Is it possible that Martyn Bradbury was cancelled from his new Magic Talk Radio show just a few days before it was due to launch? There is certainly no mention of it on the Magic Talk website and Bradbury has been uncharacteristically silent for weeks about a show that he described on his blog as a “Sunday show on Politics, Culture, Current Affairs and UFOs.”
Martyn Bradbury is not a fan of cancel culture and has spoken out against it, especially once he realised that a white male (even a left-leaning one and a male feminist) is at almost as much risk of being savaged these days by a Twitter mob as a bog-standard conservative white male.
Despite his articles where he explains why Cancel Culture is a bad thing, and where he quite rightly defends freedom of speech, it hasn’t stopped him crowing loudly when his political opponents have been hacked and cancelled.
We joked here on The BFD that Bradbury might be the first to be cancelled before he even started, and the biggest joke of the day is that we were right.
One particularly angry person on Twitter blamed The BFD rather than Bradbury’s spineless employer for his cancellation. This was very strange as Bradbury himself has said nothing about his show being cancelled and Magic Talk haven’t said anything about it either.
Did we paint a big target on his back and put a glowing Neon Sign with the words “Cancel Here” above his head or was the target already on his back?
Hiring him was certainly an odd choice for Magic Talk given that they got rid of both Sean Plunket and John Banks for saying things less inflammatory than what Bradbury publishes on his blog most days.
Ultimately only one organisation had the power to cancel Bradbury and that was Magic Talk Radio.
Last year I was deluged with e-mails from people demanding that I cancel one of our writers. I ignored them as I don’t care what some nasty trolls on social media think. Media organisations used to be like that. They used to stand by their talent. They didn’t allow their advertisers to dictate who they could or couldn’t hire, but times have changed.
Magic Talk has painted themselves into a corner now as they appear to have cancelled right, middle of the road and left-wing commentators due to social media pressure.
Eventually, Cancel culture will wipe itself out as media like Magic Talk will find themselves with no one prepared to host their shows. Seriously, why would anyone these days work for an employer who lets a few Twitter trolls decide who they can and can’t have on their station?
As for Bradbury, he continues to maintain a dignified silence on the whole fiasco rather than discuss it and rub salt in the wound. If his show does exist it has a lot in common with UFOs. No doubt there have been a few sightings but no one has yet provided concrete evidence of its existence.
Editors Note: I rang Magic Talk on Wednesday and also wrote to them requesting confirmation that Bradbury’s show had been cancelled. I was told on the phone by staff that they could find no evidence of his show’s existence on their website and that they would ring me back when they found out more. As of this morning, I have not heard back.
Update: I just had a phone call back from Magic Talk 11.05 am this morning. I was told that the show was only ever “a concept” and is currently “on hold.”