James Whale passing

[radionortheast]

normally I wouldn’t talk about this a presenter I know about from the 90’s, who I used fall a sleep listening to on talk radio has now gone. It was a mix of that and sunrise would make me drift off, or spend many hours trying to built a 19khz stereo generator, putting dream fm mix tapes through it, maybe it would work maybe it wouldn't.
I don’t know what he talked about anyway, weather he was a nice person I don't know.

[shuffy]

I'm glad you wrote something Northeast, I was thinking of posting yesterday when I heard. I've always been a bit of an insomniac and listened to a lot of late night radio, in particular talk. I discovered James Whale on Radio Aire in my 2nd year of university. He started the dual format with Yorkshire TV (and Granada IIRC) shortly after. He was a huge influence on the talk genre and I think changed the game more than once, so a very sad loss.

By the way, according to co-presenter Ash Gould he was much more friendly off air and had to spend time working up that anger.

[Albert H]

I met him plenty of times, and he was always very generous with his time and advice for new broadcasters. A close friend of mine got lots of help from him when he began his career, and Whale provided a great reference for him when he moved to a bigger station. He enjoyed a glass (or three!) of good wine, but was cursed by ill health for the last twenty years or so. He set up a cancer research charity (one of the few real charities) and this will apparently continue despite his demise.

He's a significant loss, and managed to keep on working up to about three weeks ago, despite his collapsing health.

[radionortheast]

Ash did seem to get treated poorly, I think I mostly listened for the aliens maybe stuff about the super natural, I have memories of listening to it while on hoilday, the signal was really fluttery.

[shuffy]

That will be the "Nick Pope" era, early 2000s? They were doing this thing where Ash was playing the role of the assistant who keeps chipping in and James would tell him to butt out and go and print off some emails or answer the phone. Pretty funny and I'm sure all for the listeners' benefit!