The veteran BBC DJ Johnnie Walker has died on the age of 79, it has been introduced.
Walker, who hosted Radio 2’s Sounds of the 70s and the Radio 2 Rock Present, started his profession as a pirate DJ within the 60s on Radio Caroline, earlier than becoming a member of Radio 1 in 1969. He left the station after inflicting controversy by describing the Bay Metropolis Rollers as “musical rubbish” and clashing along with his bosses over an insistence on taking part in album tracks.
After a interval broadcasting in California, he returned to the UK within the early 80s and rejoined Radio 1 in 1987 to current a Saturday afternoon present, The Stereo Sequence, in addition to engaged on different stations together with Radio 5 (now 5 Dwell), earlier than becoming a member of Radio 2, finally taking up the Drivetime slot.
In June 2003, he introduced to the nation that he was taking day off to be handled for most cancers, finally beating his analysis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma of the colon. He returned 9 months later and gained the Gold award on the Sonys. In 2006 he was awarded an MBE within the Queen’s new yr honours record.
In 2020, Walker started broadcasting his exhibits from his Dorset house because of being recognized with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an irritation of the lungs.
In June 2024, Walker and his spouse, Tiggy, talked about having been knowledgeable by docs that the situation was terminal. On their podcast, Walker and Walker: Johnnie and Tiggy, Tiggy mentioned her husband had been instructed by a marketing consultant to “put together to go at any second”.
“[Tiggy] very lovingly helps me get into mattress and offers me a pleasant kiss goodnight, after which she has to wonder if I’m nonetheless going to be alive within the morning. Which have to be fairly laborious for her,” Walker mentioned.
