10/12/2018
Psychic News, which publishes once a month and is the UK's longest standing spiritualist magazine, includes several ghostly encounters for its Christmas / December issue. One of the classic tales it relays is that of a séance held at the home of gay radio and television personality Kenny Everett, in 1972. At this stage, Kenny was just about to start work with the then soon to be launched Capital Radio in London. Although he was gay, Kenny was also married to a woman at this point, and she was discovering her mediumship abilities. The séance involved a group of Kenny's friends. One of the spiritual contacts turned out to be a friend of one of the group, who claimed she had passed over to the other side that very day. Shocked, Kenny let the man use the phone to contact the family of the said person. It turned out that the woman had indeed, died that day. No one in the group had known. The experience informed Kenny Everett's take on spiritual matters and from that point on until his own death in 1995 from an AIDS related condition, he always believed that there was an afterlife.
Kenny Everett was a pioneer of inventive radio. Although he auditioned for the BBC as early as 1965, his creative and madcap style was better suited to the new generation of “pirate” radio stations that by the mid sixties had ringed Britain, broadcasting from ships and abandoned war time gunning towers around the coastline. Kenny found his home on “Wonderful Radio London”, (pictured) a powerful and popular station operating from an old American minesweeper, the Galaxy, anchored off the Essex coast. In 1967, with the government planning anti-pirate radio legislation, he moved onto land and joined the crew of the new Radio 1 network. He and Tony Blackburn built the studios for the new station as the BBC lacked the experience that the former pirates had. Kenny continued to broadcast on his own terms, often cracking jokes that did not go down well with BBC management, and after being dismissed by Radio 1, he was offered a job with the new Capital Radio, which started in October 1973, and which allowed him more leeway. Several television series followed for both BBC and ITV networks. Kenny continued to work for BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 through until his death. On the day he died, Noel Edmonds led tributes on Radio 1, telling the listeners how Kenny had inspired many other budding presenters to get involved in broadcasting.
If you missed Kenny Everett's madcap television programmes for both the BBC and ITV during the seventies and eighties, the best of them is available now on DVD and would make an excellent Christmas gift.
http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/bigl1.htm
https://www.psychicnews.org.uk/