ON MY RADIO

I LOVED EVERY MINUTE of my stint on the breakfast show. Those five shows a week are enough for some, but as well as two weekly TV shows, (Pop Quiz and Saturday Superstore) and Top of the Pops every few weeks, I hosted the review programme Round Table (aka Singled Out) and for periods Chart Quiz and Pop of the Form. Singled Out threw up so many giants of music on a weekly basis there is simply no room for all the stories. One rather odd show, though, was with Pamela Stephenson and Brian Setzer from the Stray Cats. While Brian and I were deep in conversation dissecting some new release, Pamela slipped under the table and undid our trousers. How we struggled. ‘Stop,’ I drawled slowly, without much conviction. The ratings did an about-turn as people tuned in to the audio romp. After another edition of the show, Phil Everly told me that he was staying in Walton-on-Thames that night, a mile down the road from my house. I was having a few people round for supper and invited him to join us for a drink later. We were still eating and had a good atmosphere going when the doorbell rang. A collective sigh went up. Was this the twentieth-century equivalent of Coleridge’s ‘person from Porlock’, come to ruin the moment? No it wasn’t, it was Phil.

To say the company was awestruck would be a slight understatement. But soon everyone re-gained their composure. My Radio One colleague Paul Burnett talked Americana with him, and with Shakin’ Stevens and producer Stuart Colman there as well, a few songs were sung. When the Everly Brothers played Hammersmith, Phil invited me backstage after the gig. Getting there proved trickier than I had expected. People were being turned away, denied access, and the place was crawling with security guys. Now it goes without saying that the Everlys are unique, inspirational and much revered and I could have understood such behaviour had it been 1960, but it was 1984 and Duran Duran were the outfit that needed protecting. I was eventually ushered to a small dressing room that I assumed was Phil’s. I knocked, and sure enough he came to the door. ‘Hey, Mike, come on in. This is my brother Don.’

Wow! One hundred per cent of the Everlys … in the same room. But there were two more guys there. One of them approached me and extended his hand. ‘Hello, Mike, I’m George.’ Phenomenally unassuming, but I do know a Beatle when I see one, or in this case two, for Ringo was also there. I re-did the maths: 100 per cent of the Everlys and 50 per cent of the Beatles. No wonder security was tight. I seem to remember Don giving George his black Gibson (possibly a J200) as a present that evening. I spent an amazing half-hour in that room and felt incredibly privileged to be invited. Apart from being musical legends, George Harrison and Phil Everly were real gentlemen who had so much more to give.

As well as the opportunity of working with the musical greats, the breakfast show brought with it a fantastic, and possibly unwarranted, clutch of national trophies down the years, with such accolades as a brace of Sonys and several Sun Awards and Smash Hits Awards being thrust into my grateful hands at various times. If I ever felt too comfortable, Doreen Davies, our head of music, was always at hand with a delightful early-morning outside broadcast at a time of year when the weather wasn’t particularly clement. Oh, and the town or city almost always, for some reason way beyond my comprehension, began with the letter B.

Bromley for example. I was a milkman in Bromley. In fact I was a milkman wherever I ended up. In Barnsley the sleet drove sideways through the float as I was given my instructions by the roundsman, who I rather gathered would have preferred to have done it alone and in half the time. A tough, gnarled finger pointed and shouted a number over the prevailing wind as I, gloveless and hopelessly underdressed, trotted with yet another two pints of gold top to yet another unwelcoming doorstep. By golly, this lactic sergeant major, with a voice like a rough-hewn Michael Parkinson, wasn’t making it easy. I was also expected to make my frozen lips move at the end of every song and say something moderately intelligent. I’m not sure that I did. Was there any heart in this fourth-generation roundsman I was assisting? Any shred of humanity? Did he never stop for refreshment?

‘We stop over there for tea.’ He nodded towards a terraced house.

I was stunned. I almost offered him my goods and chattels and prostrated myself before him.

‘I always get a cup of tea there.’

I was so overwhelmed by the moment I almost forgot my job. He hadn’t. ‘Well, go on then.’

I took the milk, rang the bell and was invited in. The lady of the house ushered me down the passage to the kitchen, where her husband had the kettle on. The back of an old pair of pyjamas greeted me without their occupant even bothering to turn round. ‘Put them on the table’, I was instructed by this strange northern voice, ‘and sit down.’

I sat. He continued some odd conversation in an even odder dialect. I couldn’t even be sure it was Yorkshire. It seemed to be a rather weird mixture, but he didn’t appear to be in the mood for me to question his accent. I hoped his blend of tea would be easier to swallow. I explained that we were broadcasting and that I was about to do a link to the rest of the country from his kitchen. That’ll get his attention, I thought. I was right. As I began to speak, he turned round. It was Noel Edmonds.

Another milk round, another place beginning with B. Bristol was too close for comfort to Smiley Miley country for me. Smiley Miley, for the uninitiated, was the guy who ran the Radio One Roadshow and my sometime nemesis, but let’s not squander words on this rascal yet, there’ll be time for that. So, as you can imagine, I had to be on my guard. My round this time took in some of the more unusual buildings and sights of the city, including Bristol Zoo. As an experienced assistant I was now allowed to deliver to some of the more important customers. The milk float could only get within a certain distance from the delivery point at the zoo, meaning that I had to carry a crate of bottles some 100 yards or so. No problem, I’m a big, strong chap. No Tarzan, but more than capable of holding my own on the crate-carrying scene. I was just contemplating imitating the old ‘milko’ cry that these cheerful chaps apparently executed in the days of yore, when someone beat me to it. Actually it was more a cry of desperation, as two characters hurtled out of the shrubbery and vanished at a rate of knots. It was only after they’d gone that the actual words registered. If they hadn’t actually shouted ‘The gorilla’s escaped’, it was something extremely similar. There was a thrashing sound a few yards ahead in a thicket. More cries went up from another location. My eyes, though, were fixed on the area of the thrashing. Putting two and two together I should have bolted, but I had no idea how fast a gorilla could run. I knew that a polar bear could do 40 mph if there was a raw takeaway seal at the end of the course, but gorillas, either in the mist or in the shrubbery, were an unknown in the Olympic stakes. In case the situation ever occurs again, I have since checked up on how a gorilla compares to say, Usain Bolt, and the answer is, at 20–25 mph, you can hardly get a cigarette paper between them. Mind you, you’d have to crack on a bit yourself to have even half a chance of achieving such an improbable and pointless feat. To be honest, in 1986, I stood more of a chance against Usain then a large runaway primate, as Mr and Mrs Bolt’s new arrival was having his umbilical cord cut at the time and I was, if I may use a little poetical licence, loose-limbed and lithe. The milkman’s guild, if there is such a thing, would have been proud of me. I stood my ground and gripped my crate as the creature came thundering through the undergrowth. OK, herbivores they may be, but if they take a shine to you, they can give a chap one hell of a ‘man-hug’. This was my ‘Ernie’ moment, with the ape, in all likelihood from the Rwandan Virunga Mountains, cast as ‘Two-Ton Ted from Teddington’. Maybe they’d write a heroic song about me as my mangled body was dragged unceremoniously away from the battlefield, still courageously clutching my crate. We’ve seen extraordinary images of the human-like behaviour of these great apes on YouTube, but I’d never seen one unzip itself before. Until now. This was surely taking anthropomorphism too far. Before you can say ‘Excuse me but are we related?’ they’ll be working as librarians or as customs officials at Heathrow. This one, though, contained a human being. Noel Edmonds. He certainly got about a bit.

While we’re deep in zoo territory, I was never more than a few hundred feet away from wild animals while presenting the breakfast show. My neighbour in Weybridge was Gordon Mills, manager of Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Gilbert O’Sullivan, also locals but not the wild animals to which I refer. Gordon had a private zoo with gorillas, a puma, Siberian and Sumatran tigers and other such cuddly creatures not a stone’s throw from my bedroom window at his house, Little Rhondda. If the alarm clock didn’t wake me at 4.30 one of the apes did, beating out a tattoo on his chest which resembled a drum battle between Carl Palmer and Keith Moon. My prayers included his safekeeping along with my nearest and dearest, for if he were to take it upon himself to embark upon an early morning stroll and present his calling card to his nearest neighbour, Radio One would be one breakfast show presenter short. I was never certain which ape was my wake-up call, but of the tribe of primates that were my former neighbours, Memba, Winston and Janey, now all well into their forties, appear to be alive and well in various parts of the USA. Presumably still beating their chests to terrify some poor American breakfast show jock.

Continuing to deliver milk to the calcium-deficient in places beginning with B, we sailed to the Bailiwick of Jersey. Talk about coals to Newcastle. They practically invented the stuff. I also presented several non-lactic and orangutan-free breakfast shows from the Channel Islands in 1985 for the fortieth anniversary of their liberation. The islands had been occupied by Nazi Germany for much of World War Two, the only part of the British Isles to be invaded and occupied. Despite a resistance movement, the period from July 1940 to May 1945 was a dark period for this beautiful archipelago, with some 4,000 inhabitants being sentenced for breaking draconian Nazi laws. Four concentration camps were built on Alderney, and 6,000 souls were imprisoned there. It’s reputed that those areas still have a strange feel about them. We captured the atmosphere in St Peter Port and St Helier as tanks, bands and hundreds of veterans of the three armed services took to the streets of Jersey and Guernsey. Old comrades hugged, reminisced or just fell silent. It was impossible to imagine their thoughts and emotions, impossible not to be respectful, humble and grateful. While in Jersey we stayed at the Pomme d’Or, where the owner relived his boyhood; he was a young lad when the German soldiers marched into his parents’ hotel, informing them that their home would henceforth become the Nazi HQ. In Sark and Herm, the reflection and memories were of a more intimate nature. When I first visited the Channel Islands in 1980, there were still families and friends split due to the ongoing conflict between those that had collaborated with the enemy and those that had resisted.

I’ve returned regularly to the islands, even being their Mr Battle in 1987. The Battle of Flowers festival had been inaugurated back in 1902 to celebrate the coronation of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, hence them choosing an annual king and queen, a Mr Battle and a Miss Battle. I was proud to be a part of the family, with previous Mr Battles including Stirling Moss, Sacha Distel, Roy Castle and more recently Gareth Gates, following a revival of the role after a period in abeyance. This Mr Battle gig was not a slow canter by any means. Interviews, float inspections and a host of other duties kept me busy for several days. The inspections of the floats necessitated some dozen questions a minute. I felt like Prince Charles, and certainly borrowed a few of his time-honoured phrases. ‘So how many flowers did you use?’ ‘Really, and how do you keep them fresh?’ ‘Extraordinary, and what happens to them afterwards?’ ‘Marvellous, and how many of you worked on it?’ ‘Amazing, so who’s the boss?’ The last question always guaranteed a degree of guffawing, at which point one could respectfully move on amid the mirth.

The Governor of Jersey came down to join me on one such excursion. What a delightful chap Bill Pillar was, or Admiral Sir William Pillar GBE KBE FIMechE to give him his full title. He was also a Knight of St John, an ancient order whose ranks I would join in 2011, and a veteran of World War Two and the Korean War. He and Ursula, Lady Pillar, rather decently invited me to Government House for tennis, supper and drinks at various times during my stay on Jersey, treating me like one of the family. I stayed in touch with one or two members of their tribe for some while with Bill and Ursula continuing to send Christmas cards. I was soon back on Jersey again, promoting and performing on Channel TV with their presenter Liam Mayclem to promote my first Betjeman album. Guitar in hand I wove my poetic way through a handful of songs and a good time was had by all. Well, I can’t be certain about the viewers, but Liam and I enjoyed ourselves. This was clearly the boost he needed. He moved to the USA to host the coast-to-coast show Tomorrow’s World America, and continues to be a major player in US TV.

Doreen Davies was always open to programme ideas. When I suggested Three Men in a Boat to her (see Chapter 5) she was onto it at once. She got it. She always did. Astute, inspirational, wise and never seeking the limelight. Peter Powell and I did Ticket to Ryde with 100 or so Radio One listeners on a round trip to the Isle of Wight. I did shows from Shire horse centres, stately homes and even a submarine. The submarine would have seriously troubled the claustrophobic. You squashed down a small tube into a longer but not much bigger one packed with sailors. If there was one thing I learned that day, it was what it feels like to be a Smartie.

During that period of the breakfast show I thought that it might be an amusing interlude to pretend I was learning the guitar. It was inspired by legendary guitarist Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day tutorial book and my idea was to deliberately get the wrong end of the stick. It just seemed a mildly off-the-wall thing to do, to get to page thirteen and discover that Bert was wearing cufflinks and that was the reason you weren’t as good as him, or after ten pages notice the guitar strap and realise that was why you’d broken so many instruments … they were simply falling on the floor. The only problem was that after some months of that, people didn’t believe I could play. At one of my group’s gigs, with Monkee Davy Jones in our line-up, a girl came up to me and snorted, ‘You were obviously miming. We know you can’t play.’ Although I’d been giving it my all for over an hour she was unconvinced, walking away with a final, dismissive ‘Everybody knows you’re only just learning’.

Davy sang with my group a couple of times and I saw quite a bit of him socially as he and his then wife, Anita, came to various gatherings when I was living at The Aldermoor, Holmbury St Mary. On one of these occsions he asked me if I’d edit and possibly add to a book he’d written, They Made a Monkee Out of Me, handing me bundles of copies of Screen Gems paperwork along with the manuscript. I read it, and assured him that he didn’t need any input from me. It was well written, amusing and spoke from the heart, but tinged with a frustration that none of the guys in the band really made any money out of a group that was meant to rival the Beatles. Davy and I performed a track the Monkees had covered, ‘Cuddly Toy’, on Saturday Superstore. I played guitar as we duetted and again someone asked if I was miming while a real musician offscreen performed. Pretending to learn was a reasonable idea, but I did rather shoot myself in the foot. It was a gag that took a lot of living down and I’m still not quite sure that I have. It did wonders for Bert Weedon, though. He thanked me profusely on many occasions for introducing him to a whole new generation of fans. He told me he’d been performing for a family function at a holiday camp on the south coast, when one very young child came up, looked him up and down, walked round him and then stared up at him, asking, ‘Are you really Bert Weedon?’ He said he was. ‘Oh,’ said the girl. ‘We thought Mike Read had made you up.’ I’d later play a one-off gig with Bert in a band you couldn’t buy or make up.

I also performed with Spanish flamenco guitarist Juan Martín, who has not only played with Miles Davis, but has been voted one of the top three guitarists in the world. Sure, I’d played a bit with him for fun on Saturday Superstore, but when he asked me to accompany him for a major gig at the Institute of Contemporary Arts I thought it was some kind of Spanish joke. Not so. He informed me that I was one of the best rhythm guitarists he had performed with. Reason? ‘You’re not the greatest lead guitarist.’ I can live with that. Accompanied by a visual wall we performed ‘Guernica’, inspired by the Picasso painting that he swore would never hang in Spain while Franco remained in power. This was no gig where you could have a laugh, smile at the crowd, pose a little and strut around with your guitar. I have to say it went down pretty well with an audience for whom I was off the radar. I doubt whether many of them had ever listened to Radio One or watched Top of the Pops. A delightful lady who I would swear had a virtual ‘Radio Four Listener’ tattoo somewhere and looked as if she’d deposited her trug by the herbaceous border for a second drawled, ‘Have you and Juan been playing together for years?’ More like hours, but I maintained the mystique, such as it was.

With the breakfast show came a series of one-hour specials with the likes of Phil Collins, Wham! and the Everly Brothers. These led to later specials with Queen and Paul McCartney.

For the show Queen for an Hour, I was warned that certain areas of discussion with Freddie Mercury were off limits. No one mentioned any specifics so I was told to tiptoe through whatever minefield I might stray into. No trained sappers at Broadcasting House to go in first to check the ground. However, all uncertainties were dispelled by Freddie, with a casual wave of the hand. ‘Ask me whatever you like, Mike, anything goes.’ The hour’s show has, I believe, been attached to various box sets.

The Paul McCartney special, which would turn out to be a much more comprehensive affair, was spread over a couple of days in the studio with him in East Sussex. Great vegetarian food, I have to say. We ended up with eighteen hours of conversation, Paul debunking myths, and discussing his relationship with John Lennon, the early days of the Beatles and how many of the songs were written, occasionally illustrated with a burst of live guitar and vocal.

Prior to travelling down to Sussex, a BBC informer tugged my sleeve and in a covert voice reliably informed me that Paul was a Wordsworthian pantheist. OK, why not? There’s no reason why a left-handed bass player shouldn’t believe in the pagan concept of a life force in all of nature. It wasn’t too hard to believe that he had Spinoza-type views and I reasoned that if he were indeed a Wordsworthian pantheist, he must have seen the light via the former Poet Laureate’s ‘Tintern Abbey’. Looking in depth at the former Beatle’s left-field animism was going to be a fascinating and illuminating part of the interview. When I asked him about it, he hadn’t got a bloody clue what I was talking about.

Recovering, I asked Paul about the first song he’d ever written, at which he picked up the guitar and launched into it. He’d hardly got into his stride when the excited tones of my producer, Paul Williams, became audible through a layer of supposedly soundproof glass. ‘It’s a first,’ came the voice, ‘it’s a bloody first!’

Paul McC. glanced at me but, ever the professional, refused to be thrown. It became tougher to continue after the door to the studio burst open and the aforementioned producer, cigarette cemented to his lips, bellowed triumphantly, ‘You’ve never played this before in public!’ I’d have said that there was a pretty good chance that McCartney was aware of the fact. The situation deteriorated as an overenthusiastic Williams grabbed the neck of the guitar and began to shake it, repeating his mantra of it being ‘a first’.

Even a world-renowned pop star can’t continue under these unforeseen circumstances. Like someone who’s been electrocuted, Paul W. seemed unable to let go of the guitar and Paul McC. seemed equally unable to shake him off. Paul W.’s ‘dead man’s grip’ made the former Beatle’s strumming sound like a muted, out-of-tune ukulele. The Fab Four had been experimental, yes, but this was taking things a little too far.

Paul McC. took control of the situation. Of course he’d known Paul W. over his years at the BBC and was aware of his eccentricity. ‘Paul.’

‘Yes … yes?’ He was still excitable but had at least let go of the guitar.

‘Why don’t you go back into the control room and do your job and let us do ours?’

He needed no second bidding. ‘Absolutely, right, quite right, yes…’ And as he’d arrived, so he departed, unabashed.

If for a moment I’d thought that Paul McC. was going to storm out diva-like at this untimely intrusion, I’d have been wrong. He took it with a grin and a chuckle, or something that was a kissing cousin to a chuckle. ‘Eccentrics, don’t you just love ’em?’ What a nice chap. Well actually they’re both nice chaps. It was a pleasurable experience making this special, which finished up as an eight-part series for Radio One. It crops up now and then on Radio Two and Six Music.

I was privileged to compere an elite lunch at the Savoy for a special presentation to Paul McCartney, attended by several luminaries including the Bee Gees and Tim Rice. At lunch I was seated next to a delightful gent in his late eighties. We chatted about songs and he asked me about Radio One. He admitted that it wasn’t his station of choice but conceded that it was doing a splendid job for young songwriters, singers, musicians and composers. Eager to let him know that my musical taste and knowledge spread beyond the top forty I declared, rather grandly, that I often featured an element of light classical music as a ‘bed’ when I was talking.

‘Oh I see … and you have it underneath your voice?’

‘That’s it.’ He caught on fast for a non-listener.

‘Why don’t you play these pieces in their entirety?’

‘Well, it’s a pop music station really.’

‘So you put them on and then talk all over them.’ I could sense the change in his tone.

‘Yes,’ I admitted, rather lamely I thought.

‘I see, these tunes aren’t on your official playlist?’

‘Well … no … I just put them in when I feel like it.’

‘And which tracks do you use?’

I use Coronation Scot a lot. Do you know it?’

The old boy nodded. ‘And does someone make a note of this extra music so that the composers get their money from PRS?’

I think I might have winked at this point. I know I wasn’t vulgar enough to nudge him. ‘Well, you know, when I remember.’

‘You will remember, every time.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said, you will remember every time. Not only am I the chairman of PRS, but I also wrote Coronation Scot.’

If only Sir Vivien Ellis had introduced himself before kicking me into touch.

Having said that, there were times when I was comparably wicked and, what was worse, there would often be an element of premeditation. Andrew Lloyd Webber and I set up one rather elaborate wheeze at the expense of impresario Robert Stigwood. Back in the mid ’60s, Stigwood had blown all his money on marketing and promoting a young singer called Simon Scott, who was cast in the mould of Cliff Richard. He had busts made of his protégé, paid for the front page of the New Musical Express and probably explored many other avenues in order to break the new singer. It didn’t happen and it cost Stigwood dearly. Unaware as he was of the phenomenal success that was about to come his way with the Bee Gees, it must have irked him that Simon Scott didn’t make it.

The single had been a small hit, but nothing to set the world alight. I actually liked the song and had recently played it, so hit upon the idea, with Andrew, of pretending that, after all those years, the single was finding popularity with a new generation. On the day that Andrew was due to collect Stigwood at Heathrow and take him to lunch and a meeting in Mayfair, the traps were set. I’d had giant posters made that had been strategically placed on the route. These were to be subtly pointed out. With the car switched on to Radio One, I organised with Mark Page, who was doing the lunchtime show that day, to play the single at a specific time. Stigwood was apparently speechless. I had it played again later. Andrew had been sent a ‘new’ copy of Simon Scott’s bust which was prominently on display during lunch. It was, in fact, an original from the ’60s. Stigwood couldn’t get his head around it: Radio One playing the song, new busts, new posters and a whole new marketing strategy. Not only was he baffled, but he still owned the track and wondered, as an impresario would, who the hell was behind this new campaign when they didn’t even own the product. I assume that the word ‘litigation’ might have been playing on his lips by the time he and Andrew hit the cheese course. What fun.

There are hundreds of tales I could tell, but too many for one book. However, I couldn’t write about my time on the breakfast show without mentioning one particular song and the stories that surround it.

I am genuinely baffled that people are still fascinated by the saga thirty years on. When asked about it (three or four times a week on average) I offer the choice of truth or myth. The truth might be less interesting, but the myth clearly isn’t the truth. A tough call for any media journalist or presenter. The truth is, I had no plans to ban ‘Relax’. It was a good dance track that powered along. It was well produced and had firmly established Frankie Goes to Hollywood in the top ten. I’ve heard some rather splendid yarns that involve Anglo-Saxon words at whose meaning I can only guess and actions that would enhance the CV of a demented cage-fighter. For these outrageous tales to have even a grain of truth, there would have had to have been at least a hundred people with notebooks and a variety of recording equipment squashed into the Radio One studio. They would also have had to blag their way past Reg, our commissionaire. Not an easy task; Reg and his ilk had kept the Nazis at bay forty years earlier, so upstarts from a red-top on a mission were a pushover. No, the studio in Broadcasting House that morning, as I ploughed my way through the top twenty, contained only me, until Adrian John glided in behind me with a brace of teas from the canteen on the eighth floor. In those days the chart came out at lunchtime on Tuesdays, and we always repeated it on a Wednesday morning, but there was never time to fit all the tracks in. I had ten minutes left and four or five songs, as I remember. I was pondering what to drop, when Adrian pointed out a phallic picture and a few choice words on the back of the Frankies’ record, including the claim that they’d make ‘Duran Duran lick the shit off their shoes’. Hmm, hadn’t spotted that. Well, maybe if I was going to drop something, I’d drop that. It’d be in tomorrow’s show anyway. I don’t recall saying that I was going to ban it; after all I was a BBC employee and had no power to ban anything.

In the meantime, the video had been circulated. My Radio One producer, Paul Williams, arrived home to find his two young daughters watching a couple of sections of the video over and over again, and was horrified when he saw what they depicted. At the same time, it had arrived at TV Centre and found its way to the Saturday Superstore office. Our editor, Chris Bellinger, told me that the programme couldn’t be seen to be anywhere near it and as one of the faces of children’s TV, neither could I. Directed by Bernard Rose, the video was set in an S&M-themed nightclub and featured simulated sex, urination and a few other choice scenes that of course they couldn’t show on Saturday Superstore or Top of the Pops. The song had already been played on both the radio and TV, but in the light of the video it was reviewed. The BBC, I believe, also took the overt advertising campaign into account. I have no idea who took the decision to ban it, but I know who took the rap. The Frankies’ manager, Paul Morley, quite rightly exploited the situation for all it was worth, with me cast as Wicked Witch of the West. Fair enough, I’d have done exactly the same in his position. The myth that it went from nowhere to number one that week is, of course, exactly that, as was the story of me smashing it violently against the studio wall or uttering a string of expletives that would have made Johnny Rotten blush.

It became de rigueur at any dance, disco or party, whether respectable or of ill-repute, to play ‘Relax’ as soon as I walked in. The expectation varied, apparently, between me wrecking the place, storming out, becoming apoplectic and breaking the record. I disappointed many an expectant throng by simply dancing – to the best of my ability, that is. There were erroneous reports that I’d punched the lead singer, Holly Johnson, and tales of heated arguments. Nonsense. I even gripped the olive branch and did the voice-over for their first album.

Twenty or so years later I was at lunch with some silver-screen luvvies at the Cannes Film Festival. As I sat at a table on the beach with a glass of something that was warming up as fast as Icarus’s wing wax on his attempted escape from Crete, a smiling stranger plonked himself opposite. But he wouldn’t be a stranger for long, for it turned out that we shared a page of musical history. This was none other than Bernard Rose, the miscreant who’d directed that leather-laden video. The chance meeting, a few prawns, a hint of Chablis, a soupçon of verbal jesting and the circle was complete. What made the whole thing even dafter was that only Holly Johnson was performing on the single and the group strenuously and robustly insisted that it was about inspiration. But then, as Mandy Rice-Davis might have said, ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they?’ Only after it had sold a couple of a million did they fess up that it wasn’t actually about inspiration. I saw Holly a year or two back in Soho and we posted a selfie on Twitter. Hell, we may even have invented the term that day.

I was asked recently if ‘Relax’ would be banned in 2014. I had to think about it. In the ’90s or first ten years or so of the 2000s, no it probably wouldn’t, but I had to admit that ‘yes, I rather suspect the video would be banned in the current climate’. To that end I checked it out on YouTube, which revealed that after more than one and a half million hits, the video is now not available to view. Maybe that will catapult it back to number one.

In May 1985, after five and a half years, my tenure of the breakfast show came to an end. There’s never a specific reason, these things just evolve. New bosses are appointed, new ideas are mooted and new brooms come in, ‘to sweep the dust behind the door’. The press eagerly raided their ‘damning vocabulary’ drawer and liberally spread words like ‘axed’, ‘chopped’ and ‘sacked’ across the headlines and front pages. Not strictly true, of course, as I was simply changing positions on the field of play. The main thing, as far as I was concerned, was that – for now, at least – the crazily early mornings were over.

I was certainly getting opinionated after leaving the breakfast show. The headlines were full of my immediate plans: ‘Bossy Read aims to revive tired Radio Two’. I’m surprised no one pushed me up against the wall and uttered dark threats. ‘They are doing everything wrong at the moment,’ I opined, ‘it’s all bits and pieces with all sorts of odd bods working there. Teenagers don’t want to hear Donald Peers.’ (Donald Peers was a Welsh singer first recorded by the BBC in 1927 and, unaccountably, still enjoying regular outings on Radio Two nearly sixty years later.) ‘The departure of disc jockeys like David Hamilton and Johnnie Walker have left the place in a shambles,’ I ranted. I made some pretty rash statements. ‘I would lay down guidelines which would guarantee Radio Two the biggest audience in the land.’ This was risible stuff at the time, but the vision I had gradually happened and the unthinkable occurred. Radio Two now consistently beats Radio One in the ratings. Always listen to the crazy man … you never know, he might just be right. I was always that guy, the one with the flag, first out of the trenches with more ‘gung-ho’ than actual planning. Do it first and think about it afterwards.

As it turned out, I stayed at Radio One until the end of 1991. I did weekend shows, I did evening shows, I depped on daytime shows. I fronted the newly devised Sunday Roadshows, which got fantastic ratings, but when my then producer, Chris Lycett, pointed this out to a less-than-impressed controller, the reply was, ‘Yes. Ironic, isn’t it?’ At that time I’d co-written Cliff Richard’s latest hit, featured heavily on Slade’s new single (their first top thirty hit for seven years), and was producing the premiere of my Oscar Wilde musical. These days, when multi-tasking is encouraged and is often financially essential, it seems strange that Radio One was suggesting that I should decide whether I wanted to be a broadcaster, a songwriter or a stage producer. I was having to choose between apples, oranges and grapefruit, but I couldn’t eat them all. What nonsense. I needed my ‘five a day’ before it was advocated.

I’d had a couple of meetings with Capital Radio’s Richard Park, as he was trying to encourage me to jump ship to his outfit, who’d got the nod that they would be given the franchise for the first national commercial radio station in the form of Capital Gold, their oldies station. Always to be relied on for a good sporting analogy, Richard affirmed, ‘I’d like you to open the batting for us.’ After two false starts, I signed up. It made sense … go when you feel the time is right. In doing so I avoided the infamous ‘Blood on the carpet’ moment when the chariot wheels of the new Radio One Controller, Matthew Bannister, scythed down several of the station’s broadcasters. Only once I’d leapt across the great divide did Capital decide against going for the national franchise. Great. However, the station had a strong line-up including Tony Blackburn, Kid Jensen, Paul Burnett, Kenny Everett, David Hamilton and Dave Cash, so all was not lost.

I arrived at Capital Gold at the tail end of 1991, in time for the station’s third birthday. Richard Park commented, ‘It’s great to welcome Mike to our all-star line-up. He has a huge following and his presence can only add to the success enjoyed by Capital Gold.’ I was hired to present the drivetime show, and I also fronted up Capital Gold’s Work Experience Scheme, which was designed to help schoolchildren to prepare for working life. This was becoming increasingly important both for London’s young people and for prospective employers, so the idea was to provide pupils approaching their last year at school with short periods in various organisations in order for them to get a taste of the working world and what might be expected of them. Hopefully people became more switched on.

That can’t be said of everyone at the station, though. On one occasion I was at an awards ceremony, sharing a table with a mix of sales, management and broadcasters. As something indescribable but creamy appeared on our plates, looking like a mass entry for the Turner Prize, the sales guy I’d been sitting next to all through lunch wiped his mouth and cheerfully asked, ‘Well, Mike, what are you up to these days?’

‘Me? I’m on the drivetime show every day from four o’clock.’

‘Really? Which station?’

‘The one that you do the sales for.’

My drivetime slot meant that I followed Kenny Everett. The studio, once Ken was done with it, was like delicatessen fall-out, but after a quick mopping-up process while Kenny said something surreal like, ‘Ooh, I’m going home to count my toes,’ all was presentable again. Kenny shared a passion with me for the Lettermen’s version of ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. Every so often he’d shoot me a sly glance, take a deep breath and whisper, ‘May I borrow it again?’ The problem was getting the single back from him. It was like tug of love with a vinyl child.

I heard the announcement that he had HIV when I was on my way to the studio, so I stopped at a florist in Oxshott and bought a small bunch of flowers. At Capital I walked into the studio with them. ‘Damn! You’re still alive. I wasted money on flowers.’

He teetered between the emotional and the comic. ‘Thank God for someone with a sense of humour,’ he said, and gave me a hug. It seemed that no one had come into the studio as they hadn’t known what to say or do. He then proceeded to lie on the floor, placing the humble bouquet on his chest. ‘So this is what it feels like to be dead! I’ll kill that bloody waiter when I get up there,’ he said, referring to the guy who he assumed had infected him.

When the day of reckoning came for Kenny, and one assumes a second reckoning for the waiter, Richard Park asked me to put together a tribute. With only an hour’s preparation, we dug out songs he’d recorded such as ‘Knees’, his TV theme tunes, clips of him on the pirate ship with Dave Cash, sections of his radio cartoon serial, Captain Kremmen, multiple sketches and characters from his TV show and some of the songs that I knew to be his favourites, including, rather inevitably, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. It could have been emotional, but like a funeral, you’re too busy to grieve. That comes later.

In 1994 Capital Gold overtook Radio One in the ratings for the first time, their share going up to 7.6 per cent in London, while Radio One’s went down to 5.8. Pretty decisive. The press release announced: ‘Drivetime host Mike Read has increased his audience by a phenomenal 41 per cent.’ At this time I was also writing a weekly showbusiness column for the Tonight newspaper, Mike Read’s Capital Chat Show, and interviewing many American artists who I’d never met. Among the most engaging were Johnny Tillotson, who’d topped the UK chart with ‘Poetry in Motion’ and whose ancestors included Oliver Cromwell, and John Denver. John was a great storyteller as both songwriter and interviewee, as was Roger McGuinn, who even let me sing and play with him on the Byrds classic ‘Mr Spaceman’.

Way before TalkSport, Richard Park laced the station’s output in the later part of the day and the evening with football talk and football commentary. In some ways he was a visionary; in others he had his own brand of leadership that wasn’t everybody’s idea of man management. I know that several of the broadcasters felt intimidated by his style. One DJ went to talk about a rise and emerged delighted to still have a job. Another, who had been at Capital for almost twenty years, was frog-marched from the station without being allowed to collect anything from his desk.

I was asked to have a think about doing the breakfast show. I wasn’t happy with that because Tony Blackburn was presenting it and, for my money, doing an excellent job. I was then informed that there was going to be a change round, just to mix things up a bit. Well, that happens, so I promised I’d think about it over the following week. I was still in need of some guidance when the day of the meeting arrived. ‘I have been thinking about it,’ I said.

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, I’ve already made the decision.’

Well, at least that shows positive management. ‘And the decision is?’

‘You’re fired.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re fired.’

‘But you’ve asked me to think about doing your flagship show.’

‘I know, but I’ve changed my mind.’

‘But hold on … my ratings are good.’

‘Yes, not bad.’

‘So this is the reward for working hard, getting good ratings and being a team player?’

Emerging from the meeting I was met by a sea of expectant faces. ‘Well, are you doing breakfast?’

‘No, I’ve been fired.’

Gales of laughter.

‘No, seriously.’

More gales.

‘I can’t even hang around. I have to leave the building immediately.’

Stunned silence.

I drove home listening to someone I’d never heard of presenting my show. I seem to recall one or two others left the building that day as well. Even before my somewhat abrupt departure from Capital Gold I had misgivings. When I started, the station had some six or seven producers, but by the time I left it had one. My main frustration was a lack of musical input as we were fairly straitjacketed on that front.

I drove home listening to someone I’d never heard of presenting my show. I seem to recall one or two others left the building that day as well. I won’t spoil the memoirs of others shown the red card by repeating their even weirder stories here, as those tales will be more credible from their own mouths, although en passant I recently heard from one senior broadcaster who was fired and not even allowed to collect his headphones from the studio. They were sent on by car the next day. In my book, not only does this bespeak a total lack of respect and decency towards a very experienced, much-admired and diligent professional, but it is bad for the image of the industry.

Even before my somewhat abrupt departure from Capital Gold I had misgivings. When I started, the station had some six or seven producers, but by the time I left it had one. My main frustration was a lack of musical input as we were fairly straitjacketed on that front.

So, with the doors at Capital Gold firmly shut behind me, where next? One place I certainly hadn’t considered was Classic FM, the national commercial classical station. But the boss, Michael Bukht, aka Michael Barry, radio and TV’s ‘Crafty Cook’, seemed to think that despite my pop background, I’d be ideal for the station. I was more convinced when he admitted that he’d already run a serious test on my profile and acceptance factor with the audience. It seems I’d emerged with a top rating.

Michael had previously set up a radio station in what was the Republic of Transkei, from where came a story that I pray was not apocryphal. Visiting one of his presenters for supper one evening, he arrived on what was a building site as the house was being renovated. It was already dark by this time and, unable to see, he stumbled into a deep, unlit hole and had to call for help. The host emerged from the house shouting, ‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s Michael Bukht,’ came the reply from the bowels of the earth.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m down here.’

His host looked down and allegedly exclaimed, ‘There’s a Bukht in my hole.’

So, I landed the gig, if indeed they called it that in the classical domain. Gounod, Berlioz and Bruch here I come. Admittedly some pronunciations went awry, but the audience were a decent and forgiving bunch. One of the highlights was the phenomenal response to the request for poetry. The two volumes that resulted from this response, which I edited, are still selling today (see Chapter 16).

My old Radio One colleague Phil Swern was brought in to produce a classical quiz. Nothing stuffy, you understand. For a start we were going to take it on the road and as a bonus the team captains were to be Barry Took and Tony Slattery. It worked beautifully, and it was fun and full of improvisation. For example, Tony would randomly start a classical limerick, I would add a second line, Barry would chuck in a third, I’d maybe sling in a fourth and Tony would dig out a stunning punchline. I was always asked how we learned our scripts! It was all off the top of our heads and wonderfully challenging.

We also ran a short series called The Three Fivers, a spoof, rather obviously, on the Three Tenors. Barry and I wrote the scripts, and while it might not have ‘run and run’ as they say, it was a delight to work with one of Britain’s greatest scriptwriters. Among Barry’s finest TV writing moments were The Army Game and Bootsie and Snudge, while on radio Beyond our Ken and Round the Horne were national favourites. He was also responsible for helping to bring together the Monty Python team and, rather later, hosted a regular quiz for us on Saturday Superstore.

One day I was dispatched to Jersey to broadcast from the 32-acre Durrell Wildlife Park, which had been set up in 1958 by the late Gerald Durrell. What they lacked in wide and high varieties, they more than compensated for with an abundance of short-toed treecreepers, blue-crowned laughing thrushes, red-cowled cardinals and lesser Antillean iguanas. We were looked after by Gerald’s delightful wife Lee, who came from the rock & roll town of Memphis, and spent the night having a couple of looseners with the Red Arrows, who were staying at the same hotel. As promised they altered course to come over the zoo the following morning and give us an official flypast.

One of the historical Classic FM outside broadcasts was from Rutland on 1 April 1997, the day it re-gained its independence from Leicestershire, having been absorbed into that county in 1974. Many doubting Thomases welded the date and their knowledge of my despicable character together and came up with … well, whatever they came up with. ‘A transparent joke,’ said those more inclined to humour, dismissively. Others turned on their heel with a knowing air and a demeaning shrug. I faintly remember some ancient don calling to complain that I was trivialising the gravitas of such an august radio station. I broadcast live from Oakham and the Old Uppinghamians partied like it was 1584. Even the school’s founder, the Archdeacon of Leicester, Robert Johnson, might have considered selling his soul at the crossroads on hearing the glad tidings.

The ratings were excellent, as my creative producer, Tim Lihoreau, and I injected classical joie de vivre into the breakfast show, but alas and alack, the station was taken over and I was moved to weekends to save money. At least my show was sponsored. The big cheese from Cathedral City was clearly a wise old bird who knew just where to place his chips.

‘How am I involved?’

‘Oh, you don’t have to do anything, we just play out a couple of ads each hour.’

‘Sorry, guv’nor, not in my nature to simply push a button.’

‘Well that’s all we need you to do.’

I say it was more through inventiveness than belligerence, but I decided I could satisfy both the sponsors and my professional pride by drip-feeding clues to a different cathedral every week. It was absolutely right for our demographic, and despite the long faces it carried the day. Assorted incumbents danced with ecclesiastical glee when their phone rang. ‘Ooh, I wondered when you’d get around to us,’ was a typical response from a long line of deans and bishops, ‘I have some clues prepared in case you need them.’ Manchester Cathedral fooled a lot of people, as one of the clues was that it was on an island, resulting, rather obviously, in callers going for coastal guesses. But, strictly speaking, it is on an island, between three rivers, the Irwell, the Irk and the Medlock.

I really enjoyed the station, but it changed when GWR took it over. The quizzes were repeated ad nauseam until every listener knew the questions, the answers and the jokes, such as they were. I remain baffled that no one has yet volunteered them as their specialist subject on Mastermind. The new owners of Classic FM also owned the Gold network and made a bold decision to remove all the breakfast show DJs on each station and have me broadcast across them all. The icing on the cake of the deal they offered was a healthy tranche of shares in the company if I doubled the figures. It was essentially a ’60s and ’70s station, and despite being shackled by members of the hierarchy coming out with inane questions like ‘Who is Clifford T. Ward?’ or crass statements such as ‘I’ve never heard of this track “Alone Again Or” by Love’, I managed to more than double the ratings. I knew this from other stations, as we all got the same figures, and our rivals had told us how well we’d done. Still, my employers dithered around pretending they were still trying to work out the figures. Needless to say they reneged on the deal, pleading poverty, as they’d just spent £27 million adding an extra group of stations to the portfolio. Whatever happened to ‘An Englishman’s word is his bond’?

Well, their answer was to get an Australasian in to head things up. ‘He used to work at Radio One,’ we were told when the Gold presenters and staff were introduced to him.

‘When was that?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, in back in the ’80s.’

‘We’re only in the ’90s now. What did you do there?’ It wasn’t so much that I had an enquiring mind, but I remember everyone that worked at the station. Here’s a tip. If you’re going to give your CV a little embellishment, don’t make the mistake of equating Radio One with the BBC. The station has always been a small family unit.