Radiohead on BBC One

Jonathan Ross has Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood on his chat show with Hail to the Thief already leaking online, and admits Kid A took him about 20 listens and is now probably his favourite. The general view of Radiohead, he puts to them, is sitting around picking scabs and reading old Russian novels; the scabs, he concedes, he added for colour. They accept the gloom-mongers tag. Somebody has to provide the music for murder shows, one of them says, though hearing it over shots of mass graves on BBC One was a bit unfair.

Ross tells Greenwood his hair has a Dickensian look, like a boy Fagin would have picking pockets. Then he challenges them to write a song for Eurovision. Back when Kid A came out, they tell him, they tried to persuade the record company that they would do no television at all, only Eurovision. He hands them a Tavares best-of to get them in the mood. Ross admits he only found them through Clueless, where “Fake Plastic Trees” is on the soundtrack, and took them for some sort of happy-go-lucky American band. They play it.