BBC Radio 4 Extra to air special series Kenny Everett at 80

To mark what would have been Kenny Everett’s 80th birthday, BBC Radio 4 Extra is to air a week of programmes on the late broadcaster.

Compiled by journalist and broadcaster Paul Rowley, there’ll be a special show every day during Christmas week to celebrate the work of the man who was born Maurice Cole on Christmas Day, 1944. They include some of the “lost” tapes from his time on BBC Local Radio after he was sacked by Radio 1 in 1970.

Rowley, author of two radio documentaries about Cuddly Ken, has digitally remastered the original reel-to-reel recordings which were left on a shelf for much of the last fifty years. They’ll now be heard in full for the first time since they were originally broadcast. One of them includes an interview with John Lennon which hasn’t been aired since going out on Radio Bristol in 1971.

The series begins on Monday 23rd December with Rowley’s documentary “Kenny Everett: The BBC Local Radio Years” from 2001.

On Christmas Eve it’s Kenny’s first programme on Radio Bristol from June 1971. On Christmas Day is another of Rowley’s documentaries “Happy Birthday Maurice Cole” from 2009. It’s followed on 26th December by a Boxing Day special from 1971, finishing on 27th December with another of Kenny’s Radio Bristol shows which features a chat with the former Beatle.

Paul Rowley says: “In my view Kenny was the best in the business. He was the most creative, most innovative, technically brilliant radio practitioner this country has produced. He was more than just a disc-jockey. He worked harder than anyone else in stitching together a kaleidoscope of sound that no-one could match.

“His bespoke jingles with their multi-track harmonies were usually better produced than many of the records he played. He was loved by millions and lauded by his radio colleagues who regarded him as a ‘genius’.

“But he pushed the boundaries and was always being fired, first by the pirate ship Radio London, then by Radio Luxembourg, and most notably by Radio 1 in 1970 after insulting the wife of a government minister or air.

“At the time the corporation had a radio monopoly in the UK, and apart from a brief stint on a couple of continental stations there was nowhere else to go. A year later Radio Bristol unexpectedly offered him a way back, bringing him on board as holiday relief, despite strong reservations from the top brass at Broadcasting House”.

The programmes coincide with the 60th anniversary of Kenny’s first broadcast as a pirate radio DJ on Radio London on Christmas Eve 1964, on his last day as a teenager. The station had only come on air the previous day.

This will also be the first time in 56 years that Kenny has been on the BBC every day of the week since ending his short-lived Radio 1 evening series “Foreverett” in December 1968.