Crunch & Roll

We've featured some presenters who are synonymous with the stations where they plied their trade for an impressive amount of time - Fresh at Beacon and Elliott Webb at BRMB for example - and there's no denying that James Heming is Mr Invicta.

He spent the majority of his career at a station in Kent, somewhere he admits he couldn't have pointed to on a map before moving there! And for an incredible 19 of years of his time there, he ...

For the two of you who don't know, Clive was one of the big guns in UK radio management. The King of Capital. The Duke of Jack. The Archbishop of Absolute. But then he went to Australia, and took a lifetime of radio knowledge and enough stories to fill your average-sized encyclopaedia with him.

So very early (too early) one Sunday, when British Summer Time and Australian Eastern Standard Time conveniently aligned, we embarked on a ...

On the advice of our legal team, which as regular listeners will know is a made up guy called Gary, we were advised to give this guest the chance to rebuke a serious accusation made against him by several previous guests on this podcast. So for the avoidance of doubt, SIMON LOGAN HAS NEVER THROWN A WHITEBOARD RUBBER AT ANYONE.

Now that unpleasantness is out of the way...

Simon was the guy on the Viking FM breakfast show when a fres...

Foxy's guest this episode is a former Whatnotter. You know, from the Saturday Whatnot on Essex Radio... No?

If that's not ringing any bells, maybe you know him from his mere 26 years at Key 103 / Hits Radio. YES! That Mike Toolan!

Of course he's one of the biggest names in the business and who's been on Radio Aire, BRMB and Capital, as well as an actual GENERATION on 103FM in Manchester, so won't need too much of an introduction.

W...

Стив Пауэр любит поезда.

Just a little message for anyone who can understand Russian there. That doesn't include the guest on this episode, Steve Power, who ended up accidentally studying the language. There may have been drink involved.

Steve must have been one of the longest serving breakfast show jocks ever. 17 BLOOMIN' YEARS! And not your lightweight 6am start nonsense. He was waking up the South of England from 5.30am!

Most re...

Before we started recording, Ben Jones told us he has a namesake in the radio industry and wanted to check we had the right guy. Er, yeah. We're sure.

Ben was ever-present on the original Virgin Radio / Absolute Radio for a decade for goodness sake. He now plies his trade on the new Virgin Radio (amongst other pies he has his fingers in...), but it hasn't all been plain sailing to get there. After leaving Absolute there were some p...

Has there ever been a more iconic evening show than Dave Kelly’s epoch-defining broadcast on Galaxy?

If you were to write the recipe for the perfect evening show, you’d use all the ingredients that made Dave’s show so perfect. Daft features – Tick. Dicking about – Tick. Pushing the boundaries of what you get away with – Tick. Bangers – Tick.

But what made this young fella from Northampton become the Don of Dusk?

Luckily you’ve foun...

Dirk Anthony is one of the most famous, or for some, infamous, radio bosses there's ever been. He pretty much ran the show at GWR and then Gcap, after the merger with Capital.

When you weald so much power for so long it's difficult for some to see beyond the 'big, scary boss' tag, and forget there's s real person with their own story, dealing with their own pressures.

So, not having had too many dealings Dirk in the past, Foxy was ...

Foxy has referenced many of his radio heroes before - Moyles, Mark & Lard, Robin Banks - but the biggest poster on teenage Foxy's bedroom wall was that of Scott Makin.

It was his husky, Teesside tones and his lovely leather jacket that did it for him. But listen to the end to find out how our awe-fill presenter embarrassed himself in front of his icon the first time they met.

If you've lived in Yorkshire or the North East of En...

A greased eel. The fur of a chinchilla. A babies bum.

When it comes to smoothness, this lot just aren't cutting the mustard, because Rossie's voice is smoother than an otter in socks, sliding down a lubed-up iceberg.

But you don't have a CV like his by simply having a great voice. His claim that he's the only person Parky never called up on the XD to give the hairdryer treatment to is probably testament to that.

He's had stints wor...

When considering a 'radio name', you could literally choose ANYTHING. But we find out early on in this episode that Dick chose, well, Dick. To be fair, it did lead to the best named breakfast show radio have ever seen! But as he helpfully suggests, "Don't Google 'Dick Stone'".

Dick is a programming stalwart, running Ram, Trent, the Hit Music Network, Capital East Mids and the Smooth network. Most people reading this will probably h...

The guest on this episode could be called a 'one station man'.... that is if he hadn't moved somewhere else almost exactly ten years ago!

Nigel Freshman*, or Fresh to his listeners, was undeniably 'Mr Beacon' until his love affair with the station turned sour and he moved to Smooth West Midlands where he still plies his trade.

So he's pretty much a legend in the West Midlands and can’t walk down Bilston high street without getting ...

Hold on to your headphones, Tiger Tim's roaring onto Crunch & Roll, and he's grrrrrrrrrreat! (Sorry).

Early on in his chat with Foxy he tells us that it is "no holes barred"...

He's happy to to go through the many highs and some notable lows of his career, spanning Capital and BRMB to TFM and Minster, and plenty more besides.

We've cover how he was once told he couldn't say his own name right by one manager, the magic of warmin...

This episodes finds you just before Christmas 2023. Tis the season of good will to all men... except one former boss who features in this episode! But be assured the rest of Foxy's chat with Darren Daley is a real Christmas cracker.

He's been in the game since Cliff Richard was number 1 in the charts with Saviours' Day, so has plenty of stories to tell.

Luckily for us he's kept all his correspondence from radio stations from the la...

Foxy calls him The Professor. You might know him as The Funster. But his passport says Paul Carrington.

Paul has to be one of the most well known presenters in the north of England and is guaranteed to have worked on a station near you, if you live north of Sutton-cum-Duckmanton. Piccadilly, Signal, Viking, Buzz, Minster, Pulse - We'll let Paul tell you the rest.

There's stories about working for Timmy Mallett (along with Professor...

When we started this podcast, we wrote down a list of people we'd love to have on, and sitting close to the top (between the hairy cornflake and Alan Tichmarsh) was today's guest, Jo Russell.

We've been pestering her to come on for ages but wasn't having any of it, until John upped the appearance fee to two bottles of Blossom Hill, then she was in!

We worked with her for several years at BRMB and didn't know 10% of the stuff she ta...

We've got a few 'firsts' going on in this episode.

The first first is that Paul is the first (OK, stop saying first) Scottish guest on the podcast. We'll be honest, we're not that clued-up about radio north of the border, so it was interesting to hear about the differences between it and radio 'down south'. Who needs contracts?!

Second first is that he's 'done' Australia, and in style. No messing about - straight on 2Day FM. No big...

John describes Elliott as Mr BRMB, and for most people that's probably how they see him too. But there's so much more to his story.

During the course of this episode you might come to regard him as Mr Sacked for Gross Misconduct; Mr Gave Moyles a Pep Talk; or Mr Told His Boss To Fuck Off.

Oh, and find out all about his part in radio's most controversial promotion.

Get ready to get caught up in Elliott's web. Sorry.

Contains strong ...

As nicknames go, The Dark Lord is right up there.

But it could have been so different for our guest if a former boss had got his way and convinced him to go with Red.

Alex Lester is truly deserving of the description 'legend'. Three decades at Radio 2 for goodness sake!

He's got some stories from those times, mainly involving Sir Terry, as well as delving into the beginning of his career and the disastrous launch of a station he wa...