Paul Gambaccini heading to Shrewsbury to remember his stellar BBC career

Gambaccini is hitting the road to share his love of music with a series of live theatre dates, including a headline show at Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn on April 18.

An Evening With The Great Gambo – The Professor of Pop will see the current BBC Radio 2 Pick of the Pops presenter reveal for the first time how he started out life as a boy in the Bronx and wound up as The Professor of Pop in Great Britain.

Gambaccini’s radio career began at Dartmouth College in the US where he was general manager and top-rated DJ of WDCR, America’s largest radio station run by students. It was while studying at Oxford University he got his big break when he came to the attention of John Peel’s producer John Walters, who took special note of a Rolling Stone cover interview Paul had conducted with Elton John.

The DJ was asked to give a weekly talk on Radio 1 beginning in the autumn of 1973. The assignment expanded into doing interviews for Peel’s programme Rock Week and reviews for Radio 4’s Kaleidoscope. Paul was given his own show of the American hits in 1975, a programme he continued on Radio 1 until 1986 and then on commercial radio and later Radio 2.

With a break of six years, America’s Greatest Hits lasted for 41 years, the longest single-presenter single-format popular music programme in British radio history.

Gambaccini remains the only broadcaster to have had regular series on BBC Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Classic FM

He was one of the founder presenters on Classic FM, where his Classic Countdown was the highest-rated classical music programme in UK history. He has also had regular television runs on BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky.

An Evening With The Great Gambo – The Professor of Pop will see this accomplished broadcaster, journalist and author share his unique lifetime experiences and stories, amongst which will be clips of some of the great artists he has known and worked with.

Gambaccini will share tales of growing up with the phenomenon of Elvis Presley as a child and the Beatles as a teenager; how he got into radio; his early experiences with Rolling Stone magazine; his fascinating years as a radio and television broadcaster and of course lots of behind the scenes tales.

He will also discuss the three great crises of his life – coping with the Vietnam War’s challenge to his American generation, enduring the era of Aids and surviving an encounter with the Metropolitan Police.

Gambaccini last year launched a £300,000 damages claim against the Met after he endured a year of unfounded suspicion before being told he would not be prosecuted for historical sexual abuse.

He said: “I think connecting face-to-face with an audience will be really exciting.

'The stupidest thing that has ever happened to me'

“I’m fascinated to see the make-up of the audience because my career has been so diverse. I’ve done so many programmes about pop and classical music – not to mention my close encounter with the Metropolitan Police, the stupidest thing that has ever happened to me.”

Gambaccini decided to hit the road because he wanted to mark his 45th anniversary. He said: “It suddenly occurred to me this autumn is the 45th anniversary of my joining Radio 1.

“I thought it was something I should take seriously and celebrate – this is my only life after all.

“Let’s just express gratitude for this career, which was inconceivable until I lived it.

“There’s never been a boy from America who has come over here and then worked for 45 years on national radio.

“When I was younger, I could never have imagined it, but here I am.”

He’s not particularly nervous about being on stage. A few years ago, BBC2 and Channel 4 captioned him as ‘The Professor of Pop’ and he was made News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at Oxford University. He had to do a string of lectures, so public speaking holds no fear. Gamaccini got his big break by using his initiative and making things happen.

Initiative

“I read the Financial Times, and they have a weekly feature where they ask a public person which counts more: talent or ambition? For me, the most important thing has always been initiative.

“An example is when I attended a Bee Gees concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1973 when I was writing for Rolling Stone magazine.

“I noticed that Elton John was also in the audience. He had just had a number one in the US, Crocodile Rock.

“As a result, he had become America’s biggest pop star without anyone really noticing – everyone at the time was obsessed with Stevie Wonder’s incredible run of albums.

“So I thought to myself, ‘It’s time for a lengthy Rolling Stone cover interview with Elton John’.

“So during the interval at the Bee Gees concert, I followed Elton into the men’s room.

“I asked him if he’d like to do a Rolling Stone cover interview. He politely told me to ask Helen Walters at his record label DJM, who took care of those things.

“I called her and, probably to Elton’s surprise, she said, ‘Great idea. Elton is about to go on tour in America, and this will be a very good way of promoting it’.

Serendipity

“She really liked the piece, and to thank me she took me to lunch with her husband, John Walters, who happened to be John Peel’s producer at Radio 1.

“He invited me to give a weekly talk on Radio 1, and that’s how my British radio career began. That was serendipity in action.”

Gambaccini has been a close friend of Sir Elton John and is also a pal of Adele. He enjoys being close to the stars, so that he can see how they operate. He also loves sharing his knowledge with fans and listeners to his programmes.

“I love the one-to-one nature of communication on radio. The last ratings for Pick of the Pops on Radio 2 were 2.35 million people, but of course I never see them. People make a big deal about an artist selling out Wembley Stadium, but Wembley Stadium only holds 72,000 people.

“Every week on Pick of the Pops, we are doing 30 Wembley Stadiums.

"But while people on stage are communing with the crowd, we’re broadcasting one-to-one. You can only broadcast one-to-one. You can’t imagine broadcasting to a room of even eight different people. What’s really interesting is to ask yourself which one person you’re broadcasting to. In my case, it’s always the young me. I know what makes him happy and thrills him.”

Not everything has gone to plan, however, and Gambaccini has had his share of mishaps.

“The biggest embarrassment happened on my first radio station at Dartmouth College. I went there because it had the largest college radio show in the US. It had an audience the size of BBC Radio London.

"Anyway, I went on air there, and I burped. There is no way of rationalising a burp. It’s there forever now and is part of history. Even though probably only a few thousand people heard it and it was 50 years ago, I still find myself apologising for it.”