Andy Kershaw obituary: The Live Aid presenter who cut his broadcasting teeth in Yorkshire
The music presenter Andy Kershaw, whose death at 66 was announced last week, was known for fronting the BBC coverage of Bob Geldof’s Live Aid concert in 1985, but it was in Yorkshire that he cut his broadcasting teeth.
He had abandoned the politics course at Leeds University which he hoped would set him on a career in journalism, to become the full-time entertainments secretary with the Students’ Union there.
In that capacity he booked Ian Dury, Dire Straits, Elvis Costello and Iggy Pop, amongst others, and paid Duran Duran £50 from his own pocket to support Hazel O’Connor at one of his gigs.
By 1982 he was a music professional, overseeing backstage operations for the Rolling Stones’ landmark concert at Roundhay Park in Leeds.
And shortly thereafter he was taken on as promotions manager for the city’s recently-established commercial station Radio Aire, where he formed an informal partnership with DJ Martin Kelner and made his solo on-air debut as host of a late-night alternative show and a weekly blues programme.
In 1984 Kershaw moved to London to work as driver and roadie for the musician Billy Bragg, and it was while accompanying Bragg to a recording of the BBC’s Whistle Test programme that he was spotted by its producer, Trevor Dann, as a potential new presenter.
He began his TV career that September, reporting for Whistle Test from the Monsters of Rock heavy metal festival, and Live Aid quickly followed.
The fund-raising concert for the Ethiopian famine was one of the TV events of the decade and Kershaw’s presenting duties, alongside Janice Long, Paul Gambaccini and others, gave him the exposure he needed.
By the following year he was on Radio 1, presenting his own show with a free choice of music – a programme policy he retained for 15 years.
At Radio 1 he shared an office with fellow presenter John Peel and their producer John Walters, and the trio adopted an ethos of “giving the audience not what it wanted but what it didn’t know it wanted”.
In its first year on the air Kershaw’s show won a Sony gold award, and a documentary he recorded in Mali with the musician Ali Farka Touré achieved the rare distinction of being broadcast simultaneously on Radios 1 and 4.
He went on to report for Radio 4, both on music and global conflicts including the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 2001 civil war in Sierra Leone.
A journalist at heart, Kershaw also made radio diaries from North Korea which were among the first programmes to be recorded inside the country, and contributed to programmes as diverse as From Our Own Correspondent, the Today programme and The World Tonight.
His Radio 1 contract, meanwhile, ended in 2000, after which he became an unlikely signing for Radio 3.
Andy Kershaw was born in Littleborough, near Rochdale, in November 1959. His father, Jack, was headmaster of a local comprehensive and his mother, Eileen (née Acton) head of a nursery school. His elder sister is the broadcaster Liz Kershaw.
He went to Hulme Grammar in Oldham, where it became clear where his priorities lay: he left his economics A-level exam halfway through in order not to be late for a Bob Dylan concert. Nevertheless, he was awarded an A grade.
Kershaw’s partner for 17 years was Juliette Banner, with whom he shared two children and a home on the Isle of Man, but their relationship ended in 2006 and a restraining order was issued, preventing him from contacting her.
When Kershaw breached the order, telling a court he wanted to see the children, he was briefly jailed and was homeless for a while, moving between friends’ houses.
He eventually returned to Radio 3 and became a reporter on the BBC’s The One Show.
Kershaw revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with cancer. He is survived by his children and his sister.