I can't stand the thought of retiring

...Says Tony Blackburn, still spinning the decks aged 81

- CLAIRE O'BOYLE

Јust over a year ago Tony Blackburn's life hung in the balance as he spent two months in hospital battling crippling sepsis and pneumonia.

Rushed to hospital after collapsing at home, the veteran DJ realised how grave things were when he woke to find his family crowded round his bed.

He says: "It was a bit of a shock. I thought, I'd better recover from this, you're not going to get my money yet".

But as he approaches his 82nd birthday in January, Tony is now fighting fit and has had a new lease of life.

And with his Radio 2 show Sounds of the 60s drawing huge audiences every weekend and an extensive run of his much-loved Live Tour coming up next year, he has no intention of hanging up his headphones.

Tony says: "The most important thing in life is health. Money's all right, but without your health, you can't enjoy it."

Describing work as "an incentive to keep going" he adds: "I can't stand the thought of retiring. When you get up in the morning, you've got to have something to do."

Tony, who got his first taste of the airwaves on pirate station Radio Caroline in 1964 after spotting an ad in the paper, has been in the business for six decades.

He says: "I always wanted to be on the radio. I was a singer when I was younger. I always wanted to be in showbiz, so when I read an advertisement for DJs on Radio Caroline, my mum said, 'Why don't you go for it?' I did and got the job. My dad was a doctor, but he thought it was great.

"It's an unusual thing for one of your children to go into the North Sea, but they saw it as something I wanted to do. I'd been sending tapes into Decca and got turned down all the time, and thought this way I could get into the music business, and probably end up making records. I made 29 singles and two albums. None of them sold!"

As a DJ, he was far more successful.

On Radio Caroline, Tony, then 21, and his cohorts were based on a boat off the coast of Essex.