Hollywood backs petition to save Janice Forsyth radio show

THE petition to save BBC Radio Scotland’s Janice Forsyth Show has collected more than 1,000 signatures as the campaign to keep the programme on the air gathers strength.

Yesterday more high-profile names joined the online clamour to save the long-running show with Hollywood actor Alan Cumming adding his voice on the micro-blogging site Twitter: “Janice Forsyth is a Legend!! Sign the petition tweeters. This is a national emergency.”

Labour front-bench MP Douglas Alexander also expressed his dismay at the move: “Simply can’t understand BBC Scotland’s decision to axe the Janice Forsyth Show. Saturday morning’s wouldn’t be the same. #hopethey’llthinkagain.”

In addition to the famous figures fighting to save the show, the fans who have been at the heart of the campaign continued to criticise the BBC’s decision.

Wilma Duff has doggedly tweeted and re-tweeted stories and links to the petition, targeting big-name Scots to help maintain the campaign’s profile.

She said: “It’s exciting. I’ve been tweeting and Facebooking any Scottish person I thought might have any sort of heft, asking them to help us out.

“Ian Rankin has been great, getting us into the newspapers, so I think we need more of that sort of thing.

“My reasons for doing this are quite straightforward: I just love the show and I don’t want any more sport on radio, certainly not during Saturday morning.”

Ms Duff, who was behind the Save Janny on the Tranny T-shirts that appeared within hours of the announcement, said that she was now looking at trying to arrange a live-music event in support of the show and to help take the campaign forward.

Paul Lewis, who masterminded the campaign to save the BBC’s 6Music channel, said its success had been down to supporters “making a nuisance of themselves” and, beyond a vociferous online effort, it had contacted the BBC’s director of audio and music, Tim Davie directly, to make listeners’ feelings clear.

Mr Lewis, who has signed the Janice Forsyth petition, also described how he had just run a successful campaign similar to that to save Janice’s show.

He said: “As of two weeks ago, Tom Robinson’s Introducing Show, which put 8,000 new bands through 6Music in the last four years, was going. I got 775 signatures on a petition within a day-and-a-half, and on Sunday night the Controller of 6Music phoned Tom and said ‘you can keep your show’.”

Forsyth’s show, which has run for 18 years, is being axed to make way for extended news and sport, in line with policy for speech during the day and music programming at night.