By Emma Clayton

 

WHAT does Mother Teresa have in common with a Charlie's Angel?

Not much, you might think. But when it came to news of their deaths, you could say they each had their thunder stolen.

Mother Teresa died just days after Princess Diana's death shook the world, and poor Farrah Fawcett passed away the same day as Michael Jackson, so you might struggle to remember any tributes paid to her.

I mention this because the death of DJ Ed Stewart recently was eclipsed by news that the world has lost David Bowie. Both men, born just a few years apart, started their careers in the Sixties, and in their own way rose to fame through popular music broadcasting.

Although I recognise Bowie's huge cultural legacy, (and before the anonymous reader who regularly chides me on my music taste sharpens his pen, I have actually seen Bowie in concert), it is Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart I pay tribute to.

For it is he that I have to thank for my lifelong love of radio.

As a child, listening to Junior Choice was a Saturday morning staple and I still recall the songs regularly played, from Terry Scott's My Brother to Allan Sherman's ode to summer camp, Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.

York Press:

Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart, who died on January 9

On Christmas Day I caught some of Stewpot presenting the last-ever Junior Choice and heard old favourite Three Wheels On My Wagon, which he once played as my brother's birthday request four decades ago.

I grew up listening to the radio; it provided the soundtrack to my life and I love that it still has the power to set the nation's agenda.

My mum was a staunch Radio 4 listener and wouldn't have anything else on but the Today programme on weekday mornings.

The news went over my head, but I still recall presenter Brian Redhead's comforting voice and Rabbi Lionel Blue's Thought for the Day bringing calm to the chaos of our breakfast table.

I can't understand why anyone would watch breakfast TV, with its garish primary colours and smirking presenters, when you have radio to ease you into the day.

As a teenager, Radio 1 was my backdrop; I'd break off from homework to hear the soppy Our Tune, and Sunday evenings saw me dutifully taping the Top 40.

But always in the background at home were the familiar sounds of Radio 4.

Whenever I hear the theme music to The Archers or long-running panel shows Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, I think of my mum pottering around the kitchen.

And often I'm doing just the same, having reached the age when I'm more concerned with the goings-on in Ambridge than what's top of the charts.