BBC Radio 2's Vernon Kay to broadcast VE Day party from East Yorkshire

The 51-year-old presenter will be broadcasting live between 9.30am and 12pm from a special listener’s hometown with a show featuring fantastic guests and live music performances.

The show will have a specially invited audience which will include Second World War veterans and those who remember the VE Day celebrations as children, plus much-loved members of the local community including nurses, WI, military personnel and community leaders.

Local hero Calum Scott returns to his hometown of Beverley to provide live music on the show, plus there will be dancing in the aisles from an East Yorkshire lindy hop troupe.

Kay will also be digging into his ‘vault’ with some amazing audio clips of VE Day from the BBC Archive, plus travel reporter Ellie Brennan – a former presenter on local station BBC Humberside – will be out and about on the streets of Beverley discovering how the locals are celebrating the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

On Sunday May 11 Kay will also present VE Day 80 – A Swinging Celebration from 8-10pm on BBC Radio 2.

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, Radio 2 is marking the occasion with this special concert, recorded at the Alexandra Palace Theatre in London. 

Presented by the station’s weekday mid-morning host, Vernon Kay – who presents the UK’s most popular radio show with an audience of 7.2m listeners each week – the concert features the BBC Big Band and the strings of the BBC Concert Orchestra with special guests as they swing the night away with the best-loved songs and melodies reminiscent of that great moment in history.

They perform Big Band classics including Flying Home, One O’Clock Jump, Skyliner, Opus One and Caravan.  Guest vocalist Anna-Jane Casey explores the Doris Day and Vera Lynn songbooks with hits including My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time, Sentimental Journey and I’ll Be Seeing You. 

Also featured are Gary Wilmot leading the great British singalong in a selection of wartime favourites; singer, saxophonist and Soho’s favourite son Ray Gelato is guaranteed to get the joint jumpin’ with Louis Jordan favourites, including Five Guys Named Moe and Caldonia; plus the stunning six-piece vocal harmony group, Accent. 

Kay says: “I’m hugely honoured and proud to be presenting this concert for Radio 2 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day. It’s such a poignant moment in our history, the end of nearly six years of a war in Europe that led to the loss of millions of lives, and we must never forget the sacrifices made by so many people all those years ago.”

The concert will be available on BBC Sounds from VE Day (Thursday May 8).

Plus, available on BBC Sounds as part of Radio 2’s commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of VE Day, Dermot O’Leary treats us to a Sounds of the 40s Special Playlist. Highlighting the music, movies and memories as Allies enjoyed the celebrations that were erupting around the world, with archive and anecdotes, O’Leary takes listeners back to VE Day in 1945.