THE DISC JOCKEYS
The title “disc jockey” is a light-hearted one bestowed by nobody-knows-which personality on show business people who present programmes of light entertainment by record. As if you didn’t know.
It covers a multiple of pasts, a wide range of talents, and an astonishing collection of characters — not least among whom are our team of deejays.
Take Ugly Bob Spencer. He isn’t ugly at all. He’s really rather goodlooking (ask the girls who flock about him), but the “ugly” tag was given to him in the early days of offshore radio. And stuck.
Bob is the most senior of the Radio Scotland deejays, and a man of many talents — flier, lifeboatman, broadcaster, he has perfected an air-style of his very own which makes his voice instantly identifiable to his thousands of fans.
Bouncy Mel Howard, the other senior disc jockey, is a resilient Canadian with a passion for flying to Paris on his day off. Like so many colonials — he hates the term — Mel emigrated backwards and being a man of unusual talents and personality, gravitated to Radio Scotland.
Cheerful Tony Meehan is the disc jockey with the glasses. Not many people know this — he never wears them when he’s on the air. Tony has an air of sympathy all around him — he looks like he needs sympathy. So he gets it…… from the girls, natch. When word got around that he had a birthday coming up, Radio Scotland put up the barricades and stood by to be bombarded with birthday presents.
Jack McLaughlin is the deejay with the split personality. Half the time he thinks he’s actually a zany character called Yak Macfisheries, who presents one of Radio Scotland’s most successful programmes, the daily ceilidh, with a multitude of hoochs, choochs and how’s-your-grannies. His parents, Mr and Mrs Macfisheries, live in Cambuslang, and Jack was once a schoolteacher. Of course, he was once a bingo caller, too …. but there’s no truth in the rumour he used to be a candy-floss salesman in a Shanghai chip shop.
These are the disc jockeys who have been with Radio Scotland right from the start of operations; they are the voices known to millions, the faces known to thousands from personal appearances at all-star shows and church bazaars, at Clan Balls and local hops. They lead the team of broadcasters on the “Comet”.
Radio Scotland has had other disc jockeys, and hopes to have more new blood in the future. Disc jockeys are not only personalities, they are also men of character — and you can’t tie down characters.
They get restless, move on, exploit their many talents in new fields. To those who have been dee jays with the Big S, we extend a big thank-you for helping make Scotland’s station the success it is.
21-year-old Ben, an Irishman by birth, has plenty of experience as a disc-jockey. He worked round the ballrooms and clubs in the London area before he decided to come up and join us at the Super S.