Torbay Hospital Radio: Who helps get you up in the morning?

I was fascinated, as well as inspired, by Radio 1 breakfast presenter Greg James’s one thousand kilometre tandem ride from Weymouth to Edinburgh last week. 

The coverage on the final day, as Greg exhaustedly traversed the Scottish borders, was what I call ‘Radio Gold,’ and produced some surprising revelations from presenters Mollie King and Matt Edmondson, regarding mental health and anxiety in particular. 

Their unexpected honesty was impressively humbling, and they rose in my estimation. I've enjoyed Greg James show since it began eight years ago. 

That's a sign of his popularity - he's amassed around four million weekly listeners and eight years is an impressive time span for a presenter. This, along with some of the praise he won for his mission, which saw him toiling across England, Wales and Scotland, got me thinking about breakfast shows over the decades, and what they mean to me.

 It must be tricky getting ready with the TV on - but the radio is my best friend in the chaos of the morning rush, and the long list of Breakfast Show presenters conjures up a vast treasure trove of happy memories, such as Chris Tarrant fooling most of London’s’ Capital radio listeners on April Fool's Day 40 years ago, saying it was an hour later than it actually was - as the clocks had gone forward the previous night, this was an easy trick to fall for! 

It's easy to underestimate the importance of the breakfast show. Few of us like mornings, and just hearing a favourite tune can easily make our day. 

A lively feature such as a quiz or inspiring interview - John Acres on Radio Devon's breakfast show is an expert at these - can go even further. 

Simon Mayo used to crease me up with his ‘Dead or Alive’ quiz - who remembers his ‘dead or alive, alive oh’ strap line? He'd read a list of five people, along with the year of their birth, as a rather large clue, then ask his team if they were dead or alive. Their answers provided some hilarious results. 

John Acres also cleverly manages to find a suitable piece of music as a brief backdrop for all his stories, which I've never heard anybody else do. When I heard him play the beginning of Nena's ‘99 Red Balloons’, with its Cold War - centred message, I certainly wondered what he was going to talk about next - it turned out to be hot air ballooning. 

And who could forget Terry Wogan, he  loved veering off into rambling, off‑beat musings, usually with a bit of banter thrown in with producer Paul Walters, and it won over listeners young and old. 

Talk of his TOGs always produced similar belly laughs. For me, the absolute peak of breakfast time entertainment came from Johnny Vaughan and Lisa Snowden on Capital Radio. 

Johnny and Lisa were an absolutely perfect match, famous, like all the best teams, for their on - air chemistry. They only presented the show together for three years, from 2008 to 2011, but what years they were - bringing in over a million listeners, making the show London's number one for commercial stations and gifting me and many others endless, helpless morning laughter. 

Torbay Hospital Radio's current breakfast presenters are Tim on Mondays, Jacqui on Tuesdays  and Keith on Thursdays, and Jacqui on Fridays. If you're one of those rare morning people, why not join us and craft your own unique show? We're always on the lookout for new talent, and you’ll receive thorough training from a very friendly and supportive team. We offer a wide variety of additional volunteering opportunities if you don't fancy yourself as the next Chris Evans or Zoe Ball - I find visiting the wards for requests enormously rewarding. We also have outside broadcast and fundraising teams. Now the lighter evenings are finally here, come and join us!