We Think Mark E Smith Might Be Calling a Late Night BBC Lancashire Phone-In Each Week to Rant About Art

Most of you won’t know this, and there’s probably no reason you’d ever need to, but BBC Radio Lancashire has a late night phone-in show hosted by Allan Beswick, who is perhaps the most uncompromising person to have ever hosted a talk show. It’s a bit of a free-for-all, as the topic based titles of the shows attest – last week’s was called “David Cameron, Syria and Ghosts”, another was titled “Global Warming, Transplants and Legalisation of Cannabis”.

Me and my mates like to listen to it when we’re stoned, because the loud idiocy of the callers and DJ Beswick’s absolute disdain for humankind are a sweet combination that makes for the type of radio even Iannucci and Coogan couldn't fictionalise. The callers are usually either absolutely smashed, deeply troubled or outrageously outspoken; the kind of people who are awake, at home and want nothing more than to rant about e-cigarettes at 1am on a public forum. Oh, and Mark E Smith from The Fall. I'm pretty sure Mark E Smith from The Fall calls in regularly.

The first time I ever heard it (which you can hear here at 45mins in), Allan introduced a caller named Mark with his catchphrase, “How do!” Now, I am certain that the voice that followed was the familiar and unmistakable Manchester drawl of The Fall’s Mark E Smith. It seemed unlikely. But think about it though; it is exactly the kind of thing you could imagine Mark E Smith doing on a night in: getting a bit pissed, and phoning the local radio’s late night talk show to vent, berate and essentially hijack. Then the pair began talking about modern art, a favourite topic of Mark’s in past interviews. “What do you think about Damien Hirst? Absolute crap.”

The conversation went on and then they began referencing previous conversations. “I told you about Picasso the other night, didn’t I,” said Mark. So, it turned out that this was a regular thing. I started Googling, scouring Twitter; how had no one had picked up on this? But then again, how big is the intersection of people who listen to The Fall and are also in the catchment and willing to listen to Allan Beswick’s BBC Lancashire Late Night Phone-In? Probably 5 people I reckon, since that’s how many fit inside my mate’s Ford Fiesta.

Trawling through the previous shows in search of a "How do, Mark!", I started to find more and more suggestive clues. It is well known that Mark E Smith is interested in the occult and that he used to dabble - in Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E Smith, he writes at length about mysticism - and on Beswick’s show this Mark talks about his grandmother’s "uncanny" tarot card reading ability, reincarnation, and his belief in ghosts and telepathy (he insisted that, “There’s something electrical in the air between human beings”).

Usually, though, the topic of their conversations is art. On one show, Mark claimed that he collaborated with Picasso as a child, on a beach in the south of France (listen here from 1hr 53mins). The man usually portrayed as a maverick and an outsider by the music press, showed Allan a more sentimental side as he took on an air of what sounded like genuine nostalgia:

“I saw this like, wet sand, so I got the bamboo cane and I started drawing this picture, and then this bloke came along and these people. It was just, like, an old man with grey hairs all over his chest and a chain around his neck and a bald head and all this. Only about my height as well, and I was only small, and he said, in French, I mean I couldn’t understand him, but he said ‘can I have the cane?’ and he carried on and we did this picture together.”

On a different show, Mark offered to give Allan a picture that he painted named ‘The Ballad of Melancholia’. His response? “Cut out the middleman and burn it yourself.” Savage.

I don’t think Allan thinks that the ‘Mark’ he regularly speaks might be Mark E Smith, which only adds to the magic of it all - but if he does, he clearly doesn’t give half a flying fuck. Allan is an unashamedly rude host. His default tone is ‘cynical bastard’. He is basically the Mark E Smith of the arts world - and The Fall frontman is not exempt from his bluntness.

To date, my favourite Beswick/Smith moment was when Mark serenaded Allan through speakerphone with his own version of The Sound of Music showtune, “Edelweiss”. In my honest opinion, it is the greatest ever BBC Live Lounge recorded. Post performance, Mark asked for Allan’s appraisal. “Was that a load of shite?” asked Mark. Beswick responds dryly: “It’s not a word I’d use on the radio, but yeah.” Beswick has no chill. None.

Whether this is the real Mark E Smith I listen to each week, or whether I have been seduced by one of the Lancashire area's leading Mark E Smith impersonators, I'm not going to lie, this entire experience has led me to admire him even more than I already did. Absent from social media, this Mark shares what most public figures would tweet about by calling up his local radio station and putting it on blast. He is such an anti-hero that he can take part in Allan Beswick’s Late Night Phone-In programme on BBC Radio Lancashire, and when he does, he isn’t treated any differently to how David from Chorley was 10 minutes earlier when he rang about his guinea pig being stuck under the decking. He is a local celebrity and an international celebrity, in two completely separate ways. He is, as he strives to be, a man of the people. Albeit, a man that is not appreciated by Allan Beswick.

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