Why there will never be another DJ like Johnnie Walker

The retirement of the BBC Radio stalwart is a watershed moment for the medium. Where will the superstar DJs of the future come from?

After almost 60 years on air, Johnnie Walker presented his last-ever radio show on Sunday. The retirement of the stalwart behind BBC Radio 2’s Sound of the 70s, prompted by ill health, is a watershed moment for the medium – and not just because a much-loved host is stepping down sooner than he would like.
His departure raises questions about the future of radio. Where are the superstar DJs of the future going to come from? (The 79-year-old Walker is to be replaced on Sound of the 70s by, erm, the 78-year-old “Whispering” Bob Harris). And, in a world of algorithmically-driven Spotify recommendations, do we even need them?
What it means to be a radio DJ, a century after the wireless was invented, continues to change and desperate bosses at cash-strapped stations are increasingly foisting TV celebrities or social media influencers on listeners in an effort to boost ratings. Think Roman Kemp (son of Spandau Ballet bassist Martin) on Capital, or stand-up comedian Romesh Ranganathan on Radio 2. Just this week Gok Wan, the erstwhile host of How to Look Good Naked, was parachuted into the Magic Radio breakfast show.
Walker himself lamented the fact that many modern radio presenters haven’t had to climb the ranks, like members of his generation did, in an interview last week. “Nowadays it seems to be the way to get radio shows is to get a television one first,” he said. “Because you’re good on TV doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to be good on the radio, but that’s the way it is. We’re in the age of celebrity.”
Paul Gambaccini remembers when the reverse was true. “In our day, people from radio were used to populate television because we were good at talking to time,” the BBC radio legend says. “That’s how Noel Edmonds started his [TV] career. Michael Hurll [producer of Top of the Pops] noticed that Noel could speak to the second without panic. They used us to populate television and now they use people from television and TikTok to populate radio.”
Do those skills lend themselves to making good radio? “No,” Gambaccini adds. “There’s no special relationship there.”
Mike Read, who spent five years hosting the Radio 1 breakfast show in the 1980s, tells me that he knows radio professionals get frustrated at stars from other media needing to have their hands held. “I remember a Radio 2 producer saying to me, ‘I walk in the studio and there’s an artist who doesn’t know much about the music, who can’t operate the desk and who’s not quite sure what to say’,” he recalls. “I’m not quite sure why they were there, because those are three basic things. Johnnie, me or Tony Blackburn could always go in the studio and do it. We didn’t need 15 people to coddle us and all the rest of it.”
That there are more presenters, who have not served an apprenticeship or honed their craft, is mostly a structural problem. There are fewer local radio stations – both BBC and commercial – because of budget cuts, but that deprives wannabe DJs of a place where previous generations learnt both how to operate a studio and build a relationship with audiences. Hospital radio, which gave the likes of Simon Mayo and Ken Bruce the chance to prove themselves, is a much-diminished force. There are 170 hospital stations remaining, less than half its 1980s heyday, with all staffed by volunteers and listener figures often in single digits.
“It’s very hard to be a proper mass-market star,” says radio industry expert Matt Deegan. “The old route of someone starting on overnights at a local radio station, then graduating to the breakfast show, then to a regional and then a national radio station has sort of disappeared. People have to arrive somewhat fully-formed.”
Shaun Keaveny is taking over from Walker on The Rock Show, with his first edition broadcast on Radio 2 this Friday night, featuring a chat with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Keaveny, 52, admits that he is not sure where that next generation of legendary DJs is going to come from.
“Thanks to the tech bros and trillionaires, there isn’t as much budget in these areas as there used to be. It isn’t even the money, is it? It’s the belief that you should do something and not make a s–tload of money – just for the greater good. There’s not much of it,” he says. “There’s been massive cutbacks on local radio. There’s been a big proliferation of new radio stations, but most of them are just playlist stations, and they’re autonomous. All of that is pretty bad news for where we find our new Johnnie Walker or Steve Wright.”
Maybe the idea is just old hat. “Have we seen the last great radio DJ? Someone like Greg James is going to be around for a long time. Jordan North is a bit younger than Greg, he was that tea boy who became a national radio star,” Deegan adds. “Has that route stopped? The jury’s out. The big, famous DJ is perhaps less important than it used to be.”
Yet it remains true that listeners will follow proper broadcasters who know what they are doing: North, who left Radio 1 in February to join commercial rival Capital, has added 400,000 listeners to the breakfast show’s ratings in his first six months. Almost 90 per cent of Brits listen to the radio at least once a week, and more people tune in now than have ever done so before. It is, Deegan admits, “mad for a medium that has been around for 100 years”.
For listeners who love a DJ, there are other reasons to be cautiously optimistic. Matt Everitt, the 6 Music presenter and founder of production company Cup & Nozzle, says the likes of Steve Lamacq, Cerys Matthews and Gary Davies are well on their way to reaching the heights of Walker and co. Of Lamacq, he says: “He’s the indie Johnnie Walker, someone that helped introduce Oasis to the world.”
Everitt also name-checks Greg James, host of the Radio 1 breakfast show, and his stable-mate Jack Saunders, as standard-bearers for the future. “Greg’s show is phenomenal because he’s purely a radio guy, that is his thing,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t been offered 100 times more TV work than he does. He loves the show.” Both proved themselves broadcasting naturals on student radio, a scene that continues to thrive despite the perception of Gen Z as social media obsessives who shun anything other than TikTok.
Keaveny even reckons that, even with near-infinite choice of entertainment at our fingertips, the good old-fashioned DJ will make a comeback — if only to serve as a human guide through an overwhelming landscape. “It’s a shame we don’t have places people can learn their apprenticeship as they used to, and the monolithic tech giants are squeezing every quid out for their own coffers and giving sod all back to the rest of us, but I think the intrinsic value of a really great radio person is a stock that is going to rise as the world becomes more digitised,” he tells me.
“People like Johnnie, and the dozens of other great radio voices still at it today, understand what it is about live radio that podcasts or binge-worthy Netflix can’t provide and that is live, as you need it company, community and warmth. And great f—ing tunes too. Hopefully.”