There's a degree of irony that Danny Baker should be nominated for an interview on his Saturday morning show on BBC Radio 5 Live.
When I first came across him in the dying days of Radio 5, he was carrying out a typically anarchic one-man crusade against the closure of the station by playing Radio 2 jingles to confuse the enemy. When his boss confiscated them, he kept up a mulish silence designed to panic the transmitters and take the station off the air altogether, in protest.
Presumably on the principle of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em', for the last couple of years he's presented a Saturday morning show for 5 Live and it is his interview with Elton John on 2 January 2010 which has been nominated.
Elton is completely relaxed. Given the pasting he's had in the press over the years, it's not surprising he doesn't give many interviews. "My mouth gets me into trouble," he tells Baker.
He gave this one because he and Baker clearly have huge mutual respect for each other. They know each other because they both worked in record shops in the days when interest in rock music was alternative rather than mainstream.
Elton clearly feels safe with Baker, and the result is a completely natural conversation where the two of them chew the fat over their shared passions: music and football.
As a listener, it's as if you happened to sit next to them in the pub and were privileged to hear them talk. But there's nothing amateurish about it. There are no awkward moments borne out of mistakes gleaned from recycled news cuttings.
Baker steers the conversation, apparently effortlessly, from school days to memories of his early career: meeting up with other bands - Gino Washington and the Ram Jam Band, The Move and Georgie Fame - at the Blue Boar services at the Watford Gap on the M1 on the way home from gigs in the Midlands.
Elton doesn't duck the issue of the years 'lost' to drugs and alcohol. And he's interesting on the perils of instant fame and how nerve-wracking it is to go on stage on your own.
He's warm and engaging. In other words, the interview does what this sort of interview is supposed to do: it allows you to see what the bloke is like, by letting him talk about things he cares about. And if he was plugging anything, I couldn't spot it.
Bridget Osborne is a BBC radio and television producer, most recently of the BBC World News interview strand HardTalk.
