If there is one thing Danny Baker wants you to know about his character, it is that he is a very shallow man.
In fact, the radio DJ, comedy writer, TV presenter and all-round loudmouth is proud of having honed shallowness to an art form and he insists it makes him very happy. “I don’t have any hidden depths,” he says, “I’m a notorious Pollyanna, shockingly upbeat. People always assume I must be hiding some dark secret, but I’m not.
“It is much harder being shallow and upbeat than being miserable. People associate ‘edgy’ and ‘dark’ with intelligence and a deeper understanding but I’m sick to the back teeth of ‘dark’ and ‘edgy’. I mean, fuck Dismaland with Banksy. Try harder. There is enough darkness in the world. Sometimes we shallow people have it right.”
For a man not given to self-analysis, though, Baker has certainly spent a lot of time reflecting on his life. At 58, he is already working on the third volume of his autobiography. The first has been turned into a BBC2 sitcom, Cradle to Grave, which starts on Thursday. And a quick scan through his extraordinarily varied CV – he likes to describe it as “uneven” – turns up enough material for at least three more books.
Baker has had so many jobs – in print, on TV, on the radio – it is hard to know how to describe his career. He has walked away from more jobs than most people will have in a lifetime.
After leaving school at 14, he worked in a record shop in Soho, central London. He soon found himself in the company of stars including Marc Bolan and Mick Jagger and, thanks to a connection with the Ramones, landed a job at NME.
“He was the funniest writer of them all,” a former journalist at the revered music magazine recalls: “Better than Tony Parsons. He was so inventive.”
In 1982, he moved to television when Janet Street-Porter hired him on LWT. He later advertised washing powder on TV and presented cheesy game shows such as Win, Lose or Draw.
At the suggestion of his friend Emma Freud, he turned his hand to radio next, landing a spot on BBC GLR in 1989.
Since he was unable to work the decks, the BBC gave him a young producer to lend a hand. “In walked this ginger beanpole,” he remembers, “His name was Chris Evans. He was amazed when we went to the pub afterwards and someone asked for my autograph.”
A few years later, it was Evans who became a household name after the pair launched Channel 4’s TFI Friday: Evans presented and Baker wrote the scripts. “I was the hairy bloke who was photographed in the back of his taxi,” Baker recalls, “I was part of his entourage.”
Joined by footballer Paul Gascoigne, they formed a showbiz trio that filled tabloid pages for years. On one famous night out, Evans spent £10,000 on a bottle of wine.
Baker insists the newspaper reports of their alcohol-fuelled excess were overblown, but he admits he has always been profligate with money. “I’ve got no money now but I live like I’ve got £20m,” he once said, “It’s a tremendous trick if you can carry it off. I live like I’m Bertie Wooster. It’s very bourgeois to fritter your money away on insurance.”
But it is as a radio host that Baker has best been able to unleash his spontaneous talents.
In the 1990s, he had stints at Radio 1 and at 5 Live, where he invented the football phone-in show 606. Both jobs ended in sackings, but he cemented himself as a fan’s favourite with his irreverent humour and quick wordplay, all delivered in his trademark south London drawl.
Baker’s long-time producer Clare Davison, who works with him on his current Saturday morning 5 Live show, says: “The word genius is overused. But I don’t know another word to use to describe Danny. He has absolute, fearless, spontaneous creativity. He has a total faith in his ability. If he gets a better idea from a caller or a guest on air, he will throw the whole show up in the air and run with it. As a producer, you just have to keep up.
“Very few broadcasters can do that and I’ve never met anyone who can keep it up for a whole show. He is revered in the industry.”
Baker’s talents have brought him a shelf full of awards, but his anarchic style and willingness to speak his mind hasn’t always endeared him to BBC bosses. In 2012, he quit BBC London in a fury when he learned his show was lined up for the axe. In a parting on-air rant, he described his superiors as “pinhead weasels”.
Reflecting on his career, he says: “I look at my shelf and I see Sony award, Sony award, Sony award. There are awards everywhere, but nobody will give me any work. If 5 Live decide to cancel my once-a-week radio show, I’m not even in radio any more. Most of them would rather have a nice docile pliable host who needs 20 people telling them what to say next than a rather threatening self-contained person who comes in five minutes before the show goes out and does his own thing.
“Thank God for 5 Live for letting me do what I do. Radio 2 was suffocating, full of overweening caution.”
Of all Baker’s troubles, none has eclipsed his diagnosis with cancer of the mouth and throat, which he announced in 2011 as he collected his award for Sony radio personality of the year.
Over nine months of treatment, he lost his saliva glands and nearly his voice – a disaster for a man who talks for a living. But beyond describing it as a “rotten, disgusting time”, he refuses to dwell on the pain or to ascribe any special meaning to his recovery.
He once said: “It was a very small portion of a wider life. I didn’t learn any lessons from it. There was no Damascene moment. People want there to be. But I am not like that. I literally have my hat on the side of my head all the time.”
Baker says his cheerfulness and resilience comes from his working-class upbringing, a childhood he describes as “idyllic”.
With Wendy, his wife of almost 30 years – whom he met at the NME – he has tried to recreate the same happy family atmosphere for his three children.
Baker was born in 1957 in Deptford, south-east London, and grew up in a council house in Rotherhithe. He and his friends would set fire to abandoned cars for fun, he says. His father Fred was a bluff docker and Communist union leader who never shied away from a fight. He says his mother Betty was “as sweet as Dad was bumptious”.
Baker senior – played by comedian Peter Kay in the BBC2 biopic – was always one step away from the law and the family struggled financially.
The drama teeters on tragedy when one of Baker’s school friends is killed in an accident. But in real life Baker refused to be maudlin. He says: “I had a terrific childhood. I didn’t ever think I was poor. I’m fed up with seeing the 70s described as this terrible time of the three-day week. We were having a great time. As a kid I was extraordinarily happy.”
Actor Laurie Kynaston, who plays the 15-year-old Baker, says: “For me, the key to Danny’s personality is his confidence that everything will be all right, no matter what happens. He is a natural storyteller and he is always trying to make people laugh. He is such a welcoming, warm man.”
Potted profile
Born June 22, 1957 in Deptford, south-east London.
Career Left school at 14, joined a record shop then landed a job at NME, where he interviewed Michael Jackson. Became a TV presenter in the 1980s, and has hosted a string of game shows that he now admits were “terrible”. He formed a lucrative creative partnership with Chris Evans in the 90s, writing most of the scripts for TFI Friday. His fame as a radio host has grown and earned him a string of awards. He invented phone-in football shows on 5 Live and had a stint as a Radio 1 DJ. He has published two successful volumes of his autobiography and helped adapt one for TV. He still hosts a Saturday morning show on 5 Live.
High point Being named Sony radio personality of the year in 2011.
Low point Being diagnosed with cancer of the throat and mouth, which he announced as he collected the award.
He says “This is a silly way to earn a living. The reason I do it is because it allows me to live well. I like being able to take everyone I love on fantastic holidays.”
They say “His vocabulary, and the use he makes of it, is second to none; nowhere in British radio is the language whipped along with such facility, such invention, such joy.” – His friend and fellow broadcaster Danny Kelly.
• Following a complaint from Danny Baker, some amendments were made to this article on 29 August to correct some inaccuracies.
