Carl Kingston - The Radio Caroline Years

Enjoy Alan’s Interview with Carl Kingston - The Radio Caroline Years.

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Hi Carl, what I’m doing is a follow up book to GREAT IDEA with a sequel called THAT’S HOW IT WAS, and following the stories of many International DJs like yourself and your passionate love of music taking you right through your whole career. Now with you, you have done the Swiss Clubs mainly and you’ve done an awful lot of radio but just I’m doing a feature article about Radio Caroline and wish to interview some of the DJs I worked with to hear your experience of working on it. Which ship were you on? I Understand there were five ships used?

No, there were only two ships originally, then later there was the ROSS REVENGE the ship that I was on so three in all.

When were you there?

I went to the relaunch of Caroline which was in the mid eighties onto the biggest Caroline Ship ever and anchored in the North Sea.

I was working at the Casino in Montreux if you remember, in Switzerland when I put an advert in Billboard magazine, as my second child was about to be born and I wanted to return back to England. And, I also thought about trying to get work in America so I put an advert in Billboard.

I didn't get any response from the advert whatsoever except a phone call from a guy called Peter Tait, who is sadly no longer with us and he called me, he was from Croydon, and, one of his friends, the late Dale Winton had been offered radio on Radio Caroline. So, Peter was chatting with me and he said “Looks like I’ll be going to Caroline, would you like to join me?” So, I said, yes, of course I would. To cut a long story short I had to fast track making a demo for Radio Caroline and I had to send it to a lady called Annie Challis, who was Rod Stewart’s manager and who was helping Ronan O’Rahilly run Radio Caroline station. I sent the tape recorded delivery to Peter who in turn gave it to Annie who contacted me and asked if I would like to go out to Caroline. So , I took that opportunity.

I cancelled all my gigs, and Dougal (Peter Allen), God rest his soul, came to live with us and he did all my gigs whilst I was on Caroline. Later, Dougal also, I got him on Caroline. It was probably the best experience of my life. It was just amazing. Earlier I did some work for the Dutch service of Caroline, Radio Mi Amigo, with pop music reports, but I didn’t get to work for Caroline itself. When Caroline sank, with Stevie Gordon on board, everyone thought well that was that, Caroline wouldn’t come back again. But, lo and behold it did, in the form of this incredible ship, the most powerful one of all with so many former famous Radio Caroline DJs from the 60’s and then new names as well.

Incredible because in those days, we didn’t have internet, we didn’t have telephones and things like that so,you would get mail from LosAngeles and it was unbelievable, mail from everywhere. I kept a small portion of the mail because I thought it’ll be interesting to retain all that adulation and feedback from all over the world. Just to feel the response from the audience about everything we were doing and it elevated my career. When I got back on shore leave to get back to doing some gigs and also did some voice overs, and commercial radio stations around the uk, they would recognise my name. So got better known that way too which increased my voice over work.

What I want to ask you, did you meet Ronan? And ,if so, how did you get on with him and what was he like to work with?

Yes, of course. I got on with him fine, he was quite a character. When he came to pay you, it was quite strange, he would put his hand into his left breast side of his suit jacket and he’d pull out Dutch Guilders, then he’d put his hand into his back trouser pocket and there were dollars!. Then, he’d put his hand into his right hand side breast pocket and he’d have Sterling. It was very funny how you got paid. I was very lucky because when I went I said to Annie Challis I am married, I have two kids, I can’t afford to be going and working somewhere for absolutely nothing and Annie Challis looked after me completely. I mean, I got paid!

You mean some of them didn’t get paid?

Possibly, well, everybody got paid but it was varying amounts. I still have the recorded delivery envelopes that Annie sent to my wife, Sue. There would be a letter inside saying there was more coming.

Was it always cash, Carl?

Always cash. And, always in multiple currencies. With Annie Challis it was always pounds to Sue.

As a DJ onboard were you free to play anything you wanted or did you have to comply with playlists?

I was free to play what I wanted. They had an enormous record library and I could listen to what I wanted. I could hear all the new albums. We had total freedom.

Just one more thing about Ronan, what was his style of management?

It was very much you were on the ship with the rest of the broadcast team. Yeah he was into the love and hippie thing, but you were allowed to do what you did within a guideline. I always observed to take care of the points each station wanted you to take care of.

How long were you on the ship for?

I did a number of stints but I don’t remember how many in total. You could be onboard six weeks and we always went out from the UK coast. It was a myth that we went out from Holland. We went out from Brightlingsea and places like that in little boats. That was the worse thing actually having to climb those ropes to get on board because I don’t swim at all.

Were you not allowed to be seen? Did it all have to be on the quiet..?

Yes, nothing was ever supposed to be delivered to the Radio Caroline ship. It was cloak and dagger.

Another thing is that Carl Kingston is my real name. When I started they said Carl Kingston is not your real name is it? I replied yes it is. I am not having my career known under another name. I am building a career I am not going to destroy it by becoming Fred Smith for a period of my career.

It was such an amazing experience, almost surreal I remember all those boats with listeners coming out from the UK being invited out to the ship under cover of darkness. You felt like you were a God but you are just an ordinary person doing the thing that you love.

It was quite incredible the adulation you got, the out pouring of love for Caroline, and the concept for free commercial radio. The only reason I left was that I was hoping to go to Viking Radio which was just about to start up. And, then when I was on shore leave from Caroline, I got a call from the BBC and asked if I was interested in a daily show, I said well I will lay my cards on the table I was waiting for another offer. But this was a proper contract and salary. I asked what was going to happen because Viking weren’t sure what their broadcast hours would be. They suggested if I had a concrete offer from the BBC I should take it because they couldn’t guaranteed anything at that time. In the meantime I went back to Caroline for another tour of duty, and then joined the BBC for about a year when I heard from the BBC they had a needle time cutback. So I left the BBC, Humberside on a Friday and started with Viking on the Saturday which was quite funny because they took me straightaway.

Where are you now by the way?

I’m in Basel. I have a flat here, retired now with a Swiss pension. With all the contracts you gave me I paid it into the Swiss system

Thanks Carl, some wonderful insight to life on board there, thank you.

Did you speak to Steve Gordon? He was on the Mi Amigo when it sank. His was the last voice on Radio Caroline!

Alan Lawrie with Gavin McCoy

Enjoy Alan’s interview with the one and only Gavin McCoy, this time on the other end of the microphone.

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Gavin: ‘It’s the Samaritans, how can I help you?’

Alan: ‘Not Battersea Dogs Home, I’ve got the wrong number…’

(Both fall about laughing not having been in touch for ten, fifteen years or more)

OK, Gavin, I am going to test you with this. It’s about the book, it’s not about Steve Cooper, it’s not about working in Denmark, nor working for IDEA. What it is, I am following the story “Great Idea”, about people who started out as a DJ, did international work, and then went on to other things. Some of these stories are absolutely amazing, really are good stuff. Now, I know you have some very readable stories. So, what happened with your career when you left the Scandinavian scene and went into radio.

I know you did all those voice impersonations and that’s very much what I want to hear about. So, tell me…

Well, it’s interesting because I had been working in Kristiansand (Norway) until the day I came back to England. I was loving every minute of my life there, but I secretly aspired to being a radio DJ, having cut my teeth on mobile and disco work. As it happened, a radio station in Wolverhampton advertised for DJs in Record Mirror or something. So, I sent off a tape which I had made in the disco; I had previously done some work for Radio Oxford, years before going on the road. Lo and behold they said come and see us, I did and after a brief interview they said you’ve got the job, this was 1976. You are going to be the mid-afternoon guy, which was fantastic. Interestingly, the money they gave me for professional radio working in the West Midlands, was less, far less than I was getting on the road in Scandinavia. So, there was a bit of a drop in income and with working on radio came far more responsibility, far more to do and it was far more demanding, so professional radio was quite a tradeoff to start with. So, between you and me (and all you readers...!) I absolutely hated the area, and I was a kind of an alien in that area as well. All the time I was just wishing I could be closer to my home in Oxford. Happily, after a short period of time, I got a job in Reading, at Radio 210. Such a lovely station, lovely people just down the road from where I lived and where actually, I met my wife to be, Ingrid, who was working in Reading as a teacher. So those bits fell into place quite quickly. I stayed in 210 for eight years. I was working alongside famous names like Bob Harris, Mike Read, Steve Wright and quite a few of the prominent names today who cut their teeth in this little radio station in Reading.

Steve Wright and I hit it off straight away, he had a comedic sense of humour, so did I, we all mucked around leaving each other ridiculous, hilarious messages, pretending to be somebody else on our answering machines and stuff. Just crazy stuff to see what we could get away with. Sometimes, when we did phone in shows on the air, if there were no calls coming in, Steve would say to me ‘call me up and pretend to be a caller’. We became quite adept at doing various voices, either crazy voices or serious voices, as phone contributors to each other’s shows, that’s where the voices developed and looking back it was like being at school and I was the class comedian. So, I was always imitating the teachers, imitating the politicians all that stuff. It was kind of second nature for me to do different voices. Well, Steve eventually got his lucky break and went from Radio 210 to Radio Luxembourg. There was a connection there because the commercial production manager at Radio 210, a guy called Dickie Swainson, had been the programme controller of one of the pirates, I think it was Radio London or Radio Caroline, back in the 60s. He became the programme controller at Radio Luxembourg so, very quickly what followed was, he recruited several people from 210 in Reading, to go and work at Hertford Street in London and thus to Luxembourg, to go on air and be presenters. There must have been five or six people who went from 210 to Radio Luxembourg. Then eventually, Steve was recruited by Radio One. Luxy in those days was a great launching ground for careers, and I am sure we know many of the guys on Luxy who ended up on Radio One. Steve was offered a weekend show, then was given his famous, ‘Steve Wright in the afternoon show’. At the same time in America, there was a famous guy Rick Dees, who was very popular, and who had a similar kind of a show, a zoo’s show. Characters on the phone coming in and out. To enhance the comedy, someone would pretend to be June the coach, or Larry the hairdresser or something like that. So, Steve said, ‘would you do some voices for me one day?’ and, I said, ‘yeah, sure, of course’. He said I can pay you for it, and shortly afterwards I got a contract from BBC Light Entertainment which was like seven pages long and I never, ever read it.

Every day I would be doing these voices, and believe it or not, I would get more for ten minutes worth of work on BBC National Radio than I did for my entire show on commercial radio which was four hours long. So, I didn’t say no to that, then just before 2 o’clock when Steve started each day, they’d say to me ‘What are you going to do?” So, I’d have a look at the day’s newspaper, find a little story about something that happened on the news and find someone that I was going to be. I said I am going to be a camp hairdresser. One of the characters I did for many years was Gervais the Hairdresser. If you listen to Alan Carr nowadays, how he laughs, basically, it was Alan Carr before Alan Carr had been born, very camp, very expressive, very OTT. So, I launched into that voice and people loved it; I experimented a with a few more different characters, some stuck and became kind of cult characters. I wrote and performed all the material for Gervais you know, for example his parting words every time he had been on, was the expression, ‘keep your tongue out’, he’d say it in a very camp voice. I was on a bus and overheard people say goodbye to each other and one of them would say ‘Keep Your Tongue Out’! I thought, bloody hell, I can’t believe that somebody’s using my expression. There were more like that.

Another character I did was, Sid the Manager, he was supposed to be Steve’s shambolic manager. A lot of these people are based on observations of real people by the way. So, I did that character who had a squeaky, irritating, protesting voice, who phoned in daily. I did another character called Fred Crosswell, a cinema manager and this was in the pre-internet days, when you had to phone the cinema to find out what film was on or look in your local newspapers. Imagine, all this was before the internet, back late 70s early 80s. This was probably around Radio One’s Hey Day, which went on for decades. Then I did a posh voice called Malcolm from the Arts Council, he was very pretentious. Every day I would sit in a studio or at home and would very quickly have to go from one character to the next. Quite frankly, it was like being schizophrenic. Even at the radio stations that I worked, they knew I did this, and very often I’d have an audience of people coming in to see me doing these changes of character and go from one thing to another. What would happen is, we would record these things about 5 or 10 to two, before Steve started on the air. No run throughs, no rehearsal. Steve didn’t know what I was going to do until I opened my mouth so, his response was absolutely genuine. Then the time would be ticking away until his show started, some days it would go really well, and we’d give it all out in ten minutes. Other days I’d trip over some words and have to start again so there was a degree of danger because it all had to be finished by 2 o’ clock. Quite often I’d be in a silly mood, and I’d put in some very rude bits, which the tech operators recording this would hear and they’d be falling around laughing, but Steve would get annoyed because I was wasting time leading up to going on air. Looking back, I would say they were fantastic fun times and some of the outtakes we made in those days, screwing it up, getting it wrong, saying rude and offensive stuff by today’s standards, are still on tape in the BBC’s secret archives. They get played at Christmas parties and by today’s standards are absolutely non-politically correct. We had a load of fun doing it.

So, anyone reading this book, will realise that YOU are behind it, I remember listening to the station.

Yes, it’s interesting because now and then I have to produce a CV of stuff I have done in the past and very often people would say “I had no idea that was YOU!”, we used to love those characters. Sid, the manager, and Gervais the Hairdresser were real people. Some people thought Steve did those impersonations. No, he didn’t, there were a nucleus of about four people who did the voices. Peter Dickson, who is a very famous voice over guy and I, probably did 99% of the characters. Such good fun and it paid well. It was exciting because I would do it and an hour or so later, I would hear it on air and would laugh at the silly stuff that I did. Some people must have a script written down, but I would just have a little guideline. If you look on You Tube for Sid the Manager, or Gervais the Hairdresser, or Steve Wright’s characters, you can hear how it went.

Let me tell you an exciting thing that happened once. One day Steve said to me, “I’ve got Paul McCartney coming in later” and he said, “would you come on the air live?”. I never ever did live stuff on the air, but I did this time. The telephone rings and he said, “Paul, it’s Sid, the Manager on the line”. (I actually have this on a cassette with McCartney’s name scrawled across it) I said to Paul, remember me? It’s Sid the Manager, I used to be a doorman at the Cavern Club, you owe me five quid.” McCartney played along with it all the way. He just said, “Oh Yes, Sid”, and carried on the banter. Paul was a great fan of the show, so even Paul McCartney knew the characters and he played along with this phone dialogue.

How long did the fun last with Steve Wright?

It was ongoing, the voices went on for about twenty years, even when he went on to the Breakfast Show on Radio One, I did the same stuff there. He’s on Radio Two now but no longer does those characters but interestingly, in addition to the character voices I have always been the announcer voice on his shows, and I still do them now.

(In September 2022 the BBC axed his show to the fury of his legions of fans and listeners. Baffling, why change a winning formula? His shows were immensely popular)

These days, semi-retired, I have a home studio, I record imaging voices for productions for radio stations all around the world, from the Caribbean, USA, Australia, Netherlands, and Norway. You know, the little things like branding for stations. Still do that work every single day of the week. Ever since I reached that so-called ‘retirement age’ I’ve never worked so much. I had this vision, like a lot of people do, of lazing around, drinking coffee, reading a book and assuming things would slow down but the truth is the opposite. I love the stimulus of creativity and doing something I am proud of every day. That’s what keeps you going, sitting down with a blank sheet of paper, and thinking I will capture those thoughts and write them down. I don’t think about myself as a pensioner. When I hear about pensioners on TV, they are talking about someone else. I am only 37 years old!

Do you still have a love of music?

Absolutely. Whenever I hear a song from a certain era I automatically think of where I was working at the time. I might hear “Love Train” by the OJAYS, now that was a Dance Floor filler at the Fregatten Hotel in Kristiansand. Having played millions of songs as a radio personality on the air and in discotheques, my emotional connection always goes back to Motown, the Philly Sound and Atlantic Soul so, if it’s Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual healing’, all that great music still resonates with me.

So, Gavin, any regrets?

You know, interestingly, during the toughest times of radio, like on breakfast shows on big stations up and down the country, Essex FM 210 Reading, quite stressful, I would very often think, bloody Hell, I wish I was back in Scandinavia again, because you start work at 8 pm, finish at midnight and have a great social life. The best part of it was when in Kristiansand, my friends Trevor White and Pip Hammond would be working in a hotel down the road and Richard White would be at the Phoenix Hotel in Arendal.

So, there would be English disc jockeys there along the coast from Mandal and one of them would have a car so, we would meet up and mess around all day long, talking about this that and the other; those days were fantastic. You know, at the toughest times on radio I would think to myself what the hell am I doing this for? I could have twice as much money, no pressure, all the freedom in the world and enjoying a foreign country…so that was often a regret. Then looking back, I was driven to getting a job on radio, but I could have waited another couple of years really and saved a bit more money and had a bit more fun.

(That idyllic, dream working lifestyle, didn’t last long Gavin. Licences in Norway extended, so DJs worked up to 3 am. Days per week were cut back, Quizzes, Live Sport on the big screen, Karaoke etc. changed the importance of entertainment through the DJ, not only in Norway but throughout Europe.) Back to the interview!

So, what was your absolute high? I would have thought it was your fun with Steve Wright.

Yes, he’s still my best mate now, I’m having lunch with him tomorrow. We’ve been best friends for forty odd years. From being on air as a presenter, I became Head of Music, the Deputy Programme Controller, then off on a management career where I became Head of Capital Gold in London. I was also Head of Smooth Radio in London and Head of presentation for Saga’s National Prime Time Radio. So, you see, the second half of my career was in Management. Then technology and everything changed around me. Very often they would say things like ‘We are not going to continue our radio station in London, we are moving to Manchester’ and I was thinking I don’t really want to go to Manchester, I want to be in the Southeast or whatever. The Radio industry changed very quickly because of the introduction of technology. Then along came the takeovers. The independence of small, radio station disappeared. Everything was run from Head Office and there was consolidation, back biting, pressure and all those things that came with it.

You know what would happen, on a Friday we would be told a new company was taking over the radio station and then on Monday we would get a memo saying “Dear Staff, just to reassure you we love everything you are doing; we are very happy to take over Radio “Whatever it was” …blah blah. Don’t worry, everybody’s job is secure”, which would be posted on the noticeboard on Friday, and then on Monday there would be another notice that said, “Dear Staff, we are going to talk to everyone today about redundancies”. You know, shrinking the numbers of the staff, and that happened so many times with the consolidation of the radio industry. You’d go home on a Friday night and wonder if you still had a job on the Monday. So, my big regret then would be, if you put all your faith in one employer you are making a big mistake. You’ve got to diversify and have some other income stream.

You’ve proved that you are still doing what you love to do from your home studio.

I don’t have to work, I don’t need the income, but I do need the stimulus, the challenge, and the excitement. I absolutely love sitting here in my home radio studio, making stuff and the challenge of someone saying could you make me this and two days later I would play it to them, and they say wow that’s fantastic. That’s better than I thought it would be.

Looking back, I will always be in your debt, Alan. There were great gigs and dream venues like Fregatten Hotel, then on the other side, shitty venues with shitty managers. That’s how it was!

I will always remember your stay at Liseleje Strand Hotel, (North Sjaelland, Denmark.) …and that awful manager.

That was my low spot. Not only now, but it was one of those places that was not busy, as they were doing renovations to the club and to get to my bedroom I had to climb over a big pile of rubble. In my bedroom, there was no running water. The toilet? If I wanted a wee in the middle of the night, I had to get up and get fully dressed again, climb back over that big pile of rubbish, open the door to this disco venue say at twelve o clock at night, I had to walk through this public area to get to the loos in this venue. The Discotheque was downstairs. The DJ booth had two layers of thick glass, so you had no contact with the guests and when you spoke into the microphone it sounded like speech in a swimming pool, as if you had a hand over your mouth and the music was like that as well.

From there the only was UP!

Thank you, Gavin - that’s a great interview, “Long May You Run”.

Keep Your Tongue Out, Alan!

Richard Blade Interview

An Interview with Richard Blade in Los Angeles

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I’m on my second book as a follow up to GREAT IDEA and its called That’s how it was and I am following the careers of International DJs with their love of music and what happened throughout their career and I’ve got some fascinating stories, I’ve got guys from Radio Caroline, one of them on the ship when it sank, some amazing stories, your story is amazing too so what I want to ask you first you were in Scandinavia because I remember that and I met you when you were Dick Sheppard you went to America fairly early.

I went to America in November 1976.

What were the reasons? Fame and Fortune? California sun, California girls?

All of the above - Fame, Fortune, Blue Skies and California girls!

Well, that is a good enough reason. Obviously the first thing you did was to try to make your name as a DJ and you were different you were English; you clearly got a lot of work and then you obviously became very well known on the circuit and started to compere gigs with bands and host shows. From the DJ bit what happened then?

When I first came to America it was to get into radio and that’s why I chose America because they had so many radio stations. It was also important the country be English-speaking as my gift for languages is very limited. That meant my list included America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. But my top choices were America or Australia. When I first arrived here I immediately tried to get a radio gig and I knocked on all the doors of stations in L.A. and was refused every single time. They said you will never work in this town with your accent, English DJs weren’t popular at the time, so I continued DJ’ing in clubs - disco was just starting in Southern California at the time. There were very few discos and no pub scene, no pubs at all over here. I found out about a restaurant chain that was putting a brand-new disco into one of their locations - and looking for a DJ. I went down and auditioned, and got the job. The club took off and everyone was happy. Then Hollywood intervened and Saturday Night Fever opened and that was the moment everything changed in America. It seemed everyone wanted to be a part of the disco scene and even have their own disco party at home. With that, mobile discos began over here, and I started doing a few on the side - people in the club would like the music and would say, hey, can you DJ a party for me?

I started doing a few of those and I got asked by a caterer if I would DJ a party for a client of hers, but she couldn’t tell me the name of the client but would meet her in Malibu? So I caravanned over and followed her car and went to this house outside of Malibu, a place called Paradise Cove and the person turned out to be Barbra Streisand. It was to be her son’s Bar Mitzvah, Jason Gould, who she had when she was together with Elliot Gould. It was a star-studded event and it seemed everyone who was hot was there, you know, Larry Hagman, Donna Summer, Neil Diamond, James Caan – almost half of Hollywood showed up so I got a lot of referrals for ‘the guy who DJ’d Barbra Streisand’s party. Larry Hagman booked me to DJ the wrap party for DALLAS - now I know who shot JR! I did a bunch of parties and premieres for Paramount Pictures, and did a lot of other Bar Mitzvahs for wealthy people’s kids, and a number of parties for Michael Jackson.

It got to the point where I had so many bookings that I left DJ’ing clubs and bought myself a mobile system; my dad ordered me a Roger Squires mobile DJ console and shipped over to me along with a little Citronic outfit, so I was DJ’ing with that, and things were booming but it wasn’t why I had come to the States, I still wanted to get into radio. I was constantly making audition tapes and sending them out and getting nowhere. Then there was contest held in the Spring of 1980 by K-WEST, a rock station, to find the best unsigned DJ. I put together a new tape and sent it in and I was one of the two winners they picked and was given an hour to do a show on the radio and while I was on air they taped it for me. I made copies of the tape and mailed it out and suddenly, three days later, I got a call with the offer of a job in Bakersfield. This is what I had been after, so I quit everything and moved to Bakersfield and did a year there on a hard-rock station – KMGN, Magic 98 FM, as their music director and initially, their evening jock. I went from being Disco Dick Sheppard to going into this rock station. I needed to be sure what they were looking for if I was to be music director, and asked what the criteria was for adding music and they dropped the needle on on Ted Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo album, - and played me the track ‘Wang Dang Sweet Poontang!’ and said, this is as mellow as we get!

That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?

It was crazy. We literally could not play “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin during the night because it was too mellow. We only could play it during the day. It was called dayparting. At night times it was just balls to the wall, Van Halen, AC/DC, Ted Nugent, Black Sabbath, Ozzie Osbourne, Motorhead – the kind of music to keep your neighbours awake all night!

Did you know the repertoire or just picked it up quickly?

Didn't know it at all, I just had to listen to it and learn. But that was OK as it was part of my education into American radio. I spent 12 - 14 hours a day at the station learning everything I could, how to produce commercials, how go on sales calls with sales people so I could see how that works and basically find out how all the equipment functioned. I wanted to know how the tape cartridges loaded, the instant start decks worked, rather that the Technics or Garrard turntables I was used to. I gave myself a deadline, I’ll be there for a year and pay my dues then go back and try to make it in L.A. I told the owners this, that in twelve months I’d be leaving, because Bakersfield is a place you don’t want to be in. It really is a shithole. After the year was up, our ratings were great. And by then I had been promoted to morning guy and program director. When I gave them my notice they didn’t believe me. I said I told you I would only be here one year. That’s it, I want to go back to L.A. and make it there. And they said, we have other stations including one on the coast, San Luis Obispo, that’s going for its very first ratings period and we would like you to go there as program director and morning DJ and get us through that rating period. Would you do it? I said, no, not interested. That was because Bakersfield is the 70th market in America and San Luis Obispo was the 150th and it would mean I was stepping down in rank, which is a big no-no.

**I did a little research here as to how radio stations are rated, this is what I found:

Nielsen rates 210 radio DMAs or designated market areas in the United States. New York City is number one. Glendive, Montana in number 210. These market designations change from year to year and are typically available for free online. So it’s fairly easy then to determine if a radio station is in a rated market.

AQH stands for average quarter hour persons. That’s the number of different people listening to a radio station for at least five minutes during a 15 minute period. AQH is the best number to use when trying to determine how many people will actually hear your commercial.

So it’s easy to figure out whether a radio station is in a rated market

I told them I had to move up. It’s the only way I could go. They said what you don’t understand is we will give you a raise and you will be PD and morning drive there, but I repeated it was a step down. They countered with, let’s fly you to San Luis Obispo and you can take a look at the station. Now that sounded fun, I’d never been on a private plane before. Okay, I told them, I’ll take a look. The flight was only 40 minutes and it was a Piper Cub not a jet, but cruising over the mountains to the Pacific was pretty cool. After we landed they drove me to the station. It was a cool little station, better than Bakersfield. It had all the latest gear, everything you needed to do a good radio show. I met with everyone and they had a consultant, Mark Driscoll, a big DJ formerly from New York, to help me and he had been there already for a few weeks. He invited me out to lunch and we walked through this little town, and it’s a California Beach town – I was no longer in the desert - and when I was walking, all I could see were lovely cute girls packing the street. I sat down with Mark and asked him what the deal was with all the hot blondes? Well, he said they go to CAL POLY which is the big university on the central coast. He continued, “And you know the KZOZ is the only rock station on the entire coast. Our only rival is the big country station (KSLY) and they are a monster! They are the one we are going up against.

(Incidentally, there are over one thousand listed licensed radio stations in California alone).

**You might also wonder why American Licensed Radio Stations have a K or W prefix?

Why? Because the government said so.

In the days of the telegraph, operators started the practice of using short letter sequences as identifiers, referring to them as call letters or call signs. Early radio operators continued the practice, but without a central authority assigning call letters, radio operators often chose letters already in use, leading to confusion.

To alleviate the problem, the Bureau of Navigation (part of the Department of Commerce) began assigning three-letter call signs to American ships in the early 1910s. Ships in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico got a K prefix; in the Pacific and the Great Lakes, a W. The precise reasons for choosing these two letters, if there were any, are unknown (bureaucracy works in mysterious ways). At the 1912 London International Radiotelegraphic Convention, ranges of letters were assigned to each of the participating nations and the U.S. was told to keep using the W and most of the K range. (Military stations used N.

When the federal government began licensing commercial radio stations soon after, it had planned to assign call letters to the land-based stations in the same way. Somehow, things got flipped during implementation, though, and Eastern stations got W call signs and the Western ones got Ks. Where exactly does the Bureau of Navigation draw the line between East and West? For a while it ran north along state borders from the Texas-New Mexico border, but shifted in 1923 to follow the Mississippi River.

Some areas, however, might have both a K and W station in the same vicinity. Why? When the dividing line switched, some stations were made to change their call signs, while others weren't. For about a year in the 1920s, the Bureau of Navigation decided that all new stations were going to get a K call sign no matter where they were located. Still other exceptions were made by special request, station relocations, ownership changes, and even human error.

Now you know, anyway back to the interview with Richard.

I thought about Mark’s words, that I was being asked to be the morning guy on the only rock station in a beach town where all the girls between the ages of 18 to 24 are going to be listening to my station. It was a no-brainer. OK, I’ll do it. I’ll stay here for six months to get KZOZ through the first ratings period. We had 90 days to gear up and then 90 days of ratings. The ratings would come out in February and the goal was to get a 5 rating and come in number two to KSLY, the big country monster that had been around forever. There was no doubt they would dominate the ratings book, but if we could just get a good showing, all would be good. I wanted to get our station’s name out there – Z93 – so I put together a big promotion with DATSUN, now NISSAN. I went to the local Datsun dealership and basically sold our souls and promised them they’d be on the air every hour for six months if they would give us a Datsun Z – their sports car, to give away. And, they said OK, we’ll do it. I had two hundred thousand bumper stickers printed and started an on-air campaign, ‘Win a Z from Z93’ which caught on quickly, and so all over California’s central coast, people were sticking on our bumper stickers and they would listen at certain set times and we would announce the license plate numbers for them to call in within 15 minutes, and if they did, they would be put into the draw. It seemed that winter every car had a Z93 sticker on it. We had a winner and gave away the car, the New Year rolled around and we nervously waited for the ratings to come out. I remember the day really well; I was just getting off the air and the call from Rogers Brandon - that was his name - Rogers Brandon, who owned the station, came. I asked ‘Did we come in number two to KSLY?’ ‘No, no you didn’t,’ he replied. Shit I thought, but before I could say anything and apologise, he cut in with, ‘You came in Number One. We are Number One in the market. We wanted a 5, but that’s what KSLY got. We got a 27!” I was speechless as Rogers continued, ‘This is going to be so great for us. We are the Number One station on the entire Central Coast going into this sales period. Everyone’s going to get a bonus, it’s going to be a fantastic time for all of us.’

I didn’t want to kill his excitement but I had to say, ‘Well, I wish you luck with it.’

He said, ‘What do you mean you wish me luck?’

I explained, ‘I told you I’d take you through the ratings period, I’m going back to L.A. now.’

He couldn’t believe what I was saying, “You’re leaving the Number One radio station along the entire central coast of California?”

“I know. It’s great, you’ve been great, everyone at the station has. God bless you man, it’s fantastic, I’ll be watching how you do”.

He still was in disbelief, “Dick, you can’t just quit. No one leaves a number one station”

I sighed and said “I just did” and two weeks later I left Z93 behind and took the ratings book and went down to L.A. to start knocking on the doors again. This time, with the impressive numbers from Bakersfield and San Luis Obispo, I was received differently and got hired doing an overnight shift on what we call an alternative station playing B-52s, Elvis Costello and Duran Duran.

Richard, one question, when did you change your name to Richard Blade?

I’m coming to that (roars with laughter)

You’re still Dick Sheppard at the moment?

I’m still Dick Sheppard!

OK, Ok, carry on…

I started working at KNAC in Long Beach, in late February 1982. And they were paying me hardly anything. I made $1000 per month before taxes, which was a big step down from KZOZ where I had made twice that, but it was L.A and people could hear me, and if I could get noticed I could keep moving up. To make extra money, I still had my mobile disco stored there, so I started doing some gigs because living in L.A. was expensive. And, while I was out doing these gigs I heard the buzz in town there were two stations that really were in line with what I did. I wasn’t a Top 40 DJ and I didn’t want to try that format as I wanted to be myself on air and not put on some faked, hyped voice. But the two stations making all the noise were KMET, a rock station and KROQ, which was a small underground station. KROQ had a bad reputation for not paying its DJs but it did have the buzz, all the kids were listening to it. And, one of the clubs I was working at, the Hot Club in Encino, were buying commercials on KROQ and asked if I would voice an ad for them rather than pay to have their DJs do it and save $400. I said sure. KROQ told me come out to the radio studio to record the commercials, so I drove out to Pasadena but couldn’t find this little hole in the wall radio station and I’d almost given up, and was about to so a U-turn and go home when I finally spotted it, right above a medical clothing shop called Uniform Circus. It was hardly glamorous. I walked into their cramped production room because I was expected, and the Production Manager, John Logic, looked at me and said “Do you know how to work the gear?” I answered, “Ah yeah, I think I do”

He replied “Good. I’m going to lunch, see you”. And he walked out leaving me alone there. It was wild, he had no clue who I was. I was looking at this reel-to-reel machine, checking out the decks and thinking I could walk out with this shit. They didn’t know who I am from Adam, this is crazy. But instead of grand theft, I voiced a commercial, put in on a cart, then typed a label for it based on the style the other commercial carts around me had. The one thing I couldn’t work out was what the dots on the label meant. Red, Blue, Green and Yellow dots. I labelled and got it ready and John came back, he said “Oh my gosh, you’ve put it on a cart already. I was going to dub it for you but you’ve even typed the label right”. I said yeah, but admitted I didn’t know what the dots were for.

He said “Well, the red dot shows it’s an exciting spot – like a movie or concert ad - so it runs first in a commercial set, and blue dot runs second, the green dot runs third and the yellow is the worst commercial of all, just some guy yapping, like an insurance spot, that’s when people tune out so we run it last right before we go back to music.”

“So, what dot do I get?” John grinned, “You get a red dot, your ad is about clubs and music, which the listeners like, so yours goes first.”

That meant people would hear my voice on this hot radio station and sure enough they did. And it wasn’t only the listeners, the DJs said “We like your English accent. Would you come in and do jingles for us?” I said sure, so I drove back out five days later and Ramondo and Evans were the morning show team and they came up with this thing to tied them in with the late-night show hosted by April Whitney. The jingle had me saying in my best Oxford accent, “Go to bed with April and wake up with Ramondo and the Evans.” It sounded fun on the air and the audience loved the double entendre. Then all the DJs wanted me to do one for them. Suddenly my voice was all over the radio station. And, as I was working on a different radio station, it was really weird.

Then other advertisers heard my drops and I got asked to do other spots like car dealerships and clothing stores and they would pay me 25 dollars for each one, which was hardly anything but better than nothing, so now my voice was basically on KROQ twenty-four hours a day. Then I got this momentous phone call. ‘I need you to meet Rick Carroll’.

Rick Carroll was the program director who had created KROQ’s format, but he was rarely at the station because Rick had, what we call ‘personal problems.’ I met with Rick and was expecting him to say we can’t use you anymore because you work at another radio station. Instead he said ‘all my DJs are going on vacation, and because KROQ couldn’t pay for them to have a paid vacation we have this thing where they work with a travel agency and do a KROQ trip to Hawaii. and if the DJs sell 20 trips and mention the agencies’ name, they get to go as well. And this year they are all going because we’ve sold it out.” Then Rick said, “I’ve got these celebrities who will be filling in for the DJs, one of them is Elvira, another is Danny Elfman from Oingo Boingo, who’s going on as Moscow Eddie.”

“Elvira and Danny are doing afternoons, the lead singer from the Cramps is going to handle nights, but in the middle of the day from 10 until 1 we don’t have anyone, would you want to do it for two weeks?” I said sure, but then Rick dropped the hammer blow and told me he couldn’t pay me, I’d be working for free. That didn’t bother me, so I said I’d do it. But Rick hadn’t finished, he now followed up with a kick to the balls. “You have to quit your job at KNAC because they compete with us, playing some of the same music.” I took a deep breath and said OK, because KROQ was much bigger than KNAC and the visibility would be great. Rick still wasn’t done, he added, “when the DJs come back, we won’t have a job for you. This is just going to be for two weeks then you’re gone.”. I said ‘You want me to quit my job, do this for free and then leave?” Rick nodded. I had one more question for him, “Will you be going to Hawaii?” ‘He replied ‘No I’m staying here” “So you’ll be in town to hear my show. He said, “Yeah but it has taken me about 18 months to put this team together and they are like the Saturday Night Live of radio, there is no shitty talent on KROQ. And, when they come back, they are all going to have their jobs, and you won’t.”

“I’ll take that risk if you’ll hear my show because I know you’ll find something for me.”

Rick shook his head and waved me out of his office.

The next day at KNAC I told them I was leaving for KROQ and giving them two weeks’ notice, and they said “Well, we’ve gotta hire someone else, so you’re out of a gig but best of luck to you”. I liked everyone there, the program director Jimmy Christopher, the morning guy and the afternoon girl, I got along with them great. Because of that I didn’t want to steal listeners from this little radio station by going to a big radio station like KROQ.

That’s why I decided to change my name. Dick Sheppard was going to fade into the past and all I knew was that I wanted to go back to Richard which was my real name. Dick Sheppard was given to me when I was DJ’ing at college by someone much bigger than me. I went with the nickname as the guy who decided I would be ‘Dick’ was captain of the field hockey team and had a bad temper and lived in the same house as us. I would use this opportunity to go back to Richard but I didn’t know what the last name would be. I was getting ready to go on the air and still hadn’t decided and was looking at a newspaper, the Los Angeles Times desperate to try and find the inspiration for a name. I looked at all these names, like a writer called Robert Hilburn, no Richard Hilburn doesn’t sound right, worse than Richard Sheppard. Then I saw an ad for a movie opening soon, Blade Runner. I thought that’s great, I am going to call myself Richard Runner. I could even steal the Rolls Royce logo and use that as my logo. R.R. Richard Runner, perfect!

It was a big newspaper, back in the day, not like today when they’re down to magazine size. Anyway, the newspaper was massive, the studio was small and the song was finishing. I dropped the paper on the floor so I could see it and I opened the microphone and said “That was a Flock of Seagulls with a song called ‘Telecommunication’ but their fans just called it ‘telecom’ Jed the Fish is in Hawaii and I’m filling in for him for two weeks and my name is…” and I looked down because I was so nervous knowing there’d be a lot of people listening that I’d forgotten the one I had chosen. I looked at the paper, but it had folded over when it fell and now I could only see ‘Blade’. The movie hadn’t opened and no one had heard of Blade Runner and I couldn’t remember the title, so I panicked and the next words out of my mouth were, “I’m Richard Blade! And, I’m going to be with you for the next couple of weeks on KROQ.” Then I announced the next band, which was Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and hit the play button, it started and I thought oh my God – I’m Richard Blade?

I DJ’d my 3-hour shift, said goodbye and waited for Moscow Eddie a.k.a Danny Eltman to come in and take over. Nothing. So I kept going for about 10 - 15 minutes and the red hot line lit up. I punched it on so I could talk to whoever it was, without it going over the air . I said ‘Hi, who’s this?” “This is Danny Eltman and I’m stuck in the studio and I can’t get away. Can you fill in for me, whoever you are?“ I said, sure I’ll keep going, and he said ‘See you tomorrow, gotta go’. I did another three hours and I was wrapping up my now six hour show and signing off again, my second sign off in six hours with ‘Talk to you all tomorrow, it’s been great’. I waited in the studio for a few minutes, but again nothing! Elvira didn’t show up, so I walked outside to the office and asked “does anyone know when Elvira was coming in?” It was about 4.20 p.m. They said ‘we don’t know”. I bumped into Pat Welsh who was the general manager of the radio station and he said, “Oh, we got a call from Elvira, she’s not coming in, can you fill in for her?” I went “OK …..I’ll do it’ (disguising a long sigh), ‘I’ve just come off doing the overnight shift with six hours, so no problem!” I did another three hours on the air and whilst doing it I was reading a live commercial in my final hour about for the Parrot Place in Van Nuys, and saying that they’ve got a special this month Green parrots are on sale for only $49.99 and if you go down to there and say KROQ, they’ll give you another 10% off that so you can buy yourself a parrot for just $45.99”

As I’m talking, a white-haired guy walks in during the middle of the live commercial and barks at me, ‘Where’s Snakeskin?” Freddie Snakeskin was the afternoon drive DJ, but he was in Hawaii and was the person who Elvira was meant to be covering. I said, hitting the mic off, “I’m on the air!” I flicked the switch back on and said “Go on down and say KROQ and get a great price on one of these parrots” and the guy again says “Where’s Snakeskin?” I turned it off again. “He’s…in …H A W A I I”. I turned the mic back on again and said, ‘That’s just one of the great specials!” If you want a parrot with…’

And the guy interrupted the commercial again ‘I need to speak to Snakeskin; I turned the mic off once more in irritation and yelled “You are not going to speak to fucking Snakeskin unless you can talk loud enough to be heard in Hawaii but right now everyone in L.A can hear you so shut the fuck up and get the hell out of here or I will throw you out!’ I turned the mic back on again because I was not going to be interrupted during my show by some random stranger. I finished the ad, put the recorded commercials on, wrapped my show and finally the next DJ comes in, the lead singer of the Cramps, and I thought oh good, finally I can relax. I walk outside and Pat Welsh is there, the general manager, who said ‘That’s great man, I didn’t realise you were on for nine hours, I am so sorry but you sounded good, I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you,” I said ‘OK’ and walked with Pat to his office and sitting behind Pat’s desk, in Pat’s chair, that no one is allowed to sit in because he is the general manager, is the white haired guy. Pat turned at me, ‘I want you to meet Ken Roberts, he owns the radio station.” I looked at Ken but he looked at Pat because he doesn’t want to look at me because I am way too insignificant for him to pay attention to and says to Pat “Ask him why he told me to fuck off.” So, Pat repeats “Why did you tell Ken to fuck off?”

I knew I had zero to lose at this point and my fate had already been decided, so I stepped up to the desk put my hands on it and leaned forward, “I might be new to KROQ but I’ve worked at three other radio stations and as far as I know the only way a radio station is legally allowed to make money is by selling commercials. And some strange guy walks in on my show when I am reading a live commercial and interrupts me three times when I told him twice very nicely that I’m on the air. If the client had heard that, they wouldn’t pay the station for an interrupted commercial. And, when I’m on the air no one is ever going to take money away from the radio station I am working for. For the next two weeks I’ve been asked to do a show for KROQ and sell commercials for them on the air, and I promise, KROQ is going to make money during my show. I didn’t know who you were, but even now, if you did it again tomorrow and cut me off during a paid-for spot, I’d tell you to fuck off again. For me, the station always comes first.” Ken Roberts was silent for a moment then looked at Pat and goes “I like the kid, hire him” And I got the job that day at KROQ. They found a job for me which was weekends and production director.

After the DJs got back I did Saturdays, Sundays and produced all the commercials and filled in if anyone got sick. Four weeks later, Mike Evans got into an argument with the program director and left the morning show to go over to KMET to do sport. That night I got a phone call asking if I could be at the station at 5.30 the next morning to be the new morning drive guy with Ramondo, it went from Ramondo and Evans to Ramondo and Blade. The rest is as they say is history.

Then a few weeks later I had a phone call about a TV show that was starting called MV3 which was a broadcast version of MTV to be on in fifty cities and they asked if I had my own hair and my own teeth. I said yeah, so the producer said come down and audition. I did and got the TV show and everything really started taking off.

And, over the next twenty, thirty years you met all the stars and hosted shows. Tell me about some of that, who were the people you met that you really liked

I really like Duran Duran and I’m very close with them, especially John Taylor who came over to my house to record the first chapter for the audio version of my autobiography, World In My Eyes, because I wasn’t in that chapter. I’m friends with the guys from Depeche Mode, Danny Eltman, OMD, Spandau Ballet, I went on tour with the Spands in Australia in 1986 when they had the Parade album out. Martin Fry of ABC, Boy George from Culture Club, Midge Ure, English Beat, Terri Nunn from Berlin who I dated for quite a while, The Motels, The Go-Go’s, The Bangles, all of them I became friends with.

Your first book was ‘World In My Eyes”.

Yes, and it got its name from the title of a Depeche Mode song. I called Martin Gore and asked if I could use the title and he said ‘yes’ right away. His only requirement was that he could write a blurb on the cover about our friendship, which he did. Great guy.

I’ve been following you and your book writing. After your autobiography, World In My Eyes, you morphed into real fiction - an historical action piece with a twist, your Roman novel SPQR. I mean that was quite a leap, that’s terrific, tell me about that.

I’ve always liked writing. I wrote for a magazine called Disco International based in London (whose editor was Ben Cree). I was their American editor for several years. I always wanted to write, so after World In My Eyes took off – it was a crazy best seller, two years at number one in the music categories on Amazon, it was nuts, I actually ended up buying the rights back, it was so successful. I wanted to do other stuff with it, including perhaps a film or a streaming series. But the writing process excited me and I wanted to try writing fiction. I had written things for TV, and some screenplays, one of which got made as a movie, Long, Lost Son, which starred Chace Crawford in his debut role, and Chace went on to do Gossip Girl and a big hit show on Amazon called The Boys. Chace plays one of the superheroes in that. And, Gabrielle Anwar who did Scent of a woman.

I also wrote for a Sci Fi series called Seven Days which was on a network called UPN now called CW over here, so I had written a number of screen plays which all got great response but in typical Hollywood fashion “We love this, we will get right back to you on it ….” and you wait for the phone to ring and ….nothing! Then your agent tells you, they loved you, loved the story but it was too big a budget for a first time writer (without a big hit I was still considered a first time writer). So, I had these screenplays lying around which had gotten great reviews and one of them was SPQR and I thought I’m going to use this as a backbone for a book and so I did just that. When it came out in 2019, it shot to number one in multiple categories, Alternative History, Action Adventure and all that.

I really enjoyed doing it so I started on my next book immediately, which is called Birthright. It’s a mystery case/thriller along the lines of a Dan Brown Novel, whose book Da Vinci Code was a massive seller and became a blockbuster film.

And, it’s kind of Indiana Jones versus James Bond because it’s has a British Royal theme in which MI6 are hunting an American kid for reasons that unravel during the chapters. After that I wrote another book ‘Imposters’ based on a true story which ironically is about the guy I replaced at KROQ - Mike Evans – and it’s something he did in the late 60’s when he’d been drafted for Vietnam and needed to disappear and he did it by getting together with his best friend and taking on the identity of a real life singing duo from the 50s. It’s an amazing tale, he was this eighteen-year-old boy saying he had a hit ten years before which would have made him eight years old at the time. But he managed to pull it off and he toured America for three years pretending to be one half of this chart-topping duo. Next I released The Lockdown Interviews which was based on a series of long Zoom interviews I had done with twenty bands during Covid. In the book you’ll find The Go-Go’s, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Midge Ure, The Alarm, OMD, Sparks and so many others. It’s like a Who’s Who of 80’s stars and it’s done done incredibly well, and I’ll be putting out a sequel to it called The Unlocked Interviews – post Covid, and that will feature conversations with Roxy Music, Blondie, Simple Minds, Soft Cell and many others. Right now, I was just doing some edits on my next book when you called and it’s also based on one of my screenplays, ‘Ghosts of the Congo.’ It’s about a massive kidnapping that happens when an oil refinery opens in the Congo, financed with American money, and on hand for the ceremony are the richest man in the world, along with the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary for Energy and the First lady, and they are all kidnapped and disappear into the jungles of the Congo. The American government can’t find them and desperately put together a special team to try to locate them before the deadline is reached and they are killed.

Any of these books being made into film?

Hopefully that might happen. All the reviews say things like – ‘this was made for the big screen.’. If you go to reviews on Good Reads or Amazon, you’ll see the reviewers saying, hey this book reads like a film. I could see it as a film. And, the reason is it was written first as a film, so when I get back from Mexico next summer, I plan to try to set up some meetings to take them back out but this time when I’m pitching the screenplay I’m going to plop the book down on the desk and say read this, it was a best seller, so, we will see. Nothing is ever real until it is made so you won’t get me saying it’s gonna be a movie. I’d love them to become movies but who knows.

Is the Richard Blade of today in his Californian home more of a writer or a DJ? What do you spend your time doing most?

Both! Because I am on the radio every day on SiriusXM, which is the biggest radio company on the planet right now. It’s got thirty-six million subscribers. That’s just in the US, there’s another seven million in Canada. And, who knows how many from SiriusXM app around the globe. It’s in every car in North America, and I do the same kind of show I’ve always done, you know, playing Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, New Order, The Smiths, those kind of superstar acts every day.

What time is your show?

My show is on East Coast 3p until 9p. West Coast Time from noon until six. And, it’s heard all across the country, all over Canada, it’s also on Dish Network and on the SiriusXM app so. If you are in the Caribbean, they listen to SiriusXM there because that’s how they get their music. The App is only $4.99 whereas if you do it through your car it is $14.99. The App has around 12 - 14 million listers I believe.

You are not doing six-hour shows, six hours a day surely?

No, I voice track it. If anything important happens I have the ability to jump on it and go live at any time, so, God forbid if a celebrity dies or there’s a tour cancelled like Erasure recently cancelled their shows, I jump on and go live. Duran Duran recently announced they are doing a special performance at a hotel in Los Angeles that will be filmed a week on Thursday, so I went live and broke the news, and also when Super Bowl or World Series results come out I go live and put that on, but the show is on every day on SiriusXM. I also do a lot of live gigs, not only in California, but because of SiriusXM’s reach, all over North America. In the last couple of months I’ve DJ’d events and corporate shows in Vegas, Toronto, Cancun and New York.

And now, I hear, you have quite an honour that’s been given you.

Yes. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce called to say I had been awarded a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame. I’ll be getting it the summer of 2023 and it’ll be placed by the Capitol Records building near stars of The Beatles, Sinatra, The Beach Boys and my friends, Duran Duran. It was a total surprise to me because there are very few DJs who have been given that honor. My only regret is my Mum & Dad are no longer around to see me get it.

Thank you, Richard, that’s a terrific story. It’s going in the book with many top DJ’s like you, and when I get the book finished, I will send you a complimentary copy.

I would love that, Alan. I fondly remember all those great gigs you got me. Those stories of my days with you and IDEA are in World In My Eyes.

..and hopefully if you think this book has value maybe you can show it to one of your publishers if it could be of interest elsewhere in your market.

Absolutely

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Richard Blade Fact File

Richard Blade (born Richard Thomas Sheppard; May 23, 1952 in Bristol, England) is a British-American Los Ángeles-based radio, television, and film personality from Torquay, England. He is best known for his radio programs that feature new wave and popular music from the 1980s. He was a disk jockey at KROQ in Los Angeles from 1982 to 2000 and has been a host for SiriusXM's 1st Wave classic alternative station since 2005.

Blade appeared in such television series as Square Pegs and Hunter and appeared as a real contestant (as "Dick Sheppard") on such game shows as Win, Lose or Draw and Card Sharks.

He also appeared in several films, including Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Depeche Mode 101, (1989), Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever (1990), and Spellcaster (1991). In August 2007, Blade made an appearance on the reality show Rock of Love. He made regular cameo appearances on Glory Daze, set at a college frat house in 1986.

Personal life: Blade lives in Southern California with his wife Krista, whom he wed in 2000. He became a United States citizen in 1988.