It's all a question of motive for me. Techno is, or should be, an inclusive genre and should welcome anyone to it so long as they are doing it for the right reaons i.e the love of the music. However, if they are bandwagon jumping or trying to gain kudos by association and bigging up some underground credentials they never had then that's a whole different matter. I personally suspect Fairgies motives ("oh, have I mentioned Tony DeVit in the last 10 minutes" :roll: ), and even the briefest examination of his musical history will show he has never had any real love or understanding of techno, so any claims now that he is 'bang into it' are suspect to say the least.

However, personal views of Fairgie aside, I've got nothing against a bit of populism and anything that encourages more people to get into the music is a good thing in my book - well I try to promote a clubnight so it'd be kwazy to diss anything that might bring more people throgh the doors.

My main worry with Radio 1 and any other commercial broadcaster is that they have an obligation to try and maximise the amount of listeners they get. No matter how much we all love it, the majority of the techno we like is unpalatable to your average Joe, so they will always choose a watered down, more common denominator version to play to them. And this in turn leads to ignorant Ben Shermans turning up in techno clubs expecting you to be playing Darude's Sandstorm, (Techno! Techno! Techno! anyone ?) and then kicking off when you continue to play the music you've always played.

If radio 1 really wants to play techno, then they should get someone in who actually knows and has some history in the scene. Nothing wrong with the theory, it's just the way they put it into practice that concerns me.