Steve Wright was often described, including in many of today’s announcements of his death aged 69, as a DJ. That, though, was barely the third of it. Influenced heavily by the US, where he frequently travelled and had family connections through marriage, Wright set out to become a “talk radio” presenter in the American tradition.
Trialled from the 1980s on BBC Radio 1 – but perfected between 1999 and 2022 in what he called the “big afternoon show” on Radio 2 – this style featured records split by interviews with actors and writers, with the songs further interspersed by what are known across the Atlantic as “comedy bits”.
