BBC Radio 7

Happy Birthday Maurice Cole

Factual: Life Stories

25/12/2010

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Happy Birthday Maurice Cole

How Christmas-born radio legend Kenny Everett started life as a quiet Merseyside schoolboy

Paul Rowley explains how Christmas-born radio legend Kenny Everett started life as a quiet Merseyside schoolboy. From December 2010.

A look at the early life of Kenny Everett, who was born on Christmas Day 1944.

BBC Political Correspondent Paul Rowley tells the story of a quiet Catholic boy from Merseyside called Maurice Cole who became Britain's most creative, innovative DJ.

Deliberately, the programme is not about his TV work, his gay lifestyle, or his brief flirtation into politics, all of which have been widely covered. There are no celebrity interviews. Rowley went back to the home where he was born, speaking to neighbours, friends and family including the man who first showed him how to use a tape-recorder. There are extracts from a little-heard but very revealing interview he did with Radio Merseyside in 1976 when he talks about his schooldays, his failed attempts to become a missionary, and his first job "scraping gunk off sausage rolls" in a bakery.

He talks about his pioneering work on pirate radio, the Light Programme, and BBC Radio 1, illustrated with rare recordings from Rowley's extensive personal archive. You hear about his sackings, his love of classical music, and some of the jingles from his time on BBC Local Radio in the 1970s after he fired from Radio 1.

With Rosemarie Robertshaw, Tony Ormesher Dora Hirons and Lee Everett Alkin

Produced by Paul Rowley.

First broadcast on 20 BBC Local Radio stations at Christmas 2009.

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