Johnnie Walker, who has died aged 79, began his career as a disc jockey in the offshore pirate radio era of the mid-1960s. He was one of four pirate DJs – the others were John Peel , Tony Blackburn and Kenny Everett – who came to symbolise that time and continued to prosper in its aftermath. The pirate radio stations, of which the most famous was Radio Caroline , were set up on ships and disused forts in the North Sea, avoiding British regulation by broadcasting from international waters and providing pop music to a British teen market not catered for by the BBC stations of the era.
Their DJs offered a fantasy version of adolescence from clued-up older-brother substitutes who, in the case of Peel, Blackburn and Walker, were former public schoolboys. Within this dreamscape Walker’s persona was that of the smooth-talking kid who got the girl. His theme tune was Duane Eddy’s 1960 American hit Because They’re Young , which more than 40 years later was still being reworked into the intro to Walker’s Radio 2 drivetime slot.
The pirates went on air in the dying months of Sir Alec Douglas-Home ’s Conservative government, and Harold Wilson ’s succeeding Labour administration devoted an extraordinary amount of energy to suppressing this sound of youth. The Marine Offences Act of 1967 brought an end to prosecution-free pirate radio on 14 August, but Walker could still be heard proclaiming the cause of freedom and the unreasonableness of adults from Radio Caroline the nex.
