Andy Kershaw
9th Nov 1959 – 16th April 2026
To mark the passing of Andy Kershaw, we’ve republished this SLAP article from his appearance at Bewdley Festival in 2016
The Adventures of…
Notorious for not knowing when to leave the stage, Ken Dodd has latterly become a bit of a pain in the arse for entertainment licence holders, hoteliers, local authorities and his audiences alike as his shows frequently and substantially overrun by hours as he tells gag after gag after gag, almost ad infinitum.
There was some uncomfortable shifting of seats and urgently whispered managerial words as Andy Kershaw’s presence at the 2016 Bewdley Festival stretched beyond 11.00pm, and showed little sign of drawing to a close as the broadcaster and DJ delved yet again into his elephantine memory to recount another pertinent tale from his singularly fascinating life.
Time-on-stage apart, it’s not clear what Kershaw made of the Bewdley Festival, or what the Festival made of Kershaw. The long-time acolyte of epochmaking Radio One DJs Johns Walters and Peel was probably more advanced in years than no more than a dozen of the 200-or-so supporters of the Bewdley Festival who rocked up to share his Tuesday evening.
Not that this presented any sort of impediment for Kershaw, his emotional intelligence making an immediate connection with this audience, even if that connection may have been lost during some of the detailed stories from his life spent bringing great music to anyone who has the open-mindedness to listen, and reporting for television from some of the world’s most perplexing and challenging locations. His early blunt affirmation of his religious atheism received a smattering of applause markedly louder than the seemingly threeperson hand-clap appreciation of Kershaw’s appeal for greater understanding of would-be immigrants and asylum seekers on the grounds that crushing poverty itself should be recognised by the affluent West as a form of oppression which merits acceptance of its victims.
But that’s AK: never afraid to say what he wants to say, whoever might be his audience. And the guy had a stinking, stinking cold, requiring him, mic’d up, to regularly pneumatically purge his nasal passages into a rapidly-diminishing roll of bog paper.
Wherein lies a Desert Island Discs story, a recording of which can be found on Kershaw’s website, andykershaw.co.uk Visit his website: there’s so much material available, you’d think you’d not need to read his 2011-published autobiography ‘No Off Switch’, much less shell out the thick-end of £20 to listen to him in person. But you should do, both, as so full of mishap, enlightenment and incident has Kershaw’s life been, and so compelling are the stories that he consequently has to tell, that after three-and-a-quarter hours in Bewdley he’d barely scratched the surface of half of the 32 photos around which he planned to weave his oratory. Repeatedly contending how ‘luck’ has seen him in the right place at the right time – being offered unexpected opportunities, chancing upon and promoting exceptional unknown musicians, or emerging from life-threatening situations unscathed – Kershaw also spoke about how energy, enthusiasm and curiosity has served him so well throughout his 50-plus years.
Which suggests a re-write of the Gary Player aphorism: the more energetic, enthusiastic and curious I am, the luckier I get. And if you are curious, musically, among the many, many references made by Andy during his beyond-three-hour but foreshortened spell in front of the loyal supporters of the Bewdley Festival, you might check out almost-forgotten and now-departed 1960s southern soul-singer James Carr, or perhaps re-visit The Bhundu Boys’ 1986 ‘Shabini’ album of Zimbabwean joy, or maybe stream Chuck Berry’s 1964 minor hit ‘Promised Land’.
You’ll get a sense of Kershaw from these – but, as demonstrated at Bewdley on Tuesday, there’s so so much more.
By: Dai Morris
SLAP Issue 64 November 2016