Kevin Greening, of Radio 1 'fame', died last night at just 44.
Kevin was another of the truly great DJ's like Kenny Everett & Roger Scott to name just a couple.
He was inventive, funny & extremely competent yet never 'full-of-himself' like so many of today's 'personality' DJs.
Kevin received most of his fame when he was co-hosting the breakfast show on Radio 1 with Zoe Ball (well, he was pushing the buttons & injected the humour as Zoe Ball was pretty 'dippy' to say the least!) but before (& after, I think) that he used to have an excellent Saturday & Sunday lunchtime show.
During these shows he invented a number of special characters like Gripper the dog & Raymond Sinclair.
He also introduced the 'Joke du Jour' where he would start a joke at the beginning of the Saturday show & deliver the punchline at the end of his Sunday show. One way to make sure people kept listening!
He moved to XFM which was part of Capital Radio's empire broadcasting indie music as opposed to Capital's normal output. (It wasn't known as 'cRapital' for nothing) I used to listen to it in the office at Keybridge.
His last job was at Smooth FM where he presented the afternoon show.
Kevin used to ride a motorcycle - last I heard he had a GSX1000 and knew how to ride it!
I always wanted to offer him & his partner a place to stay for the TT as I'd have been in my element with a DJ like him to talk to!
Sadly, that will never happen now. Nor will we ever hear anything new from him but I still have a few tapes of him and I hope some of the radio stations he worked for produce a fitting tribute program to him.
"Kevin Greening has left the building" as he used to say at the end of his shows.
R.I.P Kevin.
