That Friday feeling: should the weekend start a day earlier?

In the Routledge guide British Civilization, the weekend is defined as “Saturday and Sunday” – but try telling that to anyone who has ordered a takeaway as they are leaving the office on a Friday so that it arrives as they get home, or has gone three Woo Woos deep into the Friday happy-hour deal at a Be At One. We all know the weekend really starts at some point on Friday, but when exactly?

BBC Radio 1 has announced that it is going to start the weekend at 6.30am on Friday, by moving all its weekend hosts on to three days a week, creating “a four-day week and a three-day weekend”. One of the big winners from the decision is Mollie King from girlband the Saturdays, who will now host on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Explaining the decision, Ben Cooper, the station’s controller, said: “Fridays are different from the rest of the week. You are in a better mood. You are planning how to have fun.”

If you have tried to organise an important meeting after lunch on a Friday, you will know that most workers have checked out mentally by then. Studies suggest that productivity and output on Fridays is significantly reduced, with one arguing that we are in weekend mode by 10.19am. Many companies acknowledge this by offering dress-down Fridays, giving out free booze in the afternoon or allowing employees to leave earlier during the summer.

Where does it stop, though? If no one is going to take Fridays seriously, maybe we should take them off completely. The Labour party has hinted loosely that it may start fiddling with the working week, with Jeremy Corbyn talking about the “gateway to a new settlement between work and leisure” in response to the growth of automation.

The problem is this: if we all followed Radio 1’s example and made the official weekend three days long, people would just start bunking off on Thursday afternoons. Far better for Friday to be an illicit day of sort-of-work and for King’s radio show to be broadcast on only two days of the week.