The former 6Music DJ on being diagnosed with ADHD, and becoming a ‘reluctant pioneer’ of subscriber-only radio
“Do you remember ‘Oh Lori’ by the Alessi brothers? Late 1970s?” asks Shaun Keaveny. “No? You’d know it if you heard it. It’s one of those songs you want to hear from a taxi radio on the way back from the pub. ‘I’ve Been Waiting For a Girl Like You’ [by Foreigner, 1981] and ‘If You Leave Me Now’ [Chicago, 1976] have the same sugar that we all find ourselves reaching for when we need comfort. That kind of music has always been a great succour to me and I’ve been reaching back in time for it more than ever over the past year.”
So the Lancastrian DJ is looking forward to “banging out the big hits of the 70s, 80s and 90s” when he takes over Mark Goodier’s “Top Ten at Ten” show on Greatest Hits Radio next week. Via videolink from his home in London, Keaveny admits he’s had “an anxious time” since leaving BBC 6Music last June. He’d spent 14 years at the station, endearing himself to listeners with a dry, downbeat style honed on a breakfast show (2007-2018) that owed much to Terry Wogan’s classic, kettle-on comradeship. He spent three years on the afternoon shift (2018-2021) before station bosses shocked fans by announcing he was being replaced by Craig Charles.
Keaveny says he wasn’t exactly sacked. Instead, the BBC offered him some “stuff that wasn’t as good, stuff I didn’t want to do” and he felt he had little choice but to quit. Social media saw a huge outpouring of love – and anger at the BBC – from longterm listeners after his final show, which he began with Abba’s “Thank You for the Music” and ended graciously with The Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun”.
He sounds more wounded today, although he laces the self-pity with self-aware wit. “It was a hard transition for a 50-year-old man,” he says. “If you cut me, do I not bleed the BBC? But I was forced out onto the ice floe like an elderly Inuit relative. I had to find a way to fend for myself. I’ve had to cut a hole in the ice and start fishing…”