Tony Blackburn, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jeremy Vine say their final goodbyes to Johnnie Walker at the BBC star’s funeral after he died aged 79

Former pirate radio DJ Johnnie Walker joined the mainstream, soon becoming a successful BBC presenter and later veteran with a career spanning more than half a century.

The radio presenter, 79, hosted Sounds Of The 70s and The Rock Show on BBC Radio 2 and had recently struggled with health problems.

Walker had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPS), a terminal condition which causes the lungs to scar and makes breathing increasingly difficult, according to the NHS.

The NHS website says that it is not clear what causes the condition and that treatments can reduce the rate at which it worsens, but that there is ‘currently no treatment to stop or reverse the scarring of the lungs’.

Born in Birmingham in March 1945, he left school at 15, trained as a mechanic and was a car salesman before finding his passion for music with a Friday night disco DJ under the name Peter Dee.

After seeing an article about a new pirate station, Radio England, he quit his job in 1965 and spent six months at the station.

Walker left for the pirate radio ship Radio Caroline, off the Essex coast, where he made his name and continued to broadcast in defiance of government legislation against unlicensed broadcasters in 1967.

Speaking about being on MV Mi Amigo when the law came into force, he told Radio Times: ‘It was such an emotional time… I was terrified.

‘I was elated, excited. It was just incredible. I knew the moment the other hand swept past the 12 that if I said a word I would be a criminal, liable to prosecution for the next two years, and living in exile in Holland. It was a huge moment.’

However, he plucked up the courage to play We Shall Overcome, The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love after telling listeners: ‘This is Radio Caroline, it’s 12 midnight.’ Walker would later consult on the 2009 Richard Curtis film The Boat That Rocked, about a fictional pirate radio station.

In 1969 he joined the fledgling BBC Radio 1 for a Saturday afternoon show and gained a reputation as a DJ who put more emphasis on the records he played than the chat between tracks.

Walker moved on to a daily afternoon show, and the names he pioneered included Lou Reed, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles.

He made headlines in August 1975 after calling the popular Bay City Rollers ‘musical trash’.

But his outspoken views and his choice of music led to a falling out with his Radio 1 bosses and a move to California in 1976, where Walker recorded a weekly show broadcast on Radio Luxembourg and time on local radio station K-San.

In the 1980s he returned to the UK and was back on Radio 1 to present its Saturday Stereo Sequence, followed by stints on the BBC’s London community radio station, the newly launched BBC Radio 5.

After a return to BBC Radio 1, he left the station for good in 1995, and in the same year received the Radio Academy-Music Monitor award for outstanding contribution to music radio.

He was offered his own weekly show on Radio 2 before taking over the Drivetime show.

In 1999, he was suspended by the station after allegations of cocaine use were published in the now defunct News Of The World following a sting by ‘fake sheik’ Mazher Mahmood.

Walker was fined £2,000 after he admitted possessing the drug, but station bosses reinstated him after the trial.

Mahmood was later sentenced to 15 months for conspiring to pervert the course of justice following a case involving another celebrity.

Walker married Frances Kum in 1971, which ended in divorce, before tying the knot with Tiggy Jarvis in December 2002. He had a daughter, Beth, and a son, Sam.

After feeling ill when he returned from his honeymoon, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2003.

The DJ, who has lost both his father and brother to the devastating disease, underwent chemotherapy and emergency surgery in October 2003 before returning to his Radio 2 show after a nine-month hiatus.

Walker announced to his millions of listeners live on air that he had been diagnosed with cancer and later revealed that he ‘died’ on the operating table three times during surgery to repair his ruptured intestine.

In 2004, Walker received the Gold Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards, the industry’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.

Two years later, former The Big Breakfast host Chris Evans – who later left the BBC – took over the drive-time show, with Walker moving to a Sunday slot.

In the same year, Walker was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) at Buckingham Palace for services to the deployment of the then Prince of Wales, now King.

In 2019, he underwent surgery for heart problems and later said he suffered a heart attack and needed a triple bypass.

In June 2024, he revealed in a special episode of Sounds Of The 70s that his idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPS) is ‘terminal’ and getting ‘progressively worse’.

Speaking about his condition in an episode titled Walker & Walker: Johnnie & Tiggy with his wife, who acts as his carer, he said he has ‘a limited amount of time left here in the physical before I pass’ .

Walker had to use an oxygen machine for his IPS and was wheelchair bound towards the end of his life.

He told the Telegraph in the same month that he ‘occasionally panics when I can’t breathe’ but that he was ‘not in pain’.

‘For many people, Sounds Of The 70s is part of their Sunday afternoon. As long as I can keep doing the show, I will. It gives me purpose. If I stopped, I would probably die a lot sooner,’ he said.

‘Anyway, when you play records, you bring out memories for people as well as playing records that they love.’

In October, Walker said he was ‘not worried about dying’ but shared his fears about what his final moments might be like due to his health condition in an interview with the Daily Mail.

‘I’m not worried about dying. I have an unwavering belief in an afterlife. I think it’s a beautiful place,’ he said.

‘Unless you’ve done some terrible things down here, I don’t think there’s anything to fear.

‘What I’m a little afraid of is how the end will be when you’re fighting for breath. It doesn’t sound like a very nice way to go.’

That same month, Walker announced his retirement from radio after 58 years during his Sounds Of The 70s show as he struggled to maintain a ‘professional standard’ for Radio 2 due to his condition.

His final show was on 27 October, with broadcaster Bob Harris taking over his Sound Of The 70s show, while Shaun Keaveny became the new host of The Rock Show.

Walker decided to put his headphones on as it became increasingly difficult for him to record his shows due to his shortness of breath and he wanted to leave before he was asked to leave.

During his last episode of The Rock Show, he played some of his ‘favourite rock anthems’, while his final Sounds Of The 70s show was packed with some of his best-loved tracks.

His last show also featured messages from his wife Tiggy and Sir Rod Stewart, who thanked him for helping the careers of many rock bands over the years.

Walker ended his time on air by saying: ‘Here we are at the end of a 15-year run on Sunday afternoon Sounds Of The 70s and 58 years on British radio.

‘It will be very strange not to be on the wireless anymore. But also, for the same reason, life will be a little less strained, really, trying to find the time to make programs.

‘So thank you for being with me all these years and take good care of yourself and those you love and may we move into the future with our heads held high and happiness in our hearts. God bless you.’