07 Mar 2026
If you grew up during the 1980s the chances are you would have seen Gary Davies hosting seminal episodes of Top of the Pops or heard his familiar tones on Radio 1, part of a cohort of DJs who ruled the airwaves throughout the decade.
Now the host of Radio 2’s seminal Sounds of the 80s show, he has become an unofficial champion for the music of this era, which has led to him teaming up with Discos for Grown Ups and taking a high-energy eighties party night on tour across the UK, including a stop off at the Alban Arena in March.
Justifiably considered a broadcasting icon, Gary’s roots into DJing and presenting date back to his teenage years in Manchester, when he helped out at his cousins’ nightclub, the legendary Twisted Wheel Club.
This pioneering establishment was one of the first clubs to play records from the United States, as well as what later became known as Northern Soul, and had a major role in the birth of the mod culture.
“They did all-nighters – never had a licence, actually – but all sorts of legendary performers would play there, like Junior Walker and the All Stars, the Four Tops, Wilson Pickett, Rod Stewart in the early days, and many more like that.
“When I was a kid they would sneak me sort of backstage to have a look at some of the artists that were playing there, and it sort of blew my mind. And when all my other relatives were buying me hankies and socks for my birthday, they’d be buying me the top ten singles or the top twenty singles in the chart at the time. So it was very different and cool, and I guess that’s where my love of music started.”
When the Twisted Wheel had its day, his cousins reinvented it as a nightclub called Placemate 7, which had various rooms playing different types of music and was a key part of the Manchester music scene in the 1970s and ‘80s.
“Upstairs would be your Bowie and Roxy Music room, which had a fiercely loyal following, then there was the soul room downstairs, the main room playing pop music, another room doing cabaret and stuff like that.
“I started working there when I was 17, collecting money on the door because my cousins wanted somebody they could trust handling the cash when people were coming in. But one day the DJ in the soul room was sick, and they said, ‘Oh, who are we going to get to do that?’ and I said ‘Me, I’ll do it!’, and that was my first-ever DJ gig.
“One I’d got the taste for it, I didn’t want to go back on the door, and I stated DJing regularly in the club.”
Gary went on to work for the independent Piccadilly Radio in 1979 – the same station which provided a stepping stone for the likes of Chris Evans, Mark Radcliffe and, er, Timmy Mallett.
“It took me over two years of constant bombardment, sending demo tapes to every single radio station in the country, and everybody just rejecting me, not interested. You used to get these standard Xeroxed letters saying thanks for your tape, but we have no vacancies, you know? But eventually, after I was almost on the verge of giving up, then I gave it one last go, and I got a job with Piccadilly Radio, which is my local Manchester station. So I worked for them for three years, and then I got Radio 1.”
How did he make such a massive leap into national broadcasting? Did someone spot him and say, ‘Right we want him for the big leagues’? “No one actually spotted me, it’s a very weird story of coincidence how it came to be.”
“When I was sending off demo tapes, I’d send them off to Radio 1, and actually they were probably one of the few stations that would send me a personal rejection letter back as opposed to a Xerox copy, and they were always the nicest rejection letters.
“I remember one day I popped into this Manchester boutique, and I saw on the wall a picture of the Radio 1 DJs in these white satin bomber jackets they used to have. I said to the girl behind the shop counter, I said, ‘How come you’ve got these pictures of all these Radio 1 DJs there?’ She said, ‘Well, my boss John, he makes their jackets’.
“I said ‘I’m at Piccadilly Radio, and we don’t have any jackets like that, will you make some for us?’ So she put me in touch with John, and he started making jackets for Piccadilly Radio DJs, so we all had the shiny satin bomber jackets as well.
“He said to me, ‘If you ever want a tape sent to Radio 1, I know the second in command there, and I’d be happy to pass it on’.
“I said, ‘OK, when I think I’m ready, I’ll make a tap of one of my Piccadilly shows and give it to you,’ and that’s what happened.
“It was just at the time when Radio 1 were extending their hours, because at weekends they used to close at 6pm while the rest of the week they’d go through till midnight, which meant from 6pm till midnight on Saturdays and Sundays, there were vacancies for shows.
“I managed to get 10pm till midnight on a Saturday night on a three-month contract with no guarantees. I think it paid me, £45 a week, something like that, and even though I was earning a lot more with Piccadilly Radio, I thought it’s now or never, let’s take the chance. A three-month contract turned into 11 years, so it worked out well.”
Arriving at Radio 1 in December 1982, Gary found himself working alongside his radio heroes, people he had worshipped from afar: “I was just in awe of everybody there. It was really surreal. I think I felt like the new kid on the block for at least five years, but at the same time it was super friendly.”
Did they all hang out together? “You don’t really have the time, as everybody’s busy, I’d be doing five gigs a week travelling all over the country, and that was the same for everybody who worked there, but when we used to do our weekends away and stuff like that then we’d all hang out and it was a lot of fun.”
After a few years in the late night Saturday slot, Gary took over the lunchtime show, which he renamed The Bit in the Middle: “You don’t get a choice in what you’re after, you get what you’re given and I was very lucky to be given that, but as a young kid, living in London for the first time in the ‘80s when the nightlife was just brilliant, it was just the best time of day to work.
“It meant I could still go out until two in the morning and get up in time to do my show at lunchtime, so it gave me a social life. Like I said, for five years I was just in a whirl. I couldn’t believe this was happening, I just loved every second of it.
“I hate living in the past – says he who does an eighties radio show and eighties gigs – but I look back at it with huge fondness and a decade where my life changed and my dreams came true.
“Having said that, I love what I’m doing now. How lucky am I to be on Radio 2 and able to go out and do these amazing shows? I’m very lucky to be able to still do what I love.”
One of the highlights of his lunchtime show was announcing the new Top 40 singles chart on Tuesdays.
“Back then the chart was everything. I just don’t think it’s as relevant now as back then people had to go out to a shop, pay money and buy a physical record, so it was a real big deal.
“I remember interviewing Bryan Ferry once, who is the coolest dude ever. I thought, he’s been around, he’s done Roxy Music and his solo stuff, he always charts high and he always has success. I said, ‘Obviously you’re not worried about chart positions anymore?’ He said ‘I’m petrified. Every time I have a release coming out I’m petrified as to what will happen to it in the chart’. So you know, it had a massive impact on the artists as well as the public.”
Gary also presented Top of the Pops from 1982 to 1991, hosting the show more than any other DJ during the ‘80s.
“I never realised that until somebody worked it out, which actually really surprised me because I don’t think I was ever a natural on TV.
“In fact, for my first few appearances I could hardly speak, and I looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I was so bad that the producer said to my agent that he wasn’t sure he was going to be using me again. I was just devastated, but he was right, I was terrible.
“The thing is, nobody tells you how to do it, nobody gives you any rehearsal time or training, they just go, ‘Here’s the camera, do your stuff’. They don’t even tell you what to say, they just say you’ll have a 10-second or 20-second link and so you have to work it out yourself.
“They recorded the show as live, so if you mess up, it still goes out, and sadly, they keep showing those bloody shows on BBC4 at the moment!
“But like anything, you get more comfortable, the nerves dissipated, not completely, but enough for me to be able to function, and then I started really enjoying it. From then on they kept booking me, which I had no problem with at all. I loved hosting the show, especially when it was live, the more dangerous the better, but by then I pretty much knew what I was doing.”
In 1993, Matthew Bannister became the new producer of Radio 1, replacing Johnny Beerling who had been with the station since its inception in 1967. Keen to attract young listeners, he overhauled the staff, resulting in many presenters either resigning or being sacked.
Following the cancellation of his Sunday late night slot, Gary joined them, quitting the station on November 11 1993.
Was that cull of talent as bad as it seemed? “You get people in all industries who like to come in and have a change of guard. I didn’t enjoy it, but the one thing everybody knows that is still the case today, is that if you work for Radio 1 then there’s going to come a time when you’re too old for the station’s remit.
“I remember at the time Matthew Bannister came in, I was having my best audience figures ever. I wasn’t doing lunchtimes anymore, I was doing the weekend breakfast show, the ratings were really good, and I used to produce my own show on Sunday night which used to get the highest approval ratings of any show on the station.
“I’d just done a roadshow at Markeaton Park in Derby in front of 80,000 people – there would have been more but they blocked the motorway. So even though I was getting on a bit, I was still very much in touch with my audience, so it was good to go out on a high.
“There wasn’t any bitterness with me then and there isn’t any bitterness with me now. It’s just the way it is when you work for a young radio station, you know what I mean?”
After leaving the BBC, Gary worked for other stations including Virgin Radio and independents Real Radio and the Century Network, but also founded publishing company Goodgroove Songs, which discovered Corinne Bailey Rae, who went on to achieve phenomenal success worldwide.
That was amazing. I was really into developing new songwriters, opening doors for them and getting them in with artists to write with. I signed this guy Steve [Chrisanthou, later to become an award-winning songwriter, producer and recording engineer] from Leeds, and about three months later he sent through a couple demos of a local girl he had been writing with called Corinne, and one of those songs was called ‘Trouble Sleeping’.
“I heard this and I heard her voice, and I said, ‘Oh my God this is so fresh and different and brilliant, I need to meet her’. She had been trying to get signed for a couple of years without success, and had all these amazing songs but didn’t have the one hit single and they weren’t produced quite right, so I said, ‘Let me help you with this’. So we got lucky.”
Corinne went on to become the fourth female British act in history to have her first album debut at number one, and was nominated for various Grammys and Brit Awards.
Not disputing his obvious talent, but luck seems to have played a huge part in Gary’s success, opening doors which resulted in amazing breaks.
“You know what, you’re absolutely right. I’d like to say that I sat down and wrote this amazing plan, that I’d do this and that, but the only thing I knew I wanted was to work for Radio 1. I had no idea how, but through the coincidence I told you about I ended up there, and then everything else has been unplanned. It’s really been a case of if it feels good, I’ll do it. Not everything worked out OK, but again, I was lucky.
“I started a publishing company and nearly lost all my money on it, but then I got a break and All Saints’ Black Coffee became my first hit, which kept the wolf from the door and enabled me to sign Corrinne…”
In 2017, Gary was interviewed by Simon Mayo during a 24-hour Sounds of the 80s danceathon for Red Nose Day, which resulted in him standing in for Sarah Cox to present the show on Radio 2, his first time back on BBC Radio for 23 years. After several stints filling in for different DJs, he subsequently took over the ‘eighties show in May 2018.
For anyone growing up as a teenager during the 1980s, it marked a huge cultural transition from the previous decade, which had still been very much in the shadow of the Second World War, not least because of the incredible musical explosion of that era.
“You had electronic music, New Romantics, hip-hop, house music and amazing icons like Whitney Houston, Prince, Madonna and Queen. You had so many different new genres that broke out in that period of 10 years, there’s never been a decade like it.
“The artists were amazing and the songs were amazing, to the extent that they’re still being featured all over the place now.
“It’s not just Stranger Things [the Netflix series set in the ‘80s which features a lot of music from the period], there’s TV adverts and loads of other programmes that feature ‘80s music.”
When it comes to the Discos for Grownups gigs, how does he ensure a mix between the decade’s obvious classics and those songs which perhaps don’t get the airplay they deserve? Is it just a case of trawling through his old Now That’s What I Call Music compilation albums?
“There’s very little I’d want to play from Now That’s What I Call Music – they’re the obvious hits. On my radio show I’m constantly trying to find stuff that people won’t have heard for ages, stuff you don’t hear on any Gold station. We try and be creative, but not to the extent that we want to alienate our audience, and so we pick brilliant ‘80s songs that normally don’t get played, together with a whole bunch of the usual stuff.
“It’s similar when I’m doing my live gigs. You’ll know every single song I play, but they won’t necessarily be the obvious ones, which is the importance of it.
“I’ve got loads of songs in the pipeline for St Albans, but I never like telling people what they’re going to hear. There are going to be some magnificent ‘80s bangers, you’ll love every song that I play, but a lot of it depends on what the crowd’s like on the night and what I’m feeling.
“I’ve got 90 minutes in which to tear the roof off, so I’ll take the audience on a nice musical journey. Take them up, take them down, take them up, take them down, it’s a journey that ultimately ends with everyone having an amazing time.”
Gary will be at the Alban Arena on March 27 – tickets from the venue or via tinyurl.com/GARYDAVIES80sPARTIES
