It seems you just cannot keep a good man off the radio. After presenting his final breakfast show on Smooth Radio in March – a station he joined in January 2011 after 13 years on Classic FM – the venerable Simon Bates will be donning his headphones once again for BBC Radio Devon from 12 January. The Radio 1 veteran, who quit in 1993 after 16 years, is not a complete stranger to the delights of local radio, however. According to his Wikipedia page at least, Bates had a brief stint on BBC Southern Counties Radio presenting a Sunday morning show in the late 1990s. This time he will be on more familiar turf – Bates owns a farm on the Devon moors. He told Ariel that the gig would be a “huge challenge and different to anything I’ve done before, because it’s right here in my home county. My neighbours will all be listening and I know they’ll give me a hard time if I get it wrong.”
