CHRISTOPHER STEVENS remembers radio legend Brian Matthew | Daily Mail Online
He was, in the words of his own catchphrase, our ‘old mate’.Brian Matthew, who has died at 88, was a cheerleader of the older generation for 50 years, ever since the BBC told him in 1967 that he was too elderly to join the newly created Radio 1.The broadcaster’s longevity seemed to irk trend-chasing BBC bosses who gave him the shove repeatedly over the decades.
Their ageist attitude failed – such was Matthew’s popularity among his millions of fans, dubbed the ‘avids’, that he kept being reinstated by popular demand. ‘The guillotine keeps coming down,’ he once joked, ‘but it’s never quite reached my neck.’
Even when Radio 2 chiefs announced in January, quite callously and dishonestly, that ‘by mutual agreement’ he was giving up his weekly Sounds Of The Sixties show owing to ill-health, Matthew refused to go quietly. ‘Mutual agreement?’ he snorted. ‘That was totally untrue. Balderdash!’
Indeed, the Beeb seemed in such a hurry to get rid of him that it prematurely announced his death last week, three days before he died in hospital – though that error stemmed from a mistaken tip-off by a member of his family.
He was born in Coventry in 1928, the son of musical parents, and made his first broadcast in Germany while doing his National Service in the Army, aged 20.
Joining the British Forces Network, he broadcast for nine months from Hamburg’s Musikhalle: future BBC stars Raymond Baxter and Cliff Michelmore were colleagues.
Source: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS remembers radio legend Brian Matthew | Daily Mail Online
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