was an extract from it in the Guardian last weekend covering her relationship with her sister. It was quite touching.

Bafflingly, one of the comments on the Amazon page, written by a "Jeff Haddock from Frying-Pan-On-Sea", reads thus:

I picked up this book whilst being treated in hospital for severe brain cancer. I had literally weeks to live, so everytime I put the book down after a night's reading I had no idea if i would be alive in the morning to start the next glorious chapter. I managed to get through the entire book and was completely moved at how beautiful it was. Every night I cried tears of what I now believe to be cancer. Night after night my eyes flushed out the toxins from my brain and with every page turned, my longevity increased a little bit more. By the end of it all I was given the all clear, and had also grown threee inches. Thank you Jo, your life has given me life. I would recommend this book to everyone and anyone, especially those with terminal cancers.

hmmmm. piss-take?

amaaazing.

The Crossman Diaries?

Radio 1 DJ in lightweight candyfloss memoirs shock!

why Jo Whiley gets such a bad press? I can't say I listen to her radio shows and so I only have occasional exposure to her. She seems a pretty competent and knowledgeable presenter whenever I do see her though.

Dear Old Joe,

She never did any one any harm. She never killed a puppy or hurt a kitten. She does however get paid an awful lot of tax payers money. I mean an awful lot. There must be a talent connection there, must there not? She must get paid a lot because she is very, very good at her job(not just a very light weight presenter who can string 2-3 words together who is also quite a pretty women). Over the many years I have observed DOJ (as we refer to her in these parts)I have observed none of this exceptional talent. She has a naturally fawning manner in interviews which must irritate the star as much as the listner. She is in the great land of the very average and the mystery is how she has endured so long. Some chauvinists would say that when her looks go then the BBC exit door will fly open, but not I.

Thank god.

Is she's probably a bit too clever and thoughtful to do the job she does, hence her awkwardness & tendency to gush. She's someone I instinctively like because I think she's one of the good guys, but I can't listen to her for more than 5 minutes, though I can watch her for a bit longer.

'I got Nirvana on The Word' annecdote gets its own chapter

And here opening ' Hi I'm Jo, I'm one of the presenters round here' at this years Glasto nearly got a remote stuck in me plasma. Nasty!

timesonline
BBC boss gets £8m pension from taxpayer

http://tinyurl.com/lntwmv

the session of Florence & The Machine and after one of their tracks Jo actually said "OMG". Anyone Jo's age who says OMG deserves any ridicule thrown their way.

no redeeming qualities, why must we throw..... etc

Ignorance is bliss, except when I try to watch something I might be interested in and her cretinous talking head is foist upon me. I cringe everytime I see her blonde slinty-eyed coupon pop up. I do not listen to R1 because I know there's nothing I need to hear, so maybe I'm being harsh in my judgement of her.
Doubt it.

yes, drink has been taken

Think it was 96.
The FPO and I were invited by the lovely people of Sony to see Jacko at Wembley. Our seats were surrounded by a plethora of the glitterati.
About 10 minutes into Jacko's set, our row was disturbed by a couple making a late entrance. Looking to her left, to see the cause of the commotion, the FPO exclaimed 'Ooh look, it's Marilyn' (She was referring to the friend-of-Boy-George-minor-pop-star-person)
I looked over - it was in fact, Jo Whiley.

..until Lauren Laverne's autobiography is published. Then you'll be sorry.

I'm Fairly indifferent about Jo whiley but even her regular/listners big fans can't want to read that much about her. It's like she's had a very varied career ie runner for record company or similar then worked for the BBC on the same show for 15 years.

According to Danny Baker,Stewpot's autobiography is the worst of this genre.
Anecdotes like "Went to a party,Hendrix was there,he was wearing a nice coat"
But Danny reckons that Stewpot devotes most of the book to talking about his appearance on Celebrity Weakest Link.
What a pageturner !!!

and that was bad enough. (I got it from the library, doubt anyone has paid for a copy.) He was fairly 50/50 on her, not afraid to slag plenty of other off mind.

There are many more reprehensible feckers than Whiley, who clearly loves music in the way that we all do. I also think there is more than a hint of sexism in much of the anti-Whiley camp, there are more male DJ/ TV presenters trousering much more money who are befitting of our utterly pointless cyber ire than Whiley.

I think it's grossly unfair to say she trades on her looks, she doesn't at all, and she's clearly demonstrated a passion for music. Her luck was to be championing indie music just when indie went supernova. She and Lamacq, then Laverne, were the ones who could talk about it with a degree of knowledge and/or enthusiasm, thus they found themselves fronting music shows. Bearing in mind the demographic this seems perfectly reasonable to me, plus there's usually a Mark Radcliffe on hand to appeal to fifty quid man. I agree that her manner can be irritating, but that hardly excuses some of the comments upthread.

she's great !

..then presumably that's why poor Steve Lamacq never gets a call. Sorry Steve, but I'm no oil painting either.

I've always felt that no-one, but no-one, should be allowed to write an autobiography until a) they're at least 50 years old; b) they have never previously sanctioned an "authorised biography"; and c) they have at least written the forward (minimum 3-pages not counting thank you's and credits) by themself.

So my proposed rule is that Word, its editors, readers and contributors, should simply ignore any autobiography that does not comply with these simple prerequisites.

Does anyone think that she actually wrote it?

Has ANY dj ever produced a decent autobiography?

Much as I love Mark Radcliffe, his memoirs are a bit hamfisted and ho-hum. The pages of awfulness produced by Chris Moyles should be a lesson to many and even the Andrew Collins trilogy echoes to the rattling of empty vesels.

Jo Whiley. You would, though. And I won't have a word said against Lauren Laverne.

A couple of years ago this forum resonated to those decrying La Laverne. I believe she was once, rightly, denounced for saying every fourth word as if it were in inverted commas.
She's rubbish on large elements of the Culture Show. Gets away with more televisual murder than Whiley ever does on radio.

... surely commissioned on the basis that fame sells ... and yes, a Radio 1 DJ book that actually went into the truth about This One, That One and The Other One would be an absolute hoot but the author would never work in radio again ... (something to do at the end of the career, not the middle) ... meanwhile, the publisher doubtless thought that a celeb DJ would shift a few units ... and it might (not here of course, but out there in the world, maybe) ... and in the light of all that, what's left to say but lists and 'I love my sis'?

In the great scheme of things, Ms Whiley don't fuss me much

a classic "Who The Hell Does..." from the old days. I even checked the byline to check it really wasn't Tom Hibbert

She's not very critical of the music she plays, apparently. As opposed to all the other rabidly outspoken daytime Radio One jocks who constantly diss the playlist.

I'm not sure why Jo Whiley's such a magnet for all this vitriol. I stopped listening to Radio 1 years ago and I'm barely aware of her presence. Yes, she's bland and she talks up a bunch of landfill indie like it's Mahler's Fifth, but why single her out in a landscape littered with Chris Moyles, Zane Lowe and George Lamb?

.

That she prefers the Travis cover of Baby One More Time to Britney's original seems as good a reason as any.

isn't she?

Mark E. Smith vs The Whiley. Only one winner. You need to start watching at about 2.20 (but it is worth watching the whole thing to catch some fine, fine Fall clips).

75 posts down and we are still talking about her.

Personally, I think she's an empty vessel, ha ha Mr Pop Star you are so great and funny and you are playing a cover of a Michael Jackson song, wow.

I liked Kenickie and there's a charm to Lauren Laverne.

She comes across as pleasant and sincere v Wylie's dimness and seeming she's just read up about the band in Heat or NME.

Peel used to make her look better than she is.

Fantastic interview with her and Rob in the new magazine. The groans of abject misery upon seeing her appearance were soon cancelled out by waves of cheering at the no-nonsense questions being posed to her.

Well done Mr Fitzpatrick!

I quite enjoyed her pop chatshow a few years ago, which may place me in a very small minority. It seems pretty clear that she's not stupid, and I fondly remember her giving Jonathan King a richly deserved verbal kicking on that programme. What some took for smugness I took for wry amusement - and enjoyment of what she was doing. Why wouldn't anyone enjoy being well paid for presenting music on TV, you may ask. Well, fine, but I'd rather her looking chirpy than someone trying to look "edgy" (morose). She got flak for not wearing shoes on that programme too. Why?

That said, I won't be rushing out to buy her autobiography. I'm sure it's dull as ditchwater. Let's bear in mind, though, that a lot of D-listers have had memoirs published with even less justification (and at even younger age) than Jo Whiley. I think at least some of the vitriol probably is because she's a woman.

was a little harsh. Why doesn't she slag off any of the records she plays? Erm, perhaps because it wouldn't be very interesting or edifying listening to her moaning about a load of mainstream indie and chart pop, and might offend and annoy listeners who actually enjoy that sort of music. She probably is slightly too nice for her own good - I am amazed that she ended the interview by agreeing that she is a bit rubbish and vowing to do better in future, instead of telling Fitzpatrick to get bent, which is what she should have done. But I would rather her bland inoffensiveness than the rancid boorishness of Moyles and Lamb.

... I think the problem is with Radio 1 / BBC TV rather more than the individual. The programme she presents isn't designed to be 'controversial' or 'edgy' - she's fitting the stereotype that her employers want to portray.

I don't think she's any great shakes, but I don't see her as a hate figure. We'll bestow that honour on George Lamb.... (who I only realised recently is the son of the actor Larry Lamb)

for Davina's it has to be a 'page turner' of non epic proportions:
BB
hair commercials
...eh....

Sums it up for me:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-World-Motion-Jo-Whiley/dp/1905264763/ref=sr_1...

The tone of the BBC Glasto coverage was relentlessly positive. I didn't hear much different from any of the other presenters. JW got a kicking because that's what she's usually like (apparently - she has never really made an impression on me). At least she was professional enough to stay sober.

The elephant in the room, though, is surely Cerys Matthews. There were several times where she was sitting in the expensive backstage grotto, banging on about how great some rubbish band are, in her size 10 wellies, with her legs wide open. You could almost hear the producer in her earpiece: "Cerys!!! For the tenth time! Close your legs!".

..for Glastonbury coverage. Jo Whiley for the teenage audience, Laverne for the Twenty / Thirtysomethings, Radcliffe for the Fortysomething / Fiftysomething Fifty Quid Men and Ken Bruce for the Faintly Bewildered, (his autobiography is out in September too).

..his Eurovision commentary was great. No ghost writer on the autobiography either.

Does she talk about the time she crossed a picket line at the BBC?

I looked at Simon Mayo's Twitter feed the other day which featured a couple of sniffy Tweets from Word magazine, presumably written by one F. Lewry esq. The response from Mr Mayo were words to the effect that if you, as a morning R1 DJ, get sniffy about the music being played and criticize it on air, P45s get waved around. Being that he was in the Whiley slot not so long ago, this should rather bring an end to the argument regarding Jo's critical faculties.

I still think Twitter's shite, though. Twelve months, Fraser. Twelve months.

Have a look at the kicking JW has got on Popbitch - various accusations of selective memory/date inaccuracies in terms of her support for early grunge bands.

What's wrong with a basically nice person doing her job? OK - I blush when she's on TV because she's so nervous but it's not a crime.

And it's not tax-payer's money - it's license money - there's a difference (ok - a small one).

She just has the misfortune to be a nice person doing a high-profile job. I hate to think what you'd all say about me if the fruits of my labours were on display daily.

Never embarrassing, always witty, and easy on the eye as it happens.

Norwich - and I'm sure it's the same where you live, too - has two warehouse clearance-type bookshops with particularly fast turnrounds of stock. I would be amazed if this volume won't have appeared in at least one for no more than £3.99 by next Easter.