Jon Gaunt Interview......................Part One

SHOCK JOCK GAUNT: “I’M RIGHT WING, BUT I’M NO BIGOT”

15-01-2008

Britain’s leading shock jock has been telling The Stirrer about his political journey from left to right. But ahead of his show at Birmingham Town Hall, Jon Gaunt insists “I’m not a racist, and I’m not a bigot”.

Coventry lad Gaunt studied at Birmingham University, and worked for BBC WM before going national and writing a weekly column for The Sun. He loves nothing more than baiting tofu eating, sandal wearing liberals.

The irony is that in his student days, he was one.

“I remember walking around the centre of Coventry with a coffin on the day American missiles came to Greenham Common” he says. “And during the miners’ strike I helped put on benefit shows.”

Now he pays tribute to Ronald Regan for standing up to the Russians and helping to end the Cold War, while The President’s chief ally Margaret Thatcher (“we saw her then as the Anti-Christ”) is his political touchstone.

So how has this political transformation come about? Partly, at least, they are the result of his own often traumatic experiences.

While he may have come out of Brum’s redbrick ghetto with a drama degree, you suspect Gaunt is rather more proud of his graduation from the school of hard knocks.

As he reveals in his autobiography “Undaunted”, he was put in a children’s home at the age of 12 when his mother died suddenly with a brain haemorrhage.

After being reunited with his police officer father, he then cut out a career as an award-winning playwright ("Hooligans" won a Fringe First at Edinburgh) and entrepreneur, before the TicToc club in Coventry which he helped to create went bankrupt.

“We had the dream of bringing the Ghost Town that The Specials sang about back to life. We had four bands practising for free downstairs, comedians coming to town, big live bands.

“It was profitable for two to three years, but then when Norman Lamont had Black Wednesday the gearing on our loans went from 5% to 15% virtually overnight.

“Also I fucked up – booked bands because I liked them instead of whether they were popular, and put fancy tiles rather than llino in the toilets because they were better quality.

“I made all the mistakes you make when you’re young and naïve.

“The company went into administration and seven of us had guaranteed the loans. Although I didn’t go bankrupt, the firm did, and I went overnight from a beautiful sixteenth century house in the country to living in a grotty one down, two-up in Coundon.”

After a spell working in Scotland, he returned to life on the dole in Coventry where a chance encounter with old mate Moz Dee earned him a break with BBC WM.

His great passions – patriotism, law n’ order, traditional family values – sometimes sat uneasily with the Beeb’s stifling PC culture, but Talksport’s more laddish, tabloid atmosphere is his natural home.

It is – George Galloway’s contributions notwithstanding – a place where the attitudes of the 1980’s Sun still prevail, and Gaunty is their leader. This means that immigration, asylum seekers and paedophiles are frequent talking points on his daily show.

“I’m into looking after yourself and being entrepreneurial, but I do believe in the welfare state and the safety net” he insists.

“I do think of myself as being right-wing, but I’m no racist and no bigot. My whole life is about working hard and doing well for myself.”

See An Audience With Jon Gaunt at Birmingham Town Hall on February 5. Tickets £16 from www.thsh.co.uk

Also visit www.gaunty.com

(In Part Two tomorrow - Gaunt: How I Made Clive Owen)

Join the Jon Gaunt discussion on The Stirrer forum