"The Real Tony Blackburn" produced by Granada for Channel 4 in October 2002 not too long after winning the first series of
I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, and becoming a national hero.
Narrated by Jenny Eclair, this was a very well made programme looking at the ups and downs of the broadcaster's career including interviews with the man himself and colleagues including David Hamilton, former Radio 1 controller Derek Chinnery and producer Phil Swern who nowadays writes all the questions for Ken Bruce's Popmaster which Tony took part in during the time they did "Celebrity Popmaster" when the competitions were banned at the BBC.
Anyway, with regards to Derek Chinnery it made me realise that I've only ever seen his successor Johnny Beerling interviewed on television twice.
One of them being "The Radio 1 Story" in 1997, and the other was
"Turn That Racket Down" in 1999 broadcast as part of a special night of programmes to celebrate John Peel's 60th birthday.
It was also repeated 5 years later after his death.
Although to be honest, if you've ever heard Johnny speak, he doesn't sound like the most interesting or enthusiastic speaker, despite the many achievements he made at Radio 1 especially on the jingle side of things.
On that very subject, the Tony Blackburn documentary touched on how Tony apparently brought the concept of the personalised sung jingle to British shores after joining the pirate Radio London in 1966.
There was a close up of a photograph with all the carts with specially labelled tags, one of them reading "You get a positive charge", which was actually a PAMS cut resung for Swinging Radio England, which I reckon Tony doctored with one of his own specially made jingles by "Tin Pan Alley" in London.
The above cut was also used in the late 80s for County Sound Gold, along with many other AM stations on commercial radio when the big frequency splits took place.
It's also worth posting this version of the "Sonowaltz" as used on Radio London and adapted for County Sound that never made it to air but is rather amusing.
There was a clean version done of course.
Other interviewees included John Peel who saw Tony as a "buffoon" during his career at Radio 1 and only really felt sorry for him when he got demoted to Jimmy Young's old slot when Noel Edmonds took over the Breakfast Show.
To make things worse Tony split from his wife Tessa shortly after and his show became more or less an excuse to speak openly about his troubles resulting in him being suspended for a week in 1978.
One of the offences was the repeated playing of R & J Stone's "We've Thrown It All Away", which resulted in a send up in "Smashie And Nicey: The End Of An Era" which Harry Enfield later went on to regret doing, in spite of Tony himself being happy to appear in the programme himself.
On his return he was moved to an afternoon slot with Simon Bates taking over the mid morning slot for the next 15 years, but Derek Chinnery wouldn't have any more of Tony using the show as a soapbox and in 1979 demoted him to presenting Junior Choice on Saturday and Sunday mornings, as well as
the Top 40 rundown on Sunday afternoons.
1984 saw Tony's departure from Radio 1 after 17 years although he had just started presenting a daily soul show on BBC Radio London and gained a cult following with his Soul Nights Out, rivalling Capital Radio's "Best Disco In Town".
That's not to say that he was safe from send up as unsurprisingly he was one of the many victims of the Bastard Brothers as can be heard here.
(As you'd expect, there's a bit of naughty language)
The new found success wasn't to last however as Matthew Bannister arrived at BBC Radio London in 1988 and was charged with giving it a revamp.
Blackburn certainly wasn't on Matthew's good books and he had negotiated a deal behind the BBC's back with Capital Radio to present on their new
Capital Gold AM station which was to launch later in the year.
When Tony mentioned on air, and in a newspaper interview that the BBC couldn't sack him because he was about to resign, things came to a head on the 26th of May 1988 when Matthew booted him off the station just minutes after finished his show saying he said would be back tomorrow morning.
TV appearances around this time were nothing more than pisstakes with examples such as Roland Rat, Little and Large and especially Noel's House Party, but around this time he was more than happy to send himself up and not take himself too seriously.
Things were on the up though as in 1990 he started going out with an actress called Debbie who he starred in pantomime with and they married in 1992 giving birth to daughter Victoria five years later.
But despite his happy family life, it's easy for me to identify with Tony as a person, solely down to his insistence of being a rather solitary person and not wanting to have too many friends.
Although with me it's not really been a case of not wanting them.
It more or less leads on to when I met the man himself at Waterstones in October 2007, although I was very ill at the time.
Well not in a life threatening way but I wasn't active enough to do things which anyone else would be more than capable of.
Here's that long awaited opportunity.
But with regards to certain individuals at University who are probably either too ambitious or above their station, I hope they end up going into Hypomania like I did because that way, they'll start to realise the more simple and comforting things in life that they seem to have forgotten about since starting here.
Because I did get very carried away during the first two years of my time
at Westminster.
However as mentioned yesterday, I don't like it when people like the senior radio lecturer try to discourage me for getting enthusiastic or having fun, at events like the SRAs for example.
Therefore taking the fun out of the events completely from my point of view leaving everyone else to lick each other's backsides.
In fact I'd say that their presence is partly responsible for my dislike of awards and events of that sort.
It's not like I'm getting to the point of being too annoying or "licky" in some cases but I wish people like him would be more encouraging rather than discouraging.
I know I keep mentioning his name, but at least Dave Sharp is more relaxed and has shown interest in my "tangents" about radio from the past and isn't as snobbish as a few other lecturers on the course.
Although he's more of a hands on man rather than a someone who leans towards the poncey stuff.
It also helps that unlike a lot of lecturers here, he's never looked down on us as radio students and opened up a lot of opportunities.
Moving back to Tony, I really hope to get round to re-reading his autobiography before leaving Westminster, and hopefully this time in a less-ill condition it will take me two days to read, rather than two weeks.
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