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DJobit: Kevin Greening
The former Radio One breakfast show presenter Kevin Greening has died.
The manager of the 44 year-old said Greening died "peacefully" in his sleep, but gave no further details.
Greening would claim that his start in broadcasting came editing tapes for Checkpoint and Roger Cook, but his route to Radio One was more traditional - after a stint on BBC Radio Solent, he joined GLR at a time when the London station was at its sharpest. A brief stint at the start-up Virgin Radio was followed by the move to Radio One in 1993.
Something of an acquired taste - Greening's show was one of the last to employ comedy voices and characters (Raymond Sinclair, Major Hold-ups), making him like an erudite Steve Wright - his career highpoint came when Matthew Bannister was rushing to correct the fall-out from the Radcliffe and Lard breakfast experiment. He was thrown into a double act with Zoe Ball on breakfast, providing the radio experience to partner with Ball's high profile. The partnership lasted only until Ball started to gain in confidence, then Greening was cut free and floated about the schedules until his contract expired in early New Year, 2000.
There followed a long period where Greening struggled to find a permanent niche - a year at Five Live; some time at London Live (the renamed GLR) where he found himself playing the same role with Amanda Hussein as he did with Zoe Ball at Radio One; Jazz FM, Heart; a surprisingly successful stint at Xfm before winding up at Smooth in London. Greening's trouble was he was a man who had a unique style at a time when commercial radio is obsessed with smoothing out any sign of individuality; he was, effectively, out of the time when he would have flourished.
3 comments:
I was a big fan of his style, something which certainly stood out on Radio 1 at the time (he was the only DJ on the station whose shows were sharp, well-thought-out laugh-out-loud comedy).
My enduring memory is of Greening taking on the unenviable role of presenting the breakfast show in the week following Diana's death. While other stations and presenters went for all-out mourning, his shows were thoughtful, taking tentative steps back towards the usual style without ignoring the situation altogether (because whilst some of the audience were in full-on grief mode, some of us just wanted to listen to a good radio show).
At the time, the England football team were facing tabloid outrage for not postponing an international game 'out of respect', such was the apparent public feeling against anything non-mourning. I remember him explaining exactly how he felt, how much he dreaded walking into the studio each day and seeing his chair, facing the prospect of trying to judge the public mood each day. He ended by saying "I can't think of a more difficult place to be right now... Except maybe the England Football team"
What a shame. He was such a decent chap.
I still have a personal letter of support he sent me when I was in some crap band in the 90s.
Imagine how many crap bands he must've heard a week, and he still bothered to put pen to paper.
I can't imagine Princess Diana doing that, somehow...
I have fond memories of his stint on Virgin, back at the beginning, before it became a "plays the same 20 songs over and over" station like Atlantic 252 used to be. Now he's gone to join the likes of Peel, Vance and Freeman in the Great Broadcasting Studio in the Sky.
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