Yes, Lowe is entitled to his opinion.

Music Right then, so Zane Lowe. If you weren't watching Glastonbury last night, the main clips appear in the ITN montage above (even if the voice over at the beginning misses the point).  This is the first time in years I've watched a lot of Glastonbury and it hadn't occurred to me the actual process of broadcasting the music would be quite as exciting as the music itself.

The synopsis. After two hours of (I must admit) fantastic television as Beyonce gave a near perfect performance of songs by herself and her peers in the pop world, the coverage returned to Lauren Laverne and Zane Lowe in the studio and Lowe registered all the enthusiasm of a Vulcan watching his planet blow up, sucking all of the energy out of the screen.

Lauren, perhaps sensing that they were in danger of damning the show with faint praise offered a mini-review describing the influences she sensed and generally looking like someone who's been reining in her musical knowledge all weekend and finally taking the chance to just talk and sounding for all the world like Andrew Graham Dixon describing a Caravaggio.

You can see the rest of it above. Lowe's a relatively laid back person from what I can see.  He's probably very good on the radio.  I don't know.  Watch for the reaction on Lauren's face as they head off into the clip. I still can't interpret that.  But that's rather what we saw last night.  The difference between what people saw and what actually happened.  Cue Adam Curtis montage with footage of bears.

The twitter reaction was, shall we say, unkind and as the night went on, it was almost as though either Lowe himself or some BBC producer was feeding that back to the studio, with Lowe trying to talk back his underwhelmed reaction by mentioning Beyonce a lot but continuing to dig grave for himself (at least that's how it looked from this end) by not raising his voice much above monotone.

This was live television at its most excruciating as not a link went by without Lowe mentioning Beyonce and increasingly emphatically -- well emphatically for him -- as it became apparent the singer would be visiting the studio for a post match interview. By this time twitter was braying and also getting ready for the inevitable embarrassment of seeing Lowe having to interview the singer.

Then, seemingly without warning, we were told that Lowe had to go home because it was late, to look after his "babbies". For all we know this might have been the plan all along -- Laverne too left not long after the interview -- but for many people watching with a second screen tuned to Tweetdeck it looked as though he'd been yanked to save him and the BBC the embarrassment.

Some conspiracy theorists wondered if the singer's people had asked for him to go. I don't. But it is true that when his replacement, Jo Whiley appeared, she seemed slightly startled at being on screen earlier than expected (if it's possible to interpret these things through a television screen) but it could be that it was simply that she was suddenly sitting a few feet away from one of the most famous people on the planet.

Given the inevitable schism between how television appears and how it's being interpreted by us braying masses it perhaps didn't help Lowe that Dara O'Briain told his half million followers "it's how you... entertain... people certainly" Christ, Zane Lowe is such music snob prick sometimes" and then "Fun Fact: Zane Lowe could have saved himself the last, horrible 30 mins of his life if he'd just said "I didn't see it. How was she?"

Following a search for "zane lowe" (for anthropological reasons you understand) it wasn't long before I noticed a backlash against the backlash with many people suggesting that Lowe was allowed to have an opinion and that he was cool and whatnot and even O'Briain himself attempted a backtrack "By the way, next time I misjudge some tone on the telly, Zane Lowe is allowed laugh the longest. That's probably only fair."

Here's what I thought.  Yes, Lowe is entitled to his opinion.  We're all entitled to like some music more than others.  Some of Beyonce's tracks seem over produced to me, burying her amazing vocals beneath a morass of samples.  She's not alone in that.  Jessie J who was equally impressive the other day has an album which I find difficult to listen to.  I much prefer Laura Marling who received only a tiny bit of main channel coverage.

But as a presenter after the main act on the final night of Glastonbury, by the end of which televisual energy was at its highest and judging again by the on-line reaction people genuinely felt like they'd seen something extraordinary, it was his and Lauren's job to keep that energy up, talk in glowing terms, judge the event and act accordingly, not do what Lowe did, which was sap all of the energy out of it.

Perhaps the idea was for Lowe to be the counterweight, speaking for the people who thought Beyonce had as much right to this coveted slot as Daphne and Celeste turning up at the Reading Festival in 2000 despite the fact the crowd at Glastonbury, which was larger than the home audience for some programmes on digital channels, seemed to enjoy every minute of it and Glastonbury itself now offers alternatives at the same time.

But in this context, that's like Sophie Raworth being a rampant anti-monarchist during the royal wedding or extended sneering throughout the 80s on Top of the Pops.  I know John Peel always looked slightly incongruous introducing pop music, but at least he did it with a certain upbeat charm (or as upbeat as John Peel could ever be, bless him).

If as some assume (judging by what he said quickly going into the clip), he had been to see Queens of the Stone Age instead then perhaps that was the way to go for him to be allowed to talk about that.  Perhaps Lauren's love for Beyonce meant they didn't have time for that before the next clip played in and that was why he had nothing nice to say, in which case his "downfall" was due to messy editorial.

Perhaps many of us misinterpreted what we saw (see above), especially since apparently Lowe had said some nice things about Beyonce headlining on his own radio programme.  Or perhaps we have to decide whether these people are there to editorialise or simply present the clips like old fashioned VJs, which is I think, what was required here.  And now Devo ...



Update! Heatworld quotes a BBC spokesperson as saying that Lowe "wasn't even scheduled to chat with Beyonce, and that his transport home was organised well in advance and meant that he'd be off-site before the interview was even due to happen".