Almost six many years after spinning his first disc, Johnnie Walker bids a heart-rending farewell to BBC Radio 2: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS appears again on the veteran DJ’s profession
Every lyric took on an extra significance, an unexpected poignancy. All those bygone hits were more than just a soundtrack to Sunday afternoon – they became an echo of our old lives.
Veteran DJ Johnnie Walker, doing his last radio show in a 58-year career, was choosing the songs that summed up his memories – such as rocking up on his yellow Harley Davidson to see David Bowie in concert, or early days on Radio Caroline.
But other memories during this affecting and emotional two-hour Sounds Of The Seventies send-off belonged to us, his listeners. Because the more Johnnie reminisced, the more forgotten meanings welled up in the songs he played.
I never thought I’d get a lump in my throat over Roger Daltrey‘s solo single Giving It All Away, or The Skids’ punk war cry Into The Valley.
I hadn’t heard them in decades, nor ever thought how much meaning was hidden in the words.
BBC Radio 2 listeners were in tears as terminally ill Johnnie Walker, 79, bid farewell in his final show on Sunday
After his show, Johnnie raised a glass of fizz to celebrate his final show
The veteran DJ began his career in radio nearly 60 years ago
(From left to right) BBC Disc Jockey’s Emperor Rosko, Alan Freeman, Annie Nightingale and Johnnie Walker
After a lifetime of taking listeners’ requests, Johnnie picked his own favourites with a connoisseur’s care. He opened with What Is Life by George Harrison. ‘What I feel, I can’t say,’ sang the ex-Beatle, on a track from an album whose title was also apt: All Things Must Pass.
Johnnie’s reverence for albums, now an outdated format, once cost him his job at the Beeb, he recalled.
In 1976, Radio 1 controller Derek Chinnery told him to drop the LP cuts and play only singles, if he wanted to keep his lunchtime show.
Instead, he walked out, prompting Chinnery to complain: ‘You’re just too into the music, man.’
Despite struggling for breath against the pulmonary fibrosis that is killing him, Johnnie, 79, managed a typically pointed comment: ‘They really wanted DJs to buy a Porsche and open shopping centres and just play what they were told, and that wasn’t me.’
He took another sardonic swipe as he recalled that Bowie concert at the Royal Albert Hall – ‘stuffed with the suits from Radio 2 who don’t really know much about music but they knew David Bowie’. All those collar-and-tie executives trooped backstage to meet the star after the gig, and ‘bored him rigid!’
Johnnie started out on pirate radio before first joining the BBC in 1969
The veteran broadcaster recorded the final episode of his Sounds Of The 70s, ending a 58-year career in radio
Johnnie has just weeks to live, following a battle with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis , a rare and progressive illness that affects the respiratory system
Johnnie with his wife Tiggy. The DJ, who is terminally ill, broadcast many of his recent shows from his home in Dorset
Johnnie was always a rebel. In the early days of Radio 1, other presenters spoke of him with a hint of wary awe, as though they were afraid that merely knowing him might get them into trouble.
And in a raffish interview with his wife Tiggy in the Mail earlier this month, the two of them giggled about how he had an oxygen tube up his nose – ‘in the old days, it used to be cocaine’.
I can remember him commenting mischievously on Radio 1 in the glam rock era how he couldn’t see the attraction of Page 3 girls: ‘I’m a bottle-and-glass man,’ he announced, using rhyming slang. Aged about nine, I was shocked that anyone could get away with saying that on the BBC. And of course, only Johnnie could.
Tiggy was at his side throughout this final show, chipping in with fond teasing and banter. The pair of them developed their double act when they were stuck indoors during lockdown – and now, thanks to his terminal lung condition, they were broadcasting from home again.
He calls her Tiggy Stardust, and played Starman in her honour. Rod Stewart left a phone message, to thank him for playing The Faces before they were famous.
‘You propelled a bunch of layabouts to overnight fame,’ he said, and promised to buy him a pint in heaven, ‘if I manage to get through the Pearly Gates’.
Johnnie signed off with the Stones and It’s Only Rock’n’Roll, followed by Judy Collins’ silvery version of Amazing Grace. ‘We’ve done a lot of living together now, you and I,’ he murmured. It wasn’t clear whether he was talking to Tiggy or us.
