Radio review: Gabby Logan

WHEN a top football manager leaves a club it often sparks a chain reaction of vacancies which leads to a merry-go-round of familiar names filling the voids, and something similar has occurred on the BBC radio airwaves at the start of 2010 in the wake of Terry Wogan's seismic departure from the Radio 2 breakfast show.

While most of the publicity this week was afforded to Chris Evans and his charm offensive on the sceptical TOGs, over on 5 Live there were some equally big shoes that needed to be filled. Since 2001, Simon Mayo's afternoon show has been one of the Beeb's hidden gems, the type which reassures you that your license fee is not simply a vehicle for keeping Jonathan Ross in rare Japanese comics and indoor tennis courts.

With a programme that was a fizzing cocktail of news, sport, politics, showbiz and movies, Mayo matured into a master of light and shade, bringing the same thoroughness of research and genuine interest to an interview with a sportsperson or soap actress as he would a heavyweight political figure. In 2008 he was rewarded with the Radio Broadcaster of the Year gong at the annual Sony Awards.

Rather than go for a straight swap, now that Mayo has moved on to the Radio 2 Drivetime slot in place of Evans, the 5 Live bigwigs have instead decided to rejig their daytime schedules with Gabby Logan now following Victoria Derbyshire from noon to 2pm and Richard Bacon on from 2 to 4pm.

Logan was lured from ITV in the autumn of 2006 after becoming frustrated when the commercial network appeared to edge her out of its World Cup coverage at the expense of old stagers Steve Rider and Jim Rosenthal. Since then she has made steady progress at Auntie, fronting football, rugby and Olympics coverage, doing the obligatory stint on Strictly Come Dancing and hosting a Sunday morning sports programme on 5 Live. One disappointment, however, has been Inside Sport, a decent idea of a sports magazine show which has been messed about by the TV schedulers.

This new daily slot on 5 Live represents a fresh challenge for Logan as she graduates into news, politics and entertainment. Sport, though, remains well to the fore. During a conversation from the Johannesburg cricket Test in Thursday's show Geoffrey Boycott may have insisted on calling her "darling", but even the unapologetically old-school Yorkshireman would have to admit that, when it comes to sport, Logan, who long ago dispelled any notions she was just a pretty face, definitely knows her (Graham?) onions.

It is clearly the ground upon which Logan is most comfortable and thanks to her Caledonian connection, through former Scotland rugby player husband Kenny, it looks like Scottish sport will get its fair share of coverage. Indeed, in the maiden show, you could hardly move for familiar voices as the first two major interviews were with George Burley and Owen Coyle.

Understandably the main sources of UK-wide interest in the recently sacked Scotland manager were the calamitous defections and player shenanigans which undermined his tenure. Equally understandably, Burley would clearly rather spend a week alone with Vladimir Romanov in an isolated Russian dacha than answer yet more questions on Kris Boyd and the 'Loch Lomond Two'.

The host did her best, but an evasive Burley never really played ball. The exchange with Coyle was much better fare as the former St Johnstone manager was able to eloquently state his case for jumping ship from Burnley to Bolton.

Logan is wisely retaining one of the best features of the Mayo show, 'The Sports Panel', which allows journalists and sportspeople to discuss and debate the biggest stories of the moment. Rather than an hour on the Friday this has been split into two half-hours from 1-1.30pm on a Monday and a Friday.

Yet more sport was to come on the debut show with the start of a weekly in-depth preview of each World Cup group. All this was an aural treat for sports buffs, but may have been a bit rich for 5 Live listeners accustomed to a more balanced mix at this time of the day, although this noticeably evened out as the week progressed.

Monday's show finished with a piece of showbiz fluff as Sinitta popped in for a chat. The singer divulged that she was planning to release a 'Greatest Hits' album and Logan did well to resist the temptation of asking how this could be accomplished with just the one hit single to draw upon. Although I did recall, slightly more quickly than I'm comfortable with, that So Macho was followed up by Toyboy in the mid-80s hit parade. The upshot was your reviewer scurrying to his computer and typing a word pairing he never anticipated he would ever trouble the Google search engine with – "Sinitta Discography".

As you will all know, Sinitta was there to discuss her exit the previous evening from Dancing On Ice. The title of that show was an apt metaphor for what Logan was being asked to perform as she negotiated a wide array of guests and topics, from Turf Moor to Westminster, while all the time staying on top of breaking news stories such as the 'Mrs Robinson' imbroglio in Belfast and the Haiti earthquake. She can look back on her first week safe in the knowledge she never put a foot wrong.