Blunt Truth

BLUNT, brusque and belligerent, Andy Kershaw is one of life’s difficult people.

Troubled yet brilliant, he has all too often been a victim of the same raw energy that saw him earn the respect of music-lovers throughout the 80s and 90s, as a champion of bands no one else had heard of.

Since then life has not been kind to Andy. And, to be fair, Andy has not been kind to life. His inglorious sacking from Radio 1 and later shunting to a graveyard slot on Radio 3, was followed by an even less edifying series of events: his acrimonious break-up from ex-partner Juliette Banner; his arrest after breaking a restraining order banning him from contacting the mother of his two children Sonny and Dolly; drink-related bad behaviour, imprisonment and banishment from his home on the Isle of Man.

Almost inevitably, Kershaw, has now written a book about his life – taking in his experiences as Student Union entertainments officer at Leeds University, through to his time as roadie for Billy Bragg, and his glory days as a presenter on the Old Grey Whistle Test, Live Aid and Radios 1 and 3 – where his distinctive Rochdale accent became a regular late-night fixture.

The title is No Off Switch – something his enemies may agree with all too readily. He is pushing the book with a series of evenings of readings and anecdotes, including at the Glee Club, in Hythe Bridge Street on March 15.

So why write the book now? “Because I’d decided I’d got enough to make a very colourful autobiography,” he says crossly. I’ve clearly caught him on a bad day. “I was first asked years ago, but there’s no point doing these things too early, when you haven’t done anything in your life. The whole publicity circus is huge fun though,” he goes, warming slightly. “It is a lot of work, but I enjoy it and I can’t wait to get on tour.”

And what will the evening consist of? “You never know what’s going to happen,” he says. And I believe him. However, it will probably include tales of sharing a cramped studio with the great John Peel at Radio 1, and of being invited to be a presenter on the Old Grey Whistle Test, after driving Billy Bragg to the studio.

“It has all been a happy accident,” he says. “I went to university with the intention of being a foreign correspondent, and it all got derailed. At the age of 18 I was running the biggest college venue in the country. My ambition then became to be the next Harvey Goldsmith – but, again, it didn’t work out like that.”

These days, of course, Kershaw prefers to think of himself as much a traveller as a broadcaster. He has been to 97 countries; a fact he is keen to remind me, with tales of Haiti, Montserrat – where he was taking “a quiet Caribbean holiday” when the volcano exploded – and Rwanda, where he was an eyewitness to the genocide.

Among the most memorable destinations, though, has been North Korea – where he has “holidayed” four times and made a film for Channel 4.

“The best thing about North Korea was that they didn’t want journalists to be in there, which was like a red rag to a bull for me,” he says, describing the Stalinist state as “the most secretive and bonkers country”.

“If they don’t want me there, I want to find out why. It’s nosiness, or, to give it a more respectable name, curiosity.”

So what does the musical giant, whose elder sister Liz also made a successful career as a radio presenter, and who’s own CD and LP collection weighs seven tons, consider his greatest regret? His incarceration, perhaps? No. It was his failure to earn a degree at university and the disappointment of his headteacher father.

“It was my dad’s anguish at my academic failure,” he says. “But it was ridiculous; Leeds was the biggest college venue in the country and some weeks I was organising all these concerts – with Dire Straits in a Friday night and Ian Dury on the Saturday, yet I was expected to do my course. It’s ridiculous it wasn’t a sabbatical position.”

And what is he most proud of? “My two children,” he says. “We are closer and stronger than ever.”

And do they share his enthusiasm for music?

“I don’t think music is as central in young people’s lives as it was to people of my generation,” he says. “And, anyway, the music is not as good – nor as exciting.”

* An Evening with Andy Kershaw is at the Glee Club, Oxford, on Thursday, March 15. Tickets are £15 in advance.

Call 08714720400 or go to glee.co.uk/oxford