Danny Baker, the outspoken radio DJ, has never been far from the spotlight, nor the door, at the BBC: this is the third time he has left the broadcaster amid acrimony.
His most recent sacking, over a tweet appearing to liken the new royal baby Archie to a chimpanzee, brings Baker’s career at BBC Radio 5 Live full circle after the channel dropped him in 1997 for crossing “the line between being humorous and controversial and being insulting” when he called on football fans to make a referee’s life hell.
An irrepressible figure on British airwaves since the 1990s and pioneer of the inclusive, personable, and at times eccentric, broadcasting style that has since become the norm, Baker has the knack of effortlessly making both the phone-in caller and the listener feel as if they are in his studio.
Now, however, he appears increasingly isolated and facing allegations of racism despite his “sincere apologies for the stupid unthinking gag pic”.
Baker, born to a working-class family in south-east London in 1957, originally made his name as a journalist for a punk fanzine, Sniffin’ Glue, before going on to work at NME, later presenting the television show Twentieth Century Box which investigated London’s youth culture.
A roving reporter on The Six O’Clock Show and the face of programmes such as Win, Lose Or Draw and Pets Win Prizes, Baker then wrote for Chris Evans’s TFI Friday Channel 4 show as his prolific radio career continued to gain steam. Soon the lifelong Labour party supporter was lauded as the “ultimate geezer” and became a mainstay on topical TV shows, where he often seemed to capture the mood of many across the UK.
Describing himself as “one of the more bumptious ants” to Desert Island Discs when discussing his career’s upward trajectory, Baker dismissed the idea he was blessed with good fortune. “I don’t feel that’s somehow lucky when you look around at some of the half-wits and boss-eyed bozos who people this business and they are running departments,” he said.
Always unafraid to publicly criticise his BBC bosses, he dubbed them “pinheaded weasels” and expressed his wish that the decision-makers “choked” on their abacus beads after his show was forced to move slots in 2012. Baker said goodbye that time with a venomous parting shot: “By the way, nice way to treat a bloke who had cancer.” The 61-year-old had his saliva glands and taste buds removed in an agonising period of treatment following chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer in 2011.
Five years later, the DJ was the first celebrity to leave the 2016 I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! despite being the last person in. “My winning personality once again descends upon the nation,” he quipped at the time. His appearance on the show followed the publication of a critically acclaimed three-volume autobiography, Going to Sea in a Sieve, which inspired BBC sitcom Cradle to Grave.
The Danny Baker Show is likely to find a new home soon – people would still tune in to play his Sausage Sandwich Game on Saturday morning – but even his most adoring listeners will surely begin to question whether his brand of humour has passed its sell-by date.
