I first met Alan when I joined Radio One in 1967 but we didn’t get to work together until I chose him to narrate my ‘Story of Pop’ series of programmes six years later.  After that we worked on his early evening Radio One Show and then I left the BBC. It wasn’t long after, that Alan also resigned from the BBC - his hugely acclaimed Saturday Rock Show was axed because the Controller thought it wrong that a peak time slot should be devoted to what he saw as a minority music. I invited Alan to lunch and with my colleague Aidan Day, persuaded him to join us at Capital Radio. I hadn’t been long gone from my post at Capital when Alan rang to say he was missing our conversations - he explained that he hadn’t felt he could take my time when I wasn’t being paid but that he had a solution: I should become his personal manager. I explained that I had very limited experience of what might be involved whilst he said that there’d be nothing to it “just tell me what jobs I should accept and which I should turn down - and oh yes , you’ll have to tell me when it’s time to retire”. We worked together from then until his death in 2006

We never had a contract, just a huge amount of mutual trust, a love of all kinds of music and a shared sense of humour. On one of his less optimistic days Alan observed “If one of us had your brains and my voice, one of us could have done very well indeed”. I don’t think he ever understood just what an important and truly distinctive contribution he made to British Radio . You can visit his memorial website here