Vernon Kay unveils his replacement for BBC Radio 2 as he steps down for a break after losing 1.3 million listeners
Vernon Kay has unveiled his replacement for BBC Radio 2 after losing 1.3 million listeners.
The 49-year-old presenter stops for a break to run an ultramarathon, from London’s Victoria Park to Bolton Wanderer’s stadium, for Children In Need.
The news was shared on BBC Radio 2’s Instagram, with a fun video of Vernon musing about possible stand-ins. ‘Noel Edmonds? No…Mr Blobby? No.’
Vernon then called fellow northern presenter Paddy McGuinness, 50, who is listed on his mobile as ‘the OTHER kay’, and said he needed him to ‘host the quiz’.
The No Likey No Lighty star agreed, joking: ‘Oh, I didn’t know you still did that! I love all that. I participate!’ in reference to Family Fortunes, before Vernon made it clear he wanted him to appear on BBC Radio 2.
Taking time off: Vernon Kay, 49, has unveiled his replacement for BBC Radio 2 as he steps down for a break to run an ultramarathon for children in need
Here it is: The news was shared on BBC Radio 2’s Instagram, with a fun video of Vernon calling fellow presenter Paddy McGuinness, 50, to ask him to perform
Last month, radio industry body Rajar reported how Vernon has lost 1.3 million listeners since taking over the morning show, with an average of 6.9 million listeners. With figures from June to September 2023.
Meanwhile, in the same period on Greatest Hits, his predecessor Ken Bruce, 72, has increased his new show’s audience by 800,000 to 3.7 million.
He previously said he left the BBC after three decades in the same way because it was “time for a change” and it felt “like the natural culmination of some planning I’ve been doing.”
But now Ken has revealed he decided to jump ship before he started becoming ‘bitter and entrenched’, saying: ‘It took a long time and I thought I was doing the same thing every day.
“There was a point of saying that I can’t be as excited about all the new music I have to play as I am about the old music. And I didn’t want to get on stage where I was bad-mouthing (or pretending to like) some of the music.”
The father-of-six explains: “I definitely thought I had something more to offer. I didn’t want to go backwards for the next three or four years and still be doing the same show, but everyone around me was getting younger and thinking, ‘Am I the old guy in the corner here?’
“I was the kid at the station and then I became the veteran almost overnight, and I didn’t want to become the old grouch in the corner saying, ‘things aren’t what they used to be,’ or ( to) a newbie idea saying, ‘No, we tried that, it didn’t work’, which does happen. I just felt like I was going to become even more bitter and deeper.”
Yikes: It comes after the radio industry’s Rajar reported how Vernon has lost 1.3 million listeners since taking over the morning show on BBC Radio 2
New job: His predecessor Ken Bruce, 72, moved to commercial rival Greatest Hits Radio (pictured) in March after hosting the same BBC program since 1986
When Vernon took the job this summer, he insisted he just wanted to be “himself” on the radio and that numbers were “not that important” to the station.
He told The Sunday times: ‘It would be foolish to replicate Ken – Ken is Ken. My parents said, “Just be yourself.” I did Radio 1 and I never worried about the numbers because the boss didn’t worry about it.
‘I was doing commercial radio station Radio X and I was worried because the boss was worried about figures. Numbers are not as important to me as people think.
‘I like my job. I say hello to almost seven million people. It’s crazy. People say Radio 2 this and Radio 2 that, but the station gets 13.5 million listeners every week.