Signal radio DJ Dicky Dodd talks about life on the Wolverhampton airwaves

“That one was a bit close for my liking,” he says with a big grin.

Dicky explains he was almost caught in what they call in the radio broadcasting trade ‘the middle of nowhere land’, stuck between a song and a news bulletin with an uneasy 30 second gap to fill.

The 43-year-old is in what he calls his ‘home from home’, the Signal 107 studio on the second floor of Wolverhampton’s Mander Centre.

It’s here he can be found every morning six days a week, playing the tunes and starting the conversations that get the people of the city up and at ‘em and ready to face the day.

A son of Wolverhampton and a veteran of more than two decades in the DJ booth, Dicky is living proof that the days of traditional local radio broadcasting are far from over.

Spending a morning in the studio with him is like entering the Dicky Dodd time machine, hurtling through the decades at 45rpm.

At times it’s all a bit Smashie and Nicey, like when we spend half an hour transported back to 1984. John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova have just won Wimbledon, Dicky reminds us, before lining up The Cars’ Drive. Let’s rock!!

In the blink of an eye Rag‘n’Bone Man’s Human is blaring out, signalling our return to the here and now.

There’s an introduction to the Grandparent of the Year Award, a debate on the benefits of cycling to work, and a question is posed: Why is Nicki Minaj being so harshly criticised?

Damned if I know.

This is the radio many of us grew up listening to, juggling nostalgia and the present day, with a good old fashioned dollop of fun thrown into the mix.

Phase one of Dicky’s day is complete as he hands over Alan Nicklin who promises ‘more of the music you love’, but there are still meetings to be had, charity events to plan and a studio tour to lead.

As well as hosting the flagship morning show Dicky is also the station’s content controller, meaning it’s his job to determine what goes out on air and when.

“Sometimes it feels like there are not enough hours in the day,” he says, now back in the confines of his office.

“But this is what I love to do and to be truthful I wouldn’t have it any way.”

It could all have been so different. As a teenager fresh out of Wednesfield High School, Dicky had his heart set on becoming a police officer.

Then his neighbour, legendary Beacon radio DJ Bob Davies, invited him into the studio on Tettenhall Road for a day ‘just to see how it was done’.

“I can remember that Dale Winton was a presenter there at the time and everyone in the studio seemed to be smoking,” recalls Dicky.

“But that was it. I was hooked.”

Dicky started working with Bob on his mobile roadshow on weekends, while in the week he spent more and more time at Beacon watching the other presenters spinning discs.

He said that by 1994 he realised that being a DJ was now his calling. “I started to watch some of the presenters and think I could do it better than them,” he says.

Meanwhile, the police application forms remained tucked away in a draw, never to be completed.

After working on the sports desk for five quid an hour and doing the occasional fill-in slot behind the scenes, Dicky’s big break finally came after he recorded a demo tape for station controller Pete Wagstaff.

“Actually it was two demo tapes,” admits Dicky. “Pete threw the first one back at me and said it was rubbish.”

He was given a few cover shifts on the overnight show, before landing his first daytime slot in Shropshire in 1995.

It was the start of ‘a beautiful relationship’, he recalls, which would eventually see him juggle his on air duties as breakfast show presenter with those of station events manager and deputy programme director.

He says he has fond memories of his time at Beacon, although it was there where he experienced his most embarrassing moment on air.

Coming to the end of a late show at 1am, word got to Dicky that his replacement Pete Clements was off sick.

He boldly carried on through into the early hours of the morning, a decision that appeared to be justified until he leaned back in his chair and momentarily closed his eyes shortly before 4am.

“I made probably the biggest mistake a DJ can make on an overnight show and nodded off,” he says.

“I can remember waking up to this horrible buzzing sound, not having a clue what was going on or how long I’d been out for.”

It transpires there had been 20 minutes of radio silence while Dicky grabbed 40 winks.

“I thought that was me done at Beacon but thankfully the bosses took a sympathetic view,” he says, still sounding relieved two decades down the line.

After leaving Beacon Dicky had a short spell at Worcester’s Radio Wyvern before returning to the city to work at The Wolf, where he stayed on as breakfast show presenter when the station became Signal 107 in 2012.

For Wolves season ticket holder Dicky, broadcasting to the city of his birth is a great honour, something he feels privileged to be able to do.

“There’s nothing better than getting up in the morning and addressing the city I grew up in,” he says.

“Working alongside Wolves, the Star . . . the city’s real blue chip companies as I call them . . . it is fantastic to be able to make a difference.

“I have a real passion for this city and its people.”

Making a difference comes in many shapes and forms, from running the dozens of charity initiatives the station is involved in, to comparing social events including the city’s marathon.

During one show Dicky spent the bulk of his time off air speaking over the phone to a listener who had called up threatening to commit suicide.

“Thankfully we managed to get him the help he needed and he was OK,” he says.

“But you realise that doing this job, you have to be there for your audience.”

He talks fondly of Wolverhampton’s great and good. Of being privileged to spend time in the company of the likes of Sir Jack Hayward and Rachael Heyhoe Flint.

“Two absolutely wonderful people,” he says.

As the unofficial voice of Wolverhampton, Dicky says he feels it is his duty to defend the city ‘against a lot of the rubbish’ that is spoken about it by the national media.

“We’re supposed to be miserable,” he says, referring to a think tank report from last year.

“What a load of absolute nonsense.”

Having been a fixture on our airwaves for some 23 years, Dicky is perfectly placed to talk about how the industry has changed from the days when radio ruled the roost.

He says automation – digital music rather than CDs or vinyl – has made running a radio show a lot easier, although he admits to missing the days of rooting through the shelves to find a particular album.

“At Beacon we used to have a wall in the studio that was just packed with CDs,” he recalls.

“We had a selector sheet with all the tracks on for that particular show and you would have to find them before you played them.

“Digital has made things smoother but it has also taken a bit of the fun away.”

The science behind song selection on radio stations involves a combination of attempting to match listener tastes with commercial responsibilities.

“At one time we had Snow Patrol on repeat for 10 months,” he says, shaking his head ruefully.

“You would think people would get fed up of it but the audience kept on telling us they wanted to hear it.”

Dicky’s personal taste covers a wide field of genres, although he has a particular soft spot for George Michael and ELO.

His career as a DJ has given him the chance to meet some major players in the music industry. He still counts Wolverhampton’s own Beverley Knight as one of the nicest people he has met, while Cheryl Cole was ‘just lovely’.

However, he admits didn’t see eye to eye with Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon. “The interview went so badly I never even put it on air,” he says.

Although he has spent more than half his life on the radio, Dicky shows no signs of slowing down and has vowed to keep on laying down the tracks for as long as the city wants him.

“If you go back a few years there were a lot of predictions that radio was old hat and wasn’t going to last in the digital age,” he says.

“But it gives the community a voice. For me it is more important than ever.”

Video hasn’t quite killed the radio star.

l Go behind the scenes of a day in Dicky Dodd’s studio at www.expressandstar.com