In the Top 20 list of people I have always wanted to interview, in between Julie Andrews and Gilbert and George, just below David Dickinson and David Lynch, there lies Tony Blackburn. In fact, the person I would want to read out that list is Tony Blackburn, using a voice that seems to mix something godlike with something happily half-witted, a voice so full of cheer and bonhomie it borders on the sinister, a voice someone invented because it didn't exist and which carries with it the very spirit of radio and yet also the very spirit of loneliness, a voice made out to read lists that really mean nothing at all, a voice that has got radio stamped into its very soul, a voice that can deliver the punchline to an appalling bad joke as if it's life depends on it and yet it couldn't care less, a voice that all disc jockeys have somewhere inside their own.
The plummy, sunny, urgently relaxed voice of Tony Blackburn was once one of the very few voices you would hear on radio and television, when there was just a couple of TV channels and one or two radio stations, back when the 60s and 70s were actually decades some of us actually lived through, wondering what the future would be like, and not anticipating that it would consist of a lot of wondering what the 60s and 70s were like. Blackburn was known and to an extent is still known for his teeth, his hair, a smile that could kill with need, the virtual dog Arnold, the tragic public break up of various relationships with actresses, a talent for singing that might even have alienated Simon Cowell, an epic sulk when he was removed from his beloved role as breakfast disc jockey on Radio 1 when it was styling itself as Wonderful, a sincere love of 60s soul, a bitter, bitchy rivalry with arch-enemy John Peel and a love of delivering rotten un-jokes that seemed the act of someone who was trying to cover up for a complete lack of a sense of humour. A recent victory on the first ever series of I'm A Celebrity!... Get Me Out Of Here confirmed that many of the talents, tics, quirks and neediness of the British radio disc jockey as diabolically perfected by the likes of Blackburn made a lot of sense in the cruel celebrity-based reality TV era.
Perhaps he's on my interview list because I just wanted to hear that voice, speaking to me personally, not all those other millions he used to be talking to as well as me when he introduced Mungo Jerry and Diana Ross, the voice of someone existing somewhere between being absolutely sure that people want to listen to him and convinced they think he's a prat, the voice of supreme self-confidence edging closer and closer to some dark English sort of self-destruction. Perhaps the disc jockey who one had an audience of millions and was as famous as anyone who then tumbles down the celebrity rankings until there is nothing but the reality TV circuit can tell me all I need to know about what happens when fame is snatched away. Once, he was at the centre of attention, and then he was broadcasting somewhere on Radio Quiet, or Radio Nostalgia, servicing a small loyal audience with a voice made up of all that authority, and a hint of understanding self-mockery, but no longer the raucous show business force he once was.
Perhaps I need to know what and who is he, and is the Tony Blackburn we know of, this example of the DJ as personality that certain sore sorts wanted to hang, the Godfather of Smashie, Nicey, Partridge and Moyles, an unfair caricature of the real person? Now that I finally get to interview him, it's not in person, as he's so busy recording radio shows – featuring the American soul of the 60s and 70s he still loves – for various stations from Rochester to Hull, Bolton to Plymouth, Tenerife to London, selecting the records he plays with anti-playlist stubbornness as if the assaults of John Peel on his musical integrity still sting. I interview him as if I've just rung into one of his shows, he's just played Stevie Wonder, he's about to play Will Young, and I've entered one of his competitions, and if I get the answers right, I'll win one of his 12-inches.
And so I hear his voice, up close and personal, talking to me from the early 70s, when black and white Britain was just breaking into colour, from when he was the absolute opposite of John Peel, in the way Cliff Richard is the opposite of Mark E Smith, and he sounds very happy, and yet, perhaps like he always did, even when he was so on top of the world, and part of the family, and something of an overbearing nuisance, a little sad. He sounds content, with the job he does, geekily putting together radio shows, still caring about a kind of personality DJ-ing that's a little frayed around the edges, – but he also sounds like he's a little deflated. A little bewildered, perhaps, that John Peel, after all that horrible obscure late night noise he organised, turned out to be the National Treasure, and Tony Blackburn, so committed to cheering everyone up, to playing uplifting pop music, turned out to be at best a sort of tolerated figure of fun. I hear his voice, the voice that used to get on my nerves, because I believed in Peel, and it's oddly moving.