Today, the world of broadcasting lost an original.
James Whale was an icon, a titan of an industry which is full of fakes. He was a pioneer, someone who wasn’t afraid to innovate or try new things, even if sometimes they failed.
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Whenever he had a setback he had the confidence in himself to bounce back and reinvent himself. A failure became an opportunity. No one even beat James. He wouldn’t let them.
He personified the word ‘resilience’, whether it was with regard to his winning battle with kidney cancer twenty years ago, or whether it was bouncing back from a career setback. He always prevailed.
When his cancer reappeared in 2020 in a different form, he was expected to die within months. He survived another five years. Actually, that’s the wrong word. He didn’t just survive, he prevailed. He lived his best life. Having lost the love of his life Melinda, he met the wonderful Nadine, with whom he lived and loved his final years.
I met Nadine for the first time a month ago when I went to see James at his home in the wonderfully named village of Grafty Green, near Maidstone. I had been due to visit him some weeks before, but I cancelled as I had developed a cold, and I didn’t want to risk infecting him.
When I arrived, the first thing I said to him was: If I tire you out, just tell me to fuck off. He roared with laughter. I hadn’t intended to stay for more than an hour, but two hours later we were still chatting away, reminiscing, and assassinating various characters in the world of radio. There was a lot of laughter.
I had been really worried I would get a bit emotional, and the tears might flow, because I was well aware this was most likely the last time I would see him. I kept it together, mainly because I knew it would upset him to see me upset.
I told how grateful I was to him for the way he had helped and advised me when I first joined LBC in 2010. I had little experience of radio presenting, but he was unstinting in giving me wise advice and unstinting support.
In our handover chats he would say “Here he is, the man with his finger on the pulse of parliament.” And then he would chuckle.
One thing James told me was that to be successful in talk radio you need to give of yourself. You need to enable the audience to get to know you as a person. You don’t need to be a totally open book but the audience needs to know stuff about you. They might love you. They might hate you. That’s fine. The worst thing that can happen is that they don’t have an opinion about you. Everyone had, and has, an opinion about James.
Something else he said that stuck with me was to make sure I got black cab drivers onside as they would be my biggest advocates and marketeers. He was so right. The following week I interviewed the chief executive of Uber about their tax affairs. I gave her a right old going over, and became an instant hero to the cabbies. 15 years on, some of them still mention it when I get into their cab.
Then came a falling out. James had been presenting the Drivetime show for four years when LBC decided to replace him. With me. Maybe it was a coping mechanism, but James got into his head that somehow I had engineered it. I hadn’t at all, but no doubt someone had whispered poison into his ear to cause trouble between us. They succeeded. It took more than eighteen months for our relationship to be repaired and James came to realise that none of it was true.
We kissed and made up over lunch at one of his favourite restaurants in Covent Garden. And that’s where the photo above was taken.
James kept on broadcasting right up until the last. TalkRadio treated him brilliantly, and he spoke so highly of Dennie Morris, his boss there, and Rebekah Brooks. He told me his farewell, valedictory broadcast would take place the Tuesday after I saw him, when Nigel Farage was going to visit him. They did the interview in his garden. I still can’t bring myself to watch it as I know I’ll spent the entire time in tears, but I post it here so you can appreciate it.
When it finally came time to bid him farewell, he made it so easy. He said he’d be in touch so he could take me to the pub in his village for lunch. We both knew it would never happen, but somehow it seemed a lovely touch. He had already told me he thought he only had another two weeks. It turned out to be four.
“So long, old friend,” I heard him whisper, as I left the room.
I had a lovely doorstep conversation with Nadine and then got in my car. I drove two hundred yards down the road, pulled over and howled my eyes out. I knew I’d never see the old rogue again.
Nick Ferrari tweeted this afternoon that the world of radio is quieter tonight, and he was right. There are a lot of radio presenters who make a lot of noise, but none quite like James Whale. He wasn’t shouty. He may have been loud, but he wasn’t a loudmouth. There was always a point to his loudness, and unlike so many today, his acid tongue was rarely cruel. Yes, he could offend, but the people he offended more often than not deserved it.
James Whale touched many people’s lives. He made a difference to individual people and the world of broadcasting. There is no one else like him. No one can do what he did.
So long, old friend.
