He may be 73, but popular radio presenter Ken Bruce is not ready to hang up his headphones just yet.
“Not willingly,” he joshes. “Doing a daily programme is not a massive strain but it does require you to be on peak form. I don’t want to get to a Joe Biden stage. If I feel I’m not doing a job to my own satisfaction, then I probably will retire.
“At the moment I feel quite happy, but I’m aware of not going on too long. If I start to feel that people have had enough of me, then I’ll go.”
If figures are anything to go by – four million listeners tune in to his Greatest Hits Radio show – that won’t be happening any time soon.
The genial Scot with that iconic deep, mellow, reassuring voice, left the BBC in March last year after almost 40 years – 31 of which were spent on his Radio 2 show – for a mid-morning slot at commercial station Greatest Hits Radio.
He took his legendary PopMaster quiz with him and has written the foreword to a new eponymous quiz book, has presented two series of the TV version on Channel 4 and hopes that it will be recommissioned.
He doesn’t listen to Vernon Kay (his replacement on the Radio 2 mid-morning slot) or to the BBC very much, he says, apart from the old archive shows on Radio 4 Extra and to Radio 3.
Bruce is in good company at Greatest Hits Radio, with other ex-BBC colleagues including Simon Mayo, Paul Gambaccini, Richard Allinson and Jackie Brambles among the fold.
He has no regrets about moving stations, in fact quite the opposite.
“It’s been fantastic. I’ve been really enjoying myself. It’s been about 16 months and it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I’ve been here for years.”
While he is careful not to criticise the Beeb, he’s glad to no longer have his earnings declared to the public, unlike other high-earners at the corporation.
“I don’t think anybody likes to see their private affairs plastered across the newspapers. The whole thing is a very handy BBC-bashing exercise. It’s a ridiculous thing, really. I don’t think it helps anybody on either side. It’s just a stick to beat the corporation with.”
Asked if he thinks the BBC gave him the recognition he deserved when he left, he says: “Well, I don’t want a fuss, so when I decided to go it was my decision. I wanted to do something else. I just wanted to do my job, finish and slip away quietly and start a new one. I’ve been able to do that. I wasn’t fazed by what went on, I was just surprised by the amount of attention.”
Bruce doesn’t like to look back, he says, but is happy to contemplate his broadcasting longevity and why he is still so popular.
“Something happens, people get used to you being around, that’s an important thing. I think the regularity is important.”
He also says that he hasn’t had too much exposure on TV.
“People who’ve been on television every day get a certain kind of resentment which builds up amongst viewers, who think, ‘What’s he doing on again?’ and you are not always welcomed in people’s living room.
“But as a radio broadcaster you are always welcome. You don’t get in the way, you don’t demand that the eyes follow you, because you could be doing 100 different things and still listen to the radio. Radio has the capacity to be much more acceptable in your life.
“From my point of view, I like to talk to one person and if that’s you listening and that works, it’s an achievement.”
The death of his friend and fellow broadcaster Steve Wright, aged 69, in February, made him consider his own mortality, he agrees.
“It was a huge shock. We had spoken not long previously, and texted to say ‘Let’s meet up for lunch’, so it seems to have been very sudden. It’s been quite distressing to read about his final moments.
“Anything like this does make you think ‘Seize the day – carpe diem’ and enjoy what you’re doing while you can. We are only here for a limited spell, so make the most of it.”
Away from the studio, he lives in Oxfordshire with his third wife, Kerith Coldham, to whom he’s been married for 24 years. They met when she was a Jimmy Young Show researcher and have three children together. He also has two children from his first marriage and one from his second.
To relax, he listens to different styles of music and also plays in a band.
“I still play drums in a little local band here, only to the public about once a year but it’s good fun and it’s sociable. It’s rock music – the hits of the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, so not that far from my daily job. We decided to call ourselves No Direction some years ago.”
Bruce remains ever diplomatic when asked if the many TV celebrities who have been brought in to Radio 2 – Romesh Ranganathan, Rob Beckett, Rylan Clark and Paddy McGuinness spring to mind – have changed the feel of the station.
“I don’t know that it’s changed all that much because radio broadcasting has always drawn people from different backgrounds. Jimmy Young was a singer and was given a radio show to do, Housewives’ Choice, originally. The powers that be thought, ‘This man is good at radio’.
“The key is that if people understand radio, and they understand how different it is to television and to acting or whatever they’ve come from, and they work as radio people, then certainly they deserve to be heard on radio. It’s a state of mind rather than experience.
“It’s just being personal and not shouting to a mass audience. It’s going into personal dialogue with somebody.
“For some young people in the business it can be a little frustrating to see somebody walk into a great radio slot, but if people who walk into these slots can do it, then good luck to them.”
Though Bruce doesn’t like attracting headlines, he recently said on the Beyond The Title podcast that Radio 2 shouldn’t try to think of itself as being ‘cool’.
“At Greatest Hits Radio we are the very antithesis of cool. We are happy playing music that appeals to a certain generation. We are comfortable in our own skin and the people who are listening to us have got to a stage where they are happy with who they are. We are happily uncool.”
Recent reports state that he won’t play Taylor Swift on his show, but he clarifies that his show plays the biggest songs of the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, and won’t play any records made after 2000. There’s no blanket ban.
As for PopMaster, for which he owns the rights, its success has far exceeded his expectations.
“When we started it back in 98, we thought it would run for a few months. Any feature on a radio programme, you usually don’t expect it to run more than a few months, maybe a year, maybe two if you’re lucky. Everything has its sell-by date.
“PopMaster just kept going and gradually building and it just seems to have become part of the fabric of people’s day.”
PopMaster by Phil Swern and Neil Myners (with an introduction by Ken Bruce) is published in paperback by Bantam on August 15, priced £14.99
