Andy Kershaw obituary | Music Radio

Andy Kershaw, who has died aged 66 after undergoing treatment for cancer, made his name as a BBC Radio 1 DJ by bringing world music to a wide audience, and established himself as a journalist reporting on radio about wars and horrors in remote places.

“I think initially Radio 1 wanted something else [John] “Bill,” he told The Independent in 2012, “but I quickly became bored with those awful, vulgar demo tapes I was receiving from indie shows in Liverpool, especially as I began to discover suitably amazing, wonderful music from Malawi, Congo and South Africa.”

Kershaw began his national radio career on television. In 1984, he joined Mark Ellen and David Hepworth in the presenting team of Whistle Test (formerly The Old Gray Whistle Test, with Richard Williams, Bob Harris and Annie Nightingale among a succession of solo presenters). The BBC Two program focused on the album’s music rather than the singles featured on BBC One’s Top of the Pops.

The following year, the trio joined Janice Long, Paul Gambaccini and others to host the Wembley Live Aid concert on television and radio. At the same time, Kershaw began presenting a weekly evening show on Radio 1, briefly on Saturdays, then on Thursdays until 1989. Alongside the music that impressed him on disc were live sessions in the studio.

He and Bill, who were dedicated to introducing listeners to new artists, shared an office in Room 318 at Egton House, the old Radio 1 building next to the Broadcasting House, with their producer John Walters, whom Kershaw described as “my close friend, advisor and inspiration”.

But both DJs were uncomfortable with the idea of ​​Kershaw being groomed as Bell’s successor, and in his 2011 autobiography, No Off Switch, Kershaw downplayed his late colleague’s reputation as a “rebel”, like himself, writing somewhat uncharitably: “He had no stomach for a fight at all.” On air, Kershaw moved around the schedule, with his show shifting to weekends, then Mondays, then Fridays, until he was dropped by Radio 1 in 2000.

During his 15 years on the station, he also traveled the world performing special musical performances, from joining the Elvis Presley faithful on a memorial tour marking the 10th anniversary of their idol’s death, to discovering more about the Zimbabwean music he had already featured in his shows.

The Times described the DJ as “the BBC’s musical anthropologist” and he added politics to the mix when he traveled to South Africa in 1995, meeting some of its most influential musicians and finding out how the country was settling in the year following the end of apartheid.

Eventually, he presented shows for five of the BBC’s main national radio stations. He has broadcast on Radio 4 since 1987, where he went on a three-part musical journey through Mali (1989), measured the political heat in unstable Haiti (1991), and reported for the Today program on the genocide in Rwanda (1994) and the civil wars in Angola (1996) and Sierra Leone (2001).

On Radio 3, he co-presented the magazine program World Routes with Lucy Duran from 2000 to 2006. Highlights included a return to Haiti at the time of the presidential election to listen to Caribbean-influenced music, rap and Pentecostal choirs, and a trip to Iraq shortly before 9/11 to discover the country’s classical musical traditions and the sounds of the Roma community.

After his show was canceled by Radio 1, he found a new home on Radio 3 hosting a weekly show featuring world music, folk, country and blues (2001-2007), making him the only DJ to successfully move between the two stations. He also made the radio documentaries 3 Songs of the Hermit’s Kingdom (2003) in North Korea; Iran – Axis of Evil (2004), with underground heavy metal and illegal raves; and Christmas in Ashgabat (2005) in Turkmenistan.

But Kershaw’s career faltered – and his regular Radio 3 show ended – after he split from his partner of 17 years, Juliet Banner, in 2006. When the court issued a restraining order preventing him from contacting her, he turned to drinking and was jailed three times for breaching the order, saying he wanted to see his children. When he did this again in 2008, he ran away and was homeless for a while, moving from one friend to another.

He eventually returned to Radio 3, teaming up with Duran again on the magazine program Music Planet (2011) and becoming a correspondent for the BBC television program The One Show (2012-2019).

Kershaw was born in Littleborough, Lancashire, the youngest son of Eileen (née Acton) and Jack Kershaw, who were teachers. Jack later became head of Rochdale Comprehensive School and Eileen head of a nursery school. Andy’s sister Liz, who was born a year earlier, had a long-standing career as a DJ on BBC Radio National.

When Kershaw was 14 and studying at Hulme Grammar School in Oldham, he began his “endless, tempestuous love affair” with the music of Bob Dylan after hearing the star’s 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited, in particular the song Like a Rolling Stone.

While studying politics at the University of Leeds (1978-1982), he was entertainment secretary of the Students’ Union. He spent so much time booking acts, such as Ian Dury, Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello, Dire Straits and The Clash, that he failed to get his degree.

After working as a “backstage coordinator” at the closing concert of the Rolling Stones’ 1982 European tour, in Leeds, Kershaw’s first job was at the city’s commercial Radio Air station as promotions manager (1982-1983). Within months, he was also hosting a late-night alternative music show, and then a blues show.

He moved to London in 1984 and became singer-songwriter Billy Bragg’s driver, tour manager and road coach for gigs in Britain and mainland Europe. Kershaw was invited to be the presenter of Whistle Test after meeting television producer Trevor Dunn.

On television, he also presented episodes of the Channel 4 series Travellog (1990–1998), while his journalism included a spot-on report for The Independent on the anti-government Red Shirt protests in Thailand in 2010.

Kershaw is survived by Sonny and Dolly, his children Banner, and his sister.