Poptastic!

Tony Blackburn is to take over from Dale Winton as presenter of Pick Of The Pops on BBC Radio 2 from November 6th.

He'll continue to present weekend breakfast on Smooth Radio (which becomes a national station from next Monday 4th October), regular shows for KMFM in Kent, KCFM in Hull and BBC London 94.9, as well as a syndicated weekly show featuring Soul and Motown. He's already done a couple of Bank Holiday one-offs this year for Radio 2 so it's no real surprise that he's now joining the country's most-popular network on a regular basis.

That's a busy schedule for anybody and at 67 he puts many people more than half his age to shame. He's also an enthusiastic adopter of new technology and a regular user of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Audioboo.

I've been a fan of Tony's ever since he was on the offshore pirate stations in the mid-1960s, as well as the first-ever presenter on BBC Radio 1 in 1967, and his was the show I'd listen to while getting ready for school.

To many of my classmates at the time Tony was seen as the antithesis to everything that was "cool"; after all he liked pop and Motown singles rather than album tracks from artists such as Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart or whichever band was being championed by the late John Peel.  He also told corny jokes and sounded bright, rather than the low-key presentation adopted by Radio 1's "serious" DJs such as Peel, Bob Harris and Pete Drummond.

As a radio fan (the term "anorak" didn't appear until many years later), though, I enjoyed Tony's shows because he was a "slick operator" and I was able to appreciate, and begin to understand, the qualities needed to do a show like that.  On the breakfast show I felt he struck the right chord., whereas Peel & co were rmore suitable for the evening or late at night, when people were more likely to listen because they had time to do so properly, rather than simply use the radio as background to their breakfast/morning routine.

In the early-90s I had the pleasure of working with Tony for three years at London's Capital Gold, where he was presenting the Breakfast Show at the time. He was always a total professional and a genuinely likeable person who was good fun to work with.

I believe the most important factor in Tony Blackburn's continuing success is that he is a true radio personality in an era where few 'personality' presenters exist; whether because (thanks to poor programmers and programming) they've been stifled or because, frankly, some of them never had a proper personality in the first place. His style is always "up" and he's still one of the best in the business when it comes to  "selling" the station, the music and the show.

POTP, even in its later incarnation as a classic chart show, will be forever associated with the late Alan ' Fluff' Freeman and, while Dale Winton has done a good job over the past ten years it's good to see a real 'master' at work.

If anybody deserves to step into Fluff's hallowed shoes, Tony Blackburn is the one to do it.

PS. Since writing this piece, it has been announced that Tony will be leaving Smooth Radio at the end of this month.