Johnnie Walker obituary | Johnnie Walker

Johnnie Walker, who has died aged 79, started his profession as a disc jockey within the offshore pirate radio period of the mid-Sixties. He was one in every of 4 pirate DJs – the others had been John Peel, Tony Blackburn and Kenny Everett – who got here to symbolise that point and continued to prosper in its aftermath.

The pirate radio stations, of which probably the most well-known was Radio Caroline, had been arrange on ships and disused forts within the North Sea, avoiding British regulation by broadcasting from worldwide waters and offering pop music to a British teen market not catered for by the BBC stations of the period.

Their DJs supplied a fantasy model of adolescence from clued-up older-brother substitutes who, within the case of Peel, Blackburn and Walker, had been former public schoolboys. Inside this dreamscape Walker’s persona was that of the smooth-talking child who acquired the lady. His theme tune was Duane Eddy’s 1960 American hit As a result of They’re Younger, which greater than 40 years later was nonetheless being reworked into the intro to Walker’s Radio 2 drivetime slot.

The pirates went on air within the dying months of Sir Alec Douglas-Dwelling’s Conservative authorities, and Harold Wilson’s succeeding Labour administration devoted a rare quantity of power to suppressing this sound of youth. The Marine Offences Act of 1967 introduced an finish to prosecution-free pirate radio on 14 August, however Walker might nonetheless be heard proclaiming the reason for freedom and the unreasonableness of adults from Radio Caroline the subsequent day.

Peel, Everett and Blackburn had been among the many DJs who deserted the rusting boats off the coast for a cushty billet at BBC Broadcasting Home in Langham Place, London, the place Radio 1 was launched that September to fulfill the demand that the pirate stations had recognized. The unlawful broadcasting had confirmed Walker’s place in teenage affections, however by the spring of 1968 Caroline too had buckled beneath the stress to cease broadcasting, and a yr later Walker decamped to Radio 1, taking on its lunchtime slot.

Walker was born Peter Dingley in Hampton-in-Arden close to Birmingham, the fourth of 5 youngsters of Trevor Dingley, a salesman for W Canning & Co, an electroplating firm, and his spouse, Mary (nee Waters). At Solihull college, Peter failed his O-levels as a result of, he claimed, he didn’t need a piece of paper to find out his path in life. So, at 16, he turned a automobile salesman whereas moonlighting as a dance corridor DJ beneath the title “Peter Dee”.

In Might 1966 he joined Swinging Radio England, on a ship off the coast of Essex, and adjusted his title to Johnnie Walker. A few months later he switched to Radio Caroline, the primary, and probably the most trendy, of the pirates.

Walker was a radio pure, laconic however heat, and anyone who clearly cared in regards to the music he was taking part in. His style was for the grownup oriented rock that dominated the pre-punk Seventies – or not less than its album charts – bands similar to Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan and Steve Harley’s Cockney Insurgent.

At BBC Radio 1, this introduced him into battle with a administration that had turn out to be enamoured with High 20-dominated playlists. The Bay Metropolis Rollers, in these historical instances the teenybopper rage, had been, Walker urged, “musical rubbish”. He informed callers put out by his views to “take a operating leap”. Thus, by 1976 he had stop the station to hunt his fortune in California.

He didn’t actually discover it, and after spells with the stations KSAN in San Francisco and WHFS in Bethesda, Maryland, he returned to Britain within the early Nineteen Eighties. He labored for native industrial stations till 1987, when he rejoined Radio 1. He then went to the BBC’s Higher London Radio from 1988 till 1990, when he was sacked for suggesting that the ousting of the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, would have folks “dancing within the streets”.

Regardless of that setback, his profession within the Nineties, with Radio 1, LBC and Traditional Gold was a hit. In 1998 he joined Radio 2, which by then was taking part in the exact same music he had been selling three a long time earlier when it was younger and supposedly contemporary.

In 1999 the progress of his revitalised profession was disrupted when he turned the topic of a traditional Information of the World undercover sting. Walker was videoed taking cocaine and providing to supply the “tycoons” – NoW reporters – with the companies of intercourse employees. He was suspended by the BBC, went into drug rehabilitation and after being fined £2,000 for possession of cocaine was reinstated at Radio 2. The NoW’s work had made it troublesome, the Justice of the Peace noticed, for him to obtain a good trial.

In 2003 Walker took absence from his present for most cancers therapy, from which he made a superb restoration. In 2009 he started presenting the present that will outline his later profession, Sounds of the 70s.

He was appointed MBE in 2006, and in 2013 he obtained the gold badge of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. His eponymous autobiography was printed in 2007. In 2008-09 he was an adviser to the Richard Curtis movie The Boat That Rocked, an try and recapture the pirate radio period.

Walker introduced in early October that he was retiring from radio after 58 years, having been recognized with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and introduced his last Sounds of the 70s present on the finish of that month.

He’s survived by his second spouse, Tiggy (nee Jarvis), whom he married in 2003, and by the son and daughter of his first marriage, to Frances Kum, which resulted in divorce.