Can we have our Boyd back please?

January 3, 2012 – 8:58 pm

It seems like years now since the radio industry kicked Tommy Boyd over the fence in to the next door neighbour’s garden.

The master technician of British talk radio seems to be lost in the undergrowth and I think it’s about time we plucked up the courage and went to knock on the door of the grumpy old man living at number 13.

In recent years Tommy has popped his head over the fence a few times, most recently with a blog and a podcast. However we have to look back to the Playradio experiment and a stint on Original 106 breakfast to when he last had a regular gig.

His glory days are well documented and his talkSPORT late night ‘Human Zoo’ format still has a cult following. Personally I’m most fond of his stint on the afternoon show when that station was simply called talk radio. I used to catch the programme as I walked to university in Norwich back in the 90s and remember being amused at how much Tommy wound up his listeners. There were some truly fantastic radio moments and some of the shows can still be downloaded thanks to the Tommy Boyd Shrine CD PROJECT. If you have some time I recommend you listen to the show about cowboy builders to really hear a genius at work.

So does he still have it?

Recently I was lucky enough to come in to contact with Tommy after he agreed to be a semi-regular contributor on a weekly talk show I was producing on Mansfield 103.2. You can hear those appearances below and you can definitely tell the old magic is still there. Although he didn’t tell me directly that he enjoyed doing the calls, I’m sure you’ll agree he sounded like he was having fun.

So where could Tommy go?

I would like to hear him back at LBC, where his talk radio journey began. Back in February 2010 I asked the then Programme Director Jonathan Richards in an email ‘would you ever consider a Tommy Boyd return on LBC?’. His reply was brief, ‘I don’t ever see this happening with our current direction’. At the time I remember feeling very sad and angry about the response. I wonder whether I would get a similar kind of reply now?

In conclusion I think we should return to our football in the garden analogy and provide a little twist, not unlike the sixpence swivels Tommy was prone to do on his shows back in the day.

I think fans of ‘radio’ Tommy, like myself, lose sight of the fact that radio only represents a tiny part of his media achievements. Tommy isn’t just about the wireless and I would guess he sees it as only a tiny part of what he does. I’m sure to some extent he sees looking back on past glories as tiresome. Did Tommy actually kick himself over the fence, did he want to to get lost in the radio undergrowth/wilderness? If you listen to his chat with Iain Lee on Mansfield 103.2 just before Christmas we may find some answers. Imagine Mr Lee playing the part of the school boy popping round to number 13 to ask for his ball back. Who answers the door? It’s Tommy Boyd himself and Iain gets turned away with just a tantalising glimpse of the ball sitting majestically on Boyd’s mantelpiece.