We know we shouldn’t aid what was already a fairly desperate publicity campaign for a new commercial station but Absolute Radio 60s announcement that records by Cliff Richard will be banned from their playlists is all we needed to hear to know never to listen to something that thinks of music only in terms of cool and uncool, like an embarrassing dad wearing his cap backwards.

Here’s the statement from Absolute Radio 60s presenter Pete Mitchell:

“His songs don't fit the cool sound of the swinging sixties we're trying to create on our new station. We believe timeless acts of the decade that remain relevant today are The Beatles, The Stones, The Doors and The Who - not Sir Cliff.”

Yep, those are the phrases “cool sound” and “swinging sixties” being used unironically in the 21^st century. But it’s the “trying to create” bit that exposes the lack of vision, ambition and genuine passion for music you’d hope was still present in anyone working in music broadcasting. I mean, you’d hope right?

Trying to create? Trying? How about just playing records you think are great and that you think your audience would like? No? Too radical?

This isn’t about whether you like Cliff’s music or not. This is about whether your music policy is based on a love and indepth knowledge of the era you’re specializing in, or if it’s simply an attempt to attract advertisers with an extremely limited and unimaginative playlist of records your focus groups have deemed acceptable to a perceived demographic.

Come off it Absolute, this is a cynical and witless PR campaign of the type Radio 1 might’ve considered a few decades ago:

“Hur, hur… that Cliff Richard’s a right old square god botherer isn’t he? Let’s ban him, hur, hur. Everyone will think we’re well wicked.”

What next guys, going to work without your tie on?

Look, it’s your radio station, you can play what you want (you are allowed to play what you want, right?) but to demonstrate such ignorance of the music you’re claiming to promote does you no favours. The records of Cliff Richard and The Shadows were integral to the sound of the late 50s and 60s. Cliff was making sexy-as-fuck rock & roll at the start of its boom in Britain, then dominating the charts with teen-stirring pop. That would seem pretty relevant to a 60s station.

But you don’t need to be told that because you don’t care about that. Because you don’t really care about the music you play. If you did you wouldn’t resort to a cheap stunt using an outdated and clueless pop prejudice. If you did you wouldn’t care about any notion of cool, because music is worth more than that. So why should we listen?

Cliff has spoken out about it, of course, because such things bug him. But he really shouldn’t give it a second thought. Theirs is not a club to which he should want to belong.