FEATURE:
And We've Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden…
PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Chalkley/The Observer
celebrates his eightieth birthday on 18th June, Shaun Keaveny turns fifty. I mention the two together, as it is kind of cool they mark big birthdays so close together! Keaveny is a big fan of McCartney – as are we all -, and I have almost completed my forty-feature tribute and salute to a genius who, nearly sixty years since The Beatles released their debut single, remains unsurpassed as a musician. I thought that it was worth mentioning a broadcaster that is loved by so many. His Community Garden Radio show every Friday (alongside super-producer Ben Tulloh) is among the highlights of my week. Formerly with BBC Radio 6 Music, Keaveny has now created something very much his own – though it is very open to and embracing of his ‘gardeners’. Whilst I discovered Shaun Keaveny through BBC Radio 6 Music years ago, I feel more connected to him now. Whilst his leaving the station (last year) was sad and it created a big hole, he has done so much since then. Aside from the radio station building up and bringing in a mass of Patrons, he also hosts the BBC Radio 4 series, Your Place or Mine alongside the amazing history presenter, podcaster and comedian Iszi Lawrence. The tremendous podcast, The Line-Up (produced by the wonderful Natalie Jamieson) brings in guests who each select their fantasy festival and line-up. I have written about the amazing Shaun Keaveny a few times but, as his fiftieth birthday is on 14th June, I could not pass the opportunity to focus on him one more time (for now anyway)!
I am going to come to a great interview that The Observer published back in April. It was scary and quite uncertain the day Keaveny left BBC Radio 6 Music. Having spent fourteen years there, this was him moving from a certain comfort zone and having to figure out his next move! As it turns out, after some time to plan - and, as he would admit, worry quite a bit -, he has built this empire. The respect he has from his fellow broadcasters is unsurprising, heart-warming and inspiring:
“The day he left the BBC Johnny Marr pitched up on air to pay tribute, while Ken Bruce, who helms the UK’s most listened-to radio show on Radio 2 tweeted: “A unique broadcaster and a top bloke. Your next adventure awaits!” while Zoë Ball called him “a don of the airwaves”.
The way Keaveny’s listeners react, the way they’re in on the act reminds me of someone else: Terry Wogan, with his Togs, the gags that ran for years, and the cocoon he wove around himself and his audience. I suggest he could be seen as a kind of Wogan for Generation X.
“Wow!” he chews on the idea for a long moment, “Terry was – and is – my lodestone. When I started breakfast, he was still there. He anointed me, was very kind.”
Kind in what way? “What he brought out in me was this idea that, OK you’re not going to write a novel, OK you might never record an album as good as What’s Going On, but you’re a broadcaster, and be comfortable with that. And if you get really good at it and you do it for long enough, you might get the chance to touch people.
PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Chalkley/The Observer
“More than anybody – with the exception of maybe Danny Baker – he showed me that, if you think it’s just a radio show, you’re wrong. It becomes a community and that’s a really important part of people’s lives and it remains for years.”
It’s a theme he picked up on during his final 6 Music broadcast, speaking about how something as ephemeral and easily dismissed as a radio show can have emotional and cultural heft. “All the way through those years at 6, I was in all sorts of emotional turmoil because, if you’re a novelist or musician, then it’s, ‘Mummy’s writing a novel, so leave her alone because this is serious.’ Whereas what we do, we’re down here with DLT dickin’ around and killing three hours on the radio.
“I became like a character – the creatively thwarted man. The character me was comfy with the idea that these big names would come in as guests and I’d want to be like them, but I can’t be.”
But, over time, he’s begun to accept that radio is his medium and that through it he might just have ended up producing his own equivalent of that novel – a feeling underlined by the outpouring of love from listeners and colleagues at the end of his 6 Music tenure: “I now realise – it’s gone from head to heart and it’s sunk in – that we’ve created this incredibly beautiful thing. That’s the great joy of our kind of shows – like a Danny Baker or a Greg James or a Liza Tarbuck or a Trevor Nelson – you build an environment, you build repetition, you build jokes and everybody understands them and it’s a fantastic community.
“There were lots of people who loved what we did at 6. It might sound disingenuous – like I’m a bread-head who wants to get as many Patreons as possible so I can buy a gold toilet, but that’s not the case – but if this stayed exactly as it is now, that would be great. It would be so lovely and beautiful and a manageable part of my life. But if there are more who want to be part of it, I don’t know where we can go; we talked about making our own radio station. I don’t see why that’s not possible”.
I shall not include them all here, aside from his Creative Cul-de-Sac podcast, Keaveny has also appeared on Namaste Motherf**kers and a host of other podcasts. It is great that he has been in-demand and has had the opportunity to discuss his career and next steps! During his time with BBC Radio 6 Music, there weren’t a tonne of interviews published. I guess he was restricted in terms of what he could say and who he could speak with. Now that is away from the BBC, we know more about a remarkable broadcaster who has been in our lives for so many years. As he turns fifty, I don’t think his sixth decade should be seen ageing or a time when he needs to slow down! Like so many of his broadcast heroes – including the great, late Sir Terry Wogan -, we will hear Keaveny in our lives for a lot longer. I think he will be broadcasting for another couple of decades. As much as anything, he loves that connection with the listeners. He is a modern-day podcast king, yet it is when I hear him on Community Garden Radio where I hear the man really at his warmest, safest, happiest and most fulfilled.
For the rest of 2022, there is going to be so much happening in the life of the Leigh-born broadcasting giant. The Community Garden Radio is going to Latitude AND Glastonbury! There will be weekly radio broadcasters; more episodes of The Line-Up, in addition to guests spots on other people’s podcasts. With Your Place or Mine and new developments (I think there might be something T.V.-related soon), it is going to be a busy time for Keaveny. I wonder if he will expand his social media output to TikTok. I also think it would be great if there was a deep chat or podcast series with his good friend (and former BBC Radio 6 Music colleague) Matt Everitt. Another of his former colleagues, Lauren Laverne, would make for an excellent co-host if they recorded a podcast or did some radio together - and so many people would love to hear that! With a host of loyal and loving fans (The Keavenettes – which, to be fair, sounds like a girl group of the 1960s!) by his side, Shaun Keaveny can celebrate his fiftieth birthday knowing that there is so much love out there for him! Such a warm, generous and hard-working broadcaster, I hope he gets more stints on BBC Radio 2 (he has covered for Liza Tarbuck a few times). Maybe, if he ever finds time, there will be an autobiography or new book. Who knows?! What I do know is that Shaun Keaveny is among the most respected and talented broadcasters we have. His community garden of listeners blossoms and grows by the day. As Joni Mitchell sings on her iconic song, Woodstock – and as I have quoted before in a feature about Shaun Keaveny -, “We are stardust, we are golden/And we've got to get ourselves…
IMAGE CREDIT: Latitude Festival
BACK to the garden”.