Jarvis Cocker records special reading of ‘The Shipping Forecast’ to celebrate 100th anniversary
Only two days before Pulp’s legendary secret set at Glastonbury Festival, frontman Jarvis Cocker recorded his very own Shipping Forecast.
July 4th marks 100 years since the very first broadcast of The Shipping Forecast, which the Met Office produces on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). This forms part of the UK’s statutory obligations to provide Maritime Safety Information to seafarers via approved broadcasting methods.
To celebrate this milestone, Cocker had what he described as “one of the best moments of my life” recording his very own version in the BBC Radio 4 studio.
Cocker praised The Shipping Forecast, explaining that it is “something you absorb unconsciously if you live in the UK. It’s been on the airwaves for over 100 years… Now, technically speaking, it’s a weather guide designed to help sailors on the high seas. But it helps people navigate in other ways than that. For instance, for insomniacs, it’s a mantra that hopefully helps them drift finally off to sleep.”
He added, “I think it’s known around the world as a go-to chill-out thing — before chill-out things were invented, probably.” He contrasted the sense of stability the forecast provides with the turmoil of life, which is never so stable.
The music preceding The Shipping Forecast is a piece called ‘Sailing By’. Cocker has obviously loved the Forecast for some time, as he picked ‘Sailing By’ as one of the eight tracks he couldn’t live without two decades ago, in 2005.
He praised the piece and the calm it brought him, stating, “When you listen to ‘Sailing By’, it really does feel like life is drifting past you in an extremely pleasant way. A handy go-to sedative to have to hand if you ever happen to become a castaway—or get cut off from normal life for any other reason.”
Cocker recorded his version of The Shipping Forecast for the Crossed Wires Festival, a Podcast Festival taking place between July 4th and 6th in Sheffield.
Far Out hailed Pulp’s performance at Glastonbury Festival a triumph, writing, “The world is a tough place right now, but for an hour and a bit on a muggy Saturday in June, about 100,000 people in a field and legions watching back home got to have a rave in spite of that. And it was perfectly empowering bliss.”
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