Last of the pirates: Johnnie Walker hangs up his headphones

Johnnie Walker brought his incredible 58-year radio career to a close on Sunday, with a little help from his wife Tiggy and celebrity admirers including Rod Stewart. 

“The day has come I’ve always dreaded,” said the veteran DJ, as he began his final Radio 2 show, Sounds of the 70s, which he’s presented since 2009. 

He chose George Harrison’s What Is Life as his opening song and showed off his broad musical taste for two hours, bringing Nils Lofgren, Sister Sledge and Peter Gabriel out of his record box.

“It’s my last show, I’m playing all the songs I love,” he said. And who’d want to argue with the much-loved DJ, who started on pirate radio in the 1960s and has remained relevant ever since? 

Walker announced he’d be retiring from both Sounds of the 70s and his Friday night Rock Show earlier this month, as his health made it too difficult to continue. 

For the last four years he has had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a terminal condition where the lungs become scarred, making breathing difficult.

This year the condition has worsened, so he relies on oxygen and has only been able to broadcast from his home in Dorset. 

Last of the pirates? 

After working as a car salesman and DJing locally, Walker got his big break on Radio Caroline, the pirate radio station that broadcasted from various ships in international waters.

It was 1966 and the just-about-legal station was home to legendary DJs such as Tony Blackburn, Emperor Rosko and Simon Dee. 

We could call him the last of the pirates, but his friend and rival Tony Blackburn might have something to say about that.

Earlier this year Walker and Blackburn, 81, delighted their fans by teaming up for a special Clash of the Pirates show, as well as hijacking various different shows across the BBC.  

It's not just the easy way they connect with listeners that Walker and Blackburn have in common, but also their utter devotion to music, a characteristic to be treasured in the current celebrity-led radio landscape.

What these two don’t know about rock and soul (both old and new) isn’t worth thinking about. Right from the start, Walker believed that music was more important than chat and he stood by his principles. 

After leaving Radio Caroline in 1968, he took a break before joining the BBC, with an hour-long show on Radio 1 – and what he called a “devil-may-care attitude”.

During the 1970s, he stood his ground about the tracks he would and wouldn’t play (with the Bay City Rollers, who he said were ‘musical garbage’ in the latter camp) and left to DJ in America. 

By 1987, he was back at Radio 1 and found his groove in Radio 2’s weekday drivetime show from 1999 to 2006, with a break for cancer treatment.

He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma of the colon in 2002, just months into his marriage to Tiggy.

He returned to work and for seven years he worked alongside traffic reporter Sally Boazman, who he thanked in Sunday’s show “for all the fun we had on Drivetime”.  

In 2006 he was awarded an MBE. During lockdown, he began to broadcast from home and was joined on air by his wife, who he fondly refers to as Tiggy Stardust because of her love for David Bowie.

Putting the music first 

Despite his encyclopaedic knowledge of music, Walker was always happy to take requests.

I remember gathering around the radio back in the 1970s with the whole family cheering because he played our request – The Isley Brothers’ Summer Breeze – and dedicated it to us.

He said he’d pop round for tea one day because we played such good music in our house – and as a child I spent the next few years rushing to answer the door in case it was Johnnie. 

While he welcomed requests to his Sounds of the 70s show, putting them in his virtual jukebox, his own choice, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird, perfectly summed up his rock ‘n’ roll spirit.

An archive interview with David Bowie proved what a heavyweight interviewer Walker is. 

You weren’t alone if his final song, Judy Collins’ Amazing Grace, brought you to tears.

“It’s going to be very strange not to be on the wireless anymore, but life will be less of a strain trying to find the breath and do programmes,” he said.

“Take good care of yourself and those you love and may we walk into the future with our heads held high and happiness in our hearts.”  

As he and Tiggy cracked open the champagne, he started his retirement and leaves fans with so many great memories – and plenty of inspiration for their playlists. 

Listen to Johnnie Walker’s last show on BBC Sounds.