‘The BBC let me down. I don’t think staff will ever trust management again’

MULTI-AWARD-WINNING: Burnsy at the BBC in March 2020. Picture by Tom Arran

Chewing the Fat, out to lunch with Phil Ascough

This week’s guest: Burnsy

It was one of the biggest sports stories of the summer. He was a key figure at Hull City but would he still be there at the start of the new season? As the speculation dragged on the big question was: would he stay or would he go?

We’re not talking about one of the stars on the pitch – Jacob Greaves, Ozan Tufan, Seri – or the guys at the top – manager Liam Rosenior or owner Acun Ilicali, but someone with more years’ service to the Tigers than all of those combined.

Burnsy, aka David Burns, had been the voice of Hull City for more than 30 years. He’d described the action through four divisions and a cup final, from Boothferry to Wembley and all sorts of weird locations in between. He’d charted the highs and lows, promotions and relegations, the club almost going out of business more than once. But in fact it outlasted him in his position with the BBC.

His departure from Radio Humberside didn’t just mean the loss of a sports broadcast titan. It knocked a huge, Burnsy-size hole in the weekday morning schedule. It also dealt a blow to the regional cultural community. Burnsy remains a great champion of the arts scene, particularly when it comes to local musicians. A sector which always struggles suddenly found itself shorn of a vital route to wider audiences.

To many listeners it would have come across as the dream job. Burnsy is honest enough to admit he essentially stumbled into it but his modesty, rightly, only goes so far.

“I ran the best local radio show in the country,” he declared.

“That was in 2018 according to the Radio Academy, which used to be the Sony Awards. The top gong in the country!”

He’ll also justifiably claim credit for helping to kickstart the careers of so many local bands and even for attracting Ambiente restaurant to Hull. His achievements don’t quite stretch as far as advising Dean Windass to dwell on the edge of the Wembley penalty area and hammer Fraizer Campbell’s pinpoint cross into the Bristol City net, but in my book the transformation of Radio Humberside’s sports coverage undoubtedly helped to galvanise fans of Hull City and the region’s other clubs in football and rugby league.

Burnsy and his team of broadcasters helped to restore passion to the fans by giving them a louder voice through Sportstalk and fan forums, and they roared.

FAVOURITE HAUNT: Burnsy in Humber Street

When the “higher-ups” blew the final whistle on Burnsy’s BBC career the audience response was a mix of fury and grief. His was a trusted voice. The listeners loved him whether he was cracking daft jokes at the football, breaking a new band in the mid-morning show or cornering a bigwig over a council or corporate cock-up. Not a bad achievement for the son of a rubber technician who spent his childhood bouncing around the globe.

Born in Govan, Burnsy moved to Lagos when Dunlop sent his dad to work in Nigeria. When the next posting took Burnsy’s parents to Trinidad he stayed with his aunt and uncle in Edinburgh, but flew to the Caribbean for every school holiday at Dunlop’s expense.

“There was a club with a swimming pool and a nine-hole golf course,” he remembered, eyes glazing over.

Then, back down to earth: “I used to smuggle in Scottish pies, sausages and black pudding.”

A posting to the Dunlop factory in Grimsby followed, and the family moved to Cleethorpes.

Burnsy recalled his days at the Boys’ Grammar School: “It changed to a comprehensive and introduced girls. When that happens your education wanders away from your academic studies. I loved school. I liked the social aspects of it. Seeing my mates, playing sport, but I wasn’t particularly studious.”

He claims to have had “no career path at all” but that’s not strictly true. He inadvertently found one when two grade Ds at A-level consigned him to Birmingham Polytechnic where he gained a business studies honours degree and a steer on his future.

“What I really did was only have one night in during those three years,” he said.

“It was all about bands and football and I had a great time. My thesis was on the financial management of the 92 league clubs.”

Then there was a year on the dole, a job as a trainee auditor at the council in Cleethorpes and a move to Mossley near Manchester, where he became a painter and decorator with a fear of heights. There was an office job with Tameside Council when the birth of Noisy made a move back to Humberside a good idea.

Even occasional listeners to Burnsy’s mid-morning show should recall that his three boys were introduced as Noisy, Smelly and Expensive, and the grandchildren Wee Pat and Little Ern.

“Yes, they have other names but we’ve always called them Noisy, Smelly and Expensive,” he maintains.

“And we always will.”

His first job at Radio Humberside was in the finance and personnel department. The constant playing of the station’s output throughout the Hull studios in Chapel Street and the encouragement offered to all staff to try out their talent behind a microphone triggered Burnsy’s lightbulb moment.

He said: “The first commentary I did was for Club Call and I realised broadcasting was a career I could pursue – nobody had ever said to me that there were career opportunities in talking nonsense for a living.”

His first radio report came in the days before live commentary, filling in for John Tondeur on a Grimsby Town match at Blackpool.

I travelled with him to watch Hull City at Huddersfield Town’s old Leeds Road ground. We angered the home fans by celebrating a goal by Rob Dewhurst, but they calmed down when we explained we’d each won a few quid from a little wager on the towering defender. At a time when City seemed to be perennially strapped for cash, Burnsy donated his tenner to the Chairman, Martin Fish.

In terms of football, Burnsy went up a level with a stint at Radio Sheffield, and then tasted the big time in London, reading the sports news on shows by Chris Moyles on Radio 1 and Johnnie Walker, Steve Wright and Simon Mayo on Radio 2. And narrowly averting disaster after being introduced to Fiona Bruce on 5Live.

“I’d been out the night before and the afternoon before,” he confessed.

‘INSPIRATIONAL MOMENT’: The Housemartins visit Steve Massam at the former BBC Radio Humberside building

“I really was the worse for wear and I had a bin next to me just in case. I must have stunk like a brewery and it probably made me realise I wasn’t quite that good.”

An escape route came with the chance to return to Hull. The offer was an extra £4,000, Premier League football and a sexual favour. One of the three materialised. The challenge was to beef-up Radio Humberside’s sports coverage, and Burnsy responded with the introduction of summarisers and the football forum.

Day one brought live radio disaster. With City savouring a 4-1 opening day win, the very first caller told the live audience of his plans to celebrate with four Yorkshire puddings and an act which referees were frequently accused of committing until the chant changed to “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

A charity match at Boothferry Park ignited one of football’s all-time great bromances when Burnsy lined up alongside fellow commentator Alex Burgess and they faced former City record signing Peter Swann.

“We were the centre-halves in the media team,” Burnsy recalled.

“The striker for the ex-Tigers was Swanny. He absolutely monstered the pair of us. He was just a beast. But I had a brilliant time with him in our commentaries. We just hit it off. We made it entertainment. Top man!”

The approach was to not take themselves too seriously, but the foundations were solid, built on good journalism, breaking big stories and analysing the issue of the day. Its success was noted.

“The big boss asked me if I fancied doing mid-mornings,” said Burnsy.

“I said I would as long as I could continue with the football. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted it to be entertaining. I wanted to get involved in everything, in all aspects of local life. I didn’t just want to sit there and play records. I wanted to talk to people and make it relevant to their lives.”

MODEL PROFESSIONAL: With the mini Burnsy given as a leaving present

In a long and wide-ranging interview we were throwing around a lot of names. Colleagues, mentors, household name media stars who Burnsy looked up to, but you could tell by the tone in his voice which one was truly revered.

Burnsy will never forget the man who had made the mid-morning show his own back in the days of Chapel Street: “Peter Adamson was the guvnor. He was a natural. So sharp. Intellectually way above my level. I went to see him recently. He’s still so funny.”

In October 2022 the BBC announced that everybody in local radio was under threat of redundancy. In trying to make sense of that it’s worth exploring the ethos and some of the achievements of the Burnsy Show.

“We were trying to tell people what was going on in their area. It was journalistically led, bringing people stories. Nothing was off limits and it was done in such a way that people would be entertained and would be part of it.

“People who knew me appreciated what we were trying to do and we got a great audience. We also won several awards which me and the team were immensely proud of.

“Every day we tried to make a difference, even if it was just entertaining people. Saving Dead Bod, a bridge across the A63, saving Rank House, more profile for Mick Ronson. And holding people to account.

“I was inspired by Steve Massam getting The Housemartins in at the old studio. There was no reason why bands couldn’t get a platform in the mid-morning show. If people complained my response was this could be their kids or grandkids. They might get a chance to be a sound engineer or whatever. We were a great supporter of Sesh. It was important to me and it still is.”

We almost mimic the roles of presenter and listener, discussing the redundancies in the mid-morning show.

Burnsy: “You could see it was coming. They just wanted to homogenise the whole thing.”

Me: “The BBC will babble on about digital development but it’s hard to see their ‘reorganisation’ as any more than another round of cuts driven by a government desperate to kill off the licence fee, the organisation it supports and the local democracy which relies on its services. Nothing to do with quality, all about control.”

Burnsy doesn’t do conspiracy theories. We agree to disagree, turn back to the tapas and order more beer while he talks about his departure. He feels badly let down, cheated, but there’s no real sign of bitterness, just huge disappointment that the BBC was so willing to turn its back on so many people, from seasoned professionals to avid audiences.

“When you think about it as it’s come to pass it hints that they didn’t really have a plan,” he said.

“It was just a scattergun approach that threatened everybody. The worst time ever in my time at the BBC. I could see the way it was going because the management at the time just made the show worse.

“They didn’t like local music and they showed me a radio clock which meant we had to do certain things at a particular time. I’m not that sort of broadcaster. If someone is ringing up from Pocklington saying they have a frog sitting on their toilet you want to make room for that in the programme. But they wanted everybody doing the same thing at the same time. It was very traumatic.”

He recalls meeting the Director General and detecting an obsession with digital, and he recognised the process of applying for his own job was merely going through the motions.

“You go through the ignominy of applying for your own job and you don’t get it,” he said.

“If you look across the country at people who have gone from local radio, it’s the experienced presenters, people of a certain age. It was just a purge and it wasn’t a well-planned purge.

“They have abandoned an audience that had been loyal for years. I always thought the BBC was a family organisation that would look after you or at least play fair but they have created a lot of unnecessary pain including for those who still have a job.

LEAVING DO: On stage with Pearl’s Cab Ride at Social in Humber Street

“The trust has gone. I don’t think people who work in radio or telly will ever trust the management again. It was badly planned. They still haven’t sorted it out. It’s been a back of a fag packet job.”

The final twist of the knife came in August last year. Burnsy would miss City’s big kick-off at Norwich, but he was looking forward to taking his seat next to Swanny once again from November.

“I had a gentlemen’s agreement to come back on the football three months after my redundancy,” he revealed.

“They reneged on it. Apparently the higher-ups didn’t like my choice of last record – The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum – but I had a track record of having a go at big organisations if they got it wrong so why should the BBC be any different?

“At one point they offered a contract to do the football but it would have cost me a six-figure sum in terms of my redundancy. It’s really affected me.”

Money isn’t a massive issue. It’s more about keeping busy and interested. The 1904 podcast keeps Burnsy connected with football and Burnsy’s Eclectic Circus on 107FM enables him to indulge his inner John Peel.

The two-grand Jag and the four-grand Jag might have to go but Burnsy is pondering looking for a nice driving job. Maybe delivering cars around the country, visiting old haunts, taking in a match and a band. Maybe not.

He said: “I have no plan. I’m still struggling to get my head around it. You suddenly think you are ten minutes away from the Velcro shoes and Shackleton’s high chair.”

We review some of the highlights.

TWO JAGS: Burnsy off air

“I lived in Cleethorpes and I have a lot of time for it. I saw some great gigs at the Winter Gardens. The original AC/DC line up in 1976. Dexys in the week they made Number One. Undertones. Skids. I wish I’d had the radio show then so I could have tried to stop the cultural vandalism of them knocking down the Winter Gardens.

“Maybe the biggest thing with football on the south bank was working with George Kerr at Town and Scunny matches. He was just an absolute joy and so was his Grimsby team.

“City highlights? Wembley in 2008. A couple of summers ago we replayed the whole programme we did from Wembley because we’d never heard it all. I was really proud of it. Me and the rest of the lads were on top of our game that day and Deano had predicted during the week that he would score the winner.

“The Hull music scene? Maybe the biggest highlight was Bud Sugar’s gig at the [Bonus] Arena. I was the first one to put them on the radio and here they were getting the chance to promote their own gig at the Arena and selling 1,000 tickets. I would like to think I played a part in that by giving them a chance to go on the radio.

“I’ve lived in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester and Lagos Nigeria but I love Hull. It’s a bit battered and bruised at the moment but I still think the building blocks are there. It’s been tough economically for people.

“I have always been a big fan of the marina and Humber Street. It’s urban space that other areas would kill for but people are struggling for money and finding it hard to get out and visit despite Time Out having it as a place to come and visit in 2024.”

And we’re back re-living the mid-morning show.

Burnsy: “I’ll just have to get a job but not many people are hiring middle-aged blokes, and I haven’t exactly been doing a proper job.”

Me: “While you think about it why not write a book?”

Burnsy: “No chance. I haven’t got any stories. I can’t remember any of it. I haven’t got a book in me.”

Me: “No stories? We’ve been talking for five hours and I reckon we’ve barely scratched the surface! I’ll give you the title – Give your head a wobble!”