My grandad was Radio 1's first ever 'goldenboy DJ' - but he won't be turning up to their 50th birthday party
When the BBC posted invitations to Radio One’s 50th anniversary celebration, one veteran disc jockey said he wouldn’t attend. There is a great deal to celebrate: Radio One’s birth in 1967 marked a revolution in British entertainment, and launched a new class of troublesome presenters. But with the excess came scandal, and over the years the station has lost its focus. My grandfather David Symonds, one of Radio One’s inaugural DJs, rejected his invitation and came to me with an idea: “There will be balloons and cake at Portland Place on September 30,” he said. “But will the real truth be told?”
Most people’s early memories of their grandfathers include walks in the countryside, learning to play chequers after Sunday lunch, and wartime tales by the fire. Now 74 and living in France with his third wife, Grandad has always been unorthodox. When I was seven – and he was 54 – we terrified my Mum by careering around Cyprus, where he lived, on the back of his motorbike. Both of us wore swimwear and ponytails. Neither had helmets. He ran a radio station there for tourists and expats called Coast FM.
As I entered my teens, I started to hear stories about his days at the BBC and Capital radio, complete with all the ingredients of a rock and roll lifestyle. With Grandad then estranged in Cyprus, they came from my incredulous Mum, Granny and great aunt. Having reconnected at a family reunion a few years ago, Radio One’s 50th anniversary was the perfect occasion to hear my grandfather's tales first hand.
When we met for lunch near Broadcasting House, I had to hand a potted history of drugs charges, naked national radio shows, late-night interviews with David Bowie and Paul McCartney, and a couple of years of Hollywood success. But the reality of sepia-toned headiness was far more spectacular – if not a touch inappropriate for a grandchild.
Nicknamed “Golden Boy” by his listeners, I learnt he was one of the first and youngest DJs on Radio One when it launched in September 1967. The pop music station was to replace the recently banned pirates and adopt “all the hairies who came ashore from the boats”. Then aged 24, presented its teatime show. He paints a halcyon scene. Presenters were regularly intoxicated, running from the local members’ bar to the studio at Aeolian Hall on New Bond Street with a box of records. They had a vigour, affableness and cadence not heard before on the radio, which swiftly attracted an audience of millions.
His journey to Radio One is entwined with our family history and, while it might not begin with the North Sea’s pirate radio stations - unlike Tony Blackburn and John Peel – it is no less subversive. Born to Ronald Symonds, one-time acting head of MI5, and Pamela Symonds, author of the Let’s Speak French school books, great things were expected of young David. His grandfather was Sir Charles Symonds, a physician knighted during the Second World War, and his great grandfather Sir Charters Symonds, credited with performing one of the first successful appendectomies in 1883. No pressure.
In 1963, to the disappointment of his parents, he dropped out of Oxford University aged 19 in his first year studying Botany. “It all started when I got my girlfriend, your Granny, pregnant and I was obliged to leave,” he says. “The baby was placed for adoption and I was banished to the ends of the earth.” Putting ￡15 and a five-week ferry ticket in his pocket, my great grandparents exiled my Grandad to a “two-bit cowboy town” in New Zealand. I am well versed in this part of the story as my Mum discovered she had a sister shortly after I was born.
To his amazement, there he discovered a local radio station nestled in the middle of the town’s main dirt street. Rejected from his first interview for having a “weak ‘S’,” he persevered and was soon offered a role as a trainee general announcer, where he learnt everything from reading the news to introducing classical music. “Guys really had an ear back then,” he says. My Granny, Diana, joined him in New Zealand in January 1964 and they married. Later that year, their second baby, my Mum, Nicola, was born. “It was a very, very happy time,” he says.
Having earnt his radio stripes, he fought off competition from “every young up and coming guy” and was asked to host New Zealand’s equivalent of Top of the Pops. “I was so thrilled I got pissed and drove my car into a lamppost,” he says. The producer took one look at his cut lip and said, “I can’t put you on looking like that” and gave the job to the runner-up. With that, in January 1965, the young family returned to the UK and the BBC.
Quickly, he landed a job as presenter on the BBC’s post-war Light Programme. My great grandparents were surprised. “Having sent me to New Zealand in disgrace, I emerged as a home news presenter,” he says. With his assured hot headedness and propensity for making trouble, Grandad quickly made his mark. He had his first run-in with BBC management for injecting humour into the rigid, “po-faced” style - which dictated presenters say everything twice, once in reverse. BBC controller Dennis Morris summoned him to his office and, pacing with his hands behind his back, said: “I’m not sure David about this business of humour in the mornings. I don’t like humour until I’ve got up, brushed my teeth and been to the rear.”
But the public loved him. In the summer of 1967, the fashionable Nova magazine published a feature titled, “Can you live without David Symonds? Millions can’t: this month you may become one of them.” At one point, 13 million people tuned in for his Sunday morning show. He was the perfect fit for Radio One.
On their decks, for the first time, the presenters had “needle time”, the ability to play recorded tracks. For Grandad, who went on to present Top of the Pops and work with bands including the Moody Blues and Fairfield Parlour, this was the exciting part. 1967 was a “phenomenal year” for British music. “We had a lot of fun and it was good while it lasted,” he says. “It’ll never come back. DJs will never have the freedom again. These guys were smart, fast-thinking and they tried.”
Radio One kickstarted the careers of several long-standing BBC talents, including “national treasure” Terry Wogan, the “utterly charming” Tony Blackburn, who has “made a living out of being a good guy”, and John Peel, who had a “gruff, working class” radio persona but was actually “rather reserved”.
But the station also harboured a darker side. Jimmy Savile, Chris Denning and Jonathan King, all at Radio One in the early years, were all found guilty of sexual abuse while working for the BBC. Savile died before charges could be brought. Denning and King have both been convicted of abusing young boys, some as young as eight. “Most people suspected Jimmy, but there are people in this ridiculous society who are literally untouchable,” my Grandad tells me today. “If you tried to make it stick he’d have been on to you like a ton of bricks. The BBC is hugely culpable.” Decades later, when he wrote a piece marking Radio One’s 25th anniversary, he says, “I received phone calls from Kenny Everett and Jonathan King asking me to go easy on Chris”.
His time at Radio One ended in 1973 after he became disillusioned with the “chirpy-chirpy, cheap-cheap” music. The final straw was a new jingle from the US. “It said Radio One was wonderful - and it wasn’t. I couldn’t press the button with a clear conscience,” he says. “Guys in suits were in the driving seat and they didn’t know anything and it got worse.” He resigned and joined the new Capital radio as one of its first presenters.
I was 22 and running an alternative music magazine when I told my grandfather that I wanted to be a journalist. His advice was to always be fiercely independent. As if to prove this, when I asked if he could assist with my master’s degree a year later, he offered me five gold coins. The coins never materialised - but the advice stuck.
Until 1988, he worked for the BBC intermittently, presenting shows on Radio 4, Radio 2 and TV. A series of mishaps, pranks and arguments eventually led to him leaving the organisation for good. His rap sheet includes a minor drugs charge in 1969 when hosting the Radio One Club - “I remember having to tell my father at the time who was deputy director of MI5. It was a disaster” - and the “Dave Symonds memorial wine stain”, created when he threw a glass of red wine at the ceiling of a studio in frustration.
But by far the best – and most inappropriate – tale is “the naked DJ story”. It was 1981 and he was about to go on air on Radio 2 when he was called to the controller’s office and told he was being taken off his show. “He didn’t give me any good reason. The ratings were good, people enjoyed the show,” he says, with a family to support and it came as a “terrible shock”.
Never one to baulk in the face of a blow, he made sure he had some fun with his final act. He undressed, drank some wine and did the show naked. “I deadpanned it, played it entirely straight. They didn’t say anything because I was on my way anyway.” Grandad’s exit made it into the Daily Mail and the Sun, and Gloria Hunniford replaced him.
After leaving the UK’s radio establishment, he moved to Cyprus and set up his own station. He now lives in France with his wife, Bacilia, 35, where he broadcasts an internet station called The Roolz.
I can’t help but wonder if he scuppered his career. He, however, is certain. “If I’d been a bit more diplomatic and less impulsive and played the game I might have been able to spin it out a bit longer. But then again - for what good reason?” he says. “I always thought of radio as something which is written into your DNA. It could sound like sour grapes but a new breed of manager has arisen at the BBC that doesn’t recognise it.”
Part of the problem is contemporary culture, which he now sees as banal and lazy. At the top of its game, he says, is Radio 4 “is a station like no other in the world”. But Radio One has lost its magic. Its DJs should be in clubs in Manchester, Newcastle and London, discovering new music and meeting artists, he says. Their ear and style needs to be more akin to that on Radio 6 if they are to ever live up to their history. He admits resources are part of the problem. But the buck ultimately stops with the presenters. “Radio One now, I really don’t see the point of it - they’re just not dangerous enough,” he says.
