Easter Special
Clash of the Pirates Good Friday 12 noon Radio 2, BBC Sounds
It’s 60 years since the irrepressible Tony Blackburn made his name on Radio Caroline – and he’s been spinning pop, soul and corny jokes for the nation ever since
Tony Blackburn hasn’t changed – it’s the world that’s changed around him. For 60 years now he’s done the same stuff, spinning largely the same records, telling largely the same naff jokes, being irrepressibly, relentlessly, cheerful.
Close your eyes and you could be back in the 1960s. The voice is exactly the same. Still upbeat, in every sense, positively oozing good nature; Tigger at the turntable.
Mr “Poptastic” is 81 now – more pop than tastic, you might say – somewhat lined and hollowed, but recognisable as an older version of his cherubic younger self. Blue eyes still shine out of the creases, teeth still gleam white in the permanent grin. The enthusiasm apparently undimmed. Not bad when nearly all his contemporaries, and many of his successors, have not just retired but gone on to the great after-party in the sky.
It’s difficult to imagine now the early days of pop music. The BBC had a monopoly of radio in the early 60s and no intention of pandering to the young. Their idea of a DJ was Roy Plomley and Desert Island Discs, though there was a once-a-week chance of hearing Buddy Holly in between the 50s crooners requested by lonely squaddies on Two-Way Family Favourites. Most of us teenagers huddled beneath the bedclothes with a Bakelite radio trying, unsuccessfully, to find Radio Luxembourg.
Then, in 1964, along came the pirate radio ships, and along came Tony Blackburn. He was 21 then. He’d run off from Millfield, the posh public school, when they’d put him in the lowest stream “with the thickos, really” and told him he’d never get an O-level.
They didn’t change their mind about him, even when he became a household name – “When I was really famous I went back there with the Bunny Girl I was going out with and on the notice board was my photograph. Underneath it said: ‘Before you leave school, see your careers master. This boy didn’t.’ ” He proved them wrong about the O-levels and attained a business diploma at his local tech but was singing and playing guitar with a dance band at Bournemouth Pavilion and looking for a future in music. A television documentary about the new pirate radio ships captivated him. When Radio Caroline advertised for DJs in the New Musical Express, he knocked up a demo tape in his bedroom and sent it off. “I got two letters back. One said they couldn’t hear the tape. The o
