TV Cream

Radio 1: The Jocks

GREENING, Kevin

"Blowk and Pecker puckerchipper stripper and slow blow jobmate"MUCH-MISSED master of tape-fiddling who started off messing around with bits of old adverts and Camberwick Green in a Weekend Breakfast slot, before graduating to lunchtimes where he perfected such demented features as the ‘Mr Whippy’s Van’ quiz, the exploits of faded sixties hipster Raymond Sinclair, and the epic-length surreal monologues of Eric The Gardener. Convoluted career path involved plans to move him to The Graveyard Shift when Mark & Lard took over Drivetime, derailed when Chris Evans left unexpectedly early and Greening doing a bit of Breakfast stand-in while the duo were readied for that slot, before ending up in ‘Driveltime’ himself. Kermode-supported irate pisstaking of slot-related inanity followed by a move to Breakfast alongside Zoe Ball, bringing back all the old characters plus some new ones (including xenophobic travel report maniac Major Holdups) but not really working and he was off within the year. Radio 1 seemingly couldn’t be bothered finding him a proper new slot again, and wasted one of their best ever talents on swing jock duties, to the audible dismay of Mark Goodier after he said goodbye to Greening on-air for the last time (“one of the best DJs this station’s ever had”). Radio has never been the same since.

11 Comments

11 Comments

  1. Simon T

    June 15, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    It was Goodier seeing him off, wasn’t it? His last show was a Sunday morning “best of the week” slot and Goodybags would have been there after standing aside from drivetime for Pearce.

  2. Simon T

    June 15, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    And – yes, I should have read it all first – Kev only did the day Evans didn’t turn up, Mayo covering the three weeks before Mark and Lard were ready.

  3. David Pascoe

    June 27, 2009 at 11:16 pm

    “It’s time to play Ray’s Organ! Yeeeesssssssss!!!!!!”

  4. Eric the Gardener

    June 28, 2009 at 4:54 pm

    Whenever I hear Michael Jackson’s Earth Song, I’m not reminded of Jarvis Cocker so much as Kevin Greening telling the listeners that the sound of Michael going “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” at the end of it was Kevin punching the King of Pop for keeping Mike Flowers Pops off the Christmas number one and thereby losing Kevin a lot of money in a bet.

  5. David Pascoe

    October 5, 2009 at 10:00 pm

  6. Adrian

    October 6, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    Was it Raymond Sinclair that suffered from the incurable ‘Splicer’s Disease’? I also remember a gentleman perpetually thwarted in his attempt to speak to someone on other end of the telephone: “Ello, it’s Sid the Manager here, ‘ello, ‘ello?”

  7. NIk

    October 16, 2009 at 6:36 am

    The Splicer’s disease sufferer was Creighton Wheeler. Both he and Raymond Sinclair were characters written and performed by Andrew McGibbon – formerly Morrissey’s drummer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_McGibbon

  8. Mr Grimsdale

    June 27, 2010 at 10:24 am

    Too clever for yer average Radio One audience. Was more of a “broadcaster” rather than a “disc jockey” and maybe should’ve moved sideways to Radio 4 or summat.

    Also remember him taking the piss out of IKEA brand names, at a time when they had only just started in this country and I’m not sure how many people got the joke

  9. Matty

    June 30, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    I used to listen to Kevin’s early Saturday morning shows and absolutely loved Raymond Sinclair in particular who was a terrific example of a character who was funny largely because of the voice ;although some of those Blochap ads were brilliantly written. One of the best examples, for me, was an ad which went into great detail about one of the many vaguely mysterious Blochap products and the byzantine way it had to be assembled which ended with the brilliant “and, hey presto! [a beat] You’re ready to start again…”. It’s actually quite difficult for me not to see, for example, cheesy old ’60s print adverts without reading their blurb in my head in a Raymond Sinclair voice. Sadly, there seem to be hardly any clips of his sketches on the internet.

  10. THX 1139

    May 1, 2021 at 11:52 pm

    Then there was the time Kevin played The Fun Lovin’ Criminals Scooby Snacks in all its uncensored glory from start to finish, apparently accidentally, but with him it was difficult to tell.

    Wasn’t there a regular quiz winner called Tilly when he was standing in for Jo Whiley (on maternity leave), who he had a great rapport with?

  11. Glenn Aylett

    May 2, 2021 at 3:10 pm

    Had he lived, I wonder if Kevin Greening would have moved to Radio 2 as he would be good in the slot occupied by Rylan now, or hosting a surreal night time show like Alex Lester did in the noughties. Kevin was too smart for Radio 1 and should have been moved to Radio 2 when he parted with Zoe Ball.

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