Documentary #2: The PBS Years
My name's Sophie Best and I started doing programs on PBS in 1985 when I was a wide-eyed teenager and that was around the time I became aware of Mick obviously. I used to listen to his shows and he had such amazing musical knowledge and I found it kinda dazzling as a youngster just listening to this incredible range of music but also that very kinda husky voice. I just thought he had the loveliest voice on radio, and I just used to kinda get lulled by it, and so I always used to listen to his programs. It certainly opened my ears up to jazz and to a whole range of other musics that I'd just never heard before. And I guess it made me think of that music as being Bohemian and alternative, rather than I think in my mind I thought of that music as being something stuffy and something that your father would listen to, and it was kinda obsolete. And to hear someone who was youngish, presenting this music with so much flair, and so much passion, and presenting it not in an obvious way, like he would pair music up together that was not in a conventional way, so for a young person like me, it made me hear it with different ears. His programs made me see that there was a world of music out there beyond just alternative punk/rock. He played stuff that he thought was cool, it wasn't to do with prevailing fashions.

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I remember seeing him at station meetings, expressing really forthright views and um, bucking the establishment which I admired. I mean he also just seemed an incredibly cultured person to me in terms of you know his involvement with the art world, and his obviously fierce intellect which came through in everything he did, in his broadcasting and his writing, and in the way that he worked within the station. He was obviously someone who thought deeply and was very perceptive and had a great deal of insight into music and into broadcasting and into all of those things. So yeah, again I guess I admired him for having that level of engagement that was kind of beyond my reach.