just as Ellen was tucking in to his steak tartare, but I look forward to hearing it again.

Same with the one about the pouch where Van Morrison kept his mouth-organs. Keep doing some old, guys.

Aidan Smith is a journalist at The Scotsman