Corby Radio’s Des Barber to step down from hosting early morning breakfast show

He’s made the decision in order to be able to take it a bit easier, however, he’ll still be around on another time slot which is yet to be decided.

Des said: “I’m getting old. I’m not retiring at the minute, I’m due to retire next year but I just want to take it a bit easier now. So the plan is to put somebody in on breakfast.

“I’ll still be here, I’ll still be around and still be on air somewhere, at this minute we don’t exactly know where or what I’m doing but once I’ve got somebody on breakfast then I can decide what we’re doing from there.”

Whoever will be replacing Des on the breakfast show has big boots to fill as he’s been hosting Corby Radio full-time for more than 15 years and even longer prior to their full-time licence.

He started back in 1990 with restricted service licences which gave them one month to broadcast at a time.

With the first initial broadcast, they were raising money for the then Corby Kids Summer Camp and at the end of the month managed to raise more than £5,000.

Des said: “That was sort of an experiment to see if Corby wanted a local radio station and the response we got was brilliant. So we thought let’s get another one.

“Over the period of the ten years prior to getting the licence we did one of these broadcasts, in some of the years we did two but that’s all we were allowed to do was two maximum.”

In the years prior to the full-time licence, Des and the Corby Radio team raised quite a bit of money for charity, putting on month-long broadcasts once or twice a year.

During this time, they built up a lot of support from the town and that’s when they applied for a full-time licence, which they were eventually granted in December 2009.

Des said: “It had been a long time coming, we’d fought hard for that. I even went to the Houses of Parliament and lobbied the then radio authority, at which point they did tell me they said that they thought that Corby would never have its own radio station and I disagreed with them and stuck at it and it took a while but we got there in the end.

“At the time I thought Corby wasn’t being served by any other station so I thought I’d give it a go just for Corby and the borough and it proved that I was right and it did need to be served by its own radio station.”

Des’ personal highlights from over the years include being chosen to carry the Olympic torch for the work he’d done in the town back in 2012, being chosen as the chieftain at the Corby Highland Gathering and receiving a Spirit of Corby Award.

He said: “A lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into Corby Radio - mostly my tears to be honest.

“We’ve put on a good service for the community and supported a lot of the good causes in town.”

The radio station has moved location on a number of occasions over the years, having initially been situated in a cloakroom inside the old festival hall, as well as being in the town centre, at the Connaughty Centre and where they are now in Dale Street where Des is always happy for people to drop into the station and meet their favourite DJs.

He said: “Unlike the bigger stations where you can’t just drop in and say hello and get shown round the studios, I’m very much the opposite.

"I want people to come in, I love showing them around, I love having a chat, they can come in and chat to their favourite presenter and it’s just warming, it’s great, and I’d love us to carry on doing that.”

The hunt is now on for the next host of Corby Radio’s Breakfast Show – with Des happy to speak to anybody who is interested.

He said: “I’m looking for somebody who’s got the town at heart, somebody who knows the town reasonably well and can, as far as the show’s concerned, have lots of local content involved.

“I’m willing to train somebody that’s had no radio experience whatsoever, it would be useful if they have but if they haven’t then I’m willing to train them from scratch - if I feel it’s the right person then it’s what we’ll do.

“I’ve got about a dozen people already who are lined up to come and have a chat with me and we’ll take it from there.

“They’ll find it’s an exciting time for them. The person who gets the job will hopefully enjoy it first of all, but they’ll see the response that you get from the people in our town, it’s personal to them.

“I always remember the very first broadcast we did, when we switched off at midnight on that last night, somebody sent a message to me saying ‘it’s like having a death in the family’ because it had gone silent, we weren’t there anymore - and that encouraged me then to push harder to get the licence for Corby and now we’re here, we’re part of everyone’s family.”

If the idea of becoming Corby Radio’s next Breakfast Show host interests you, you can call Des for an informal chat on 01536 265666 or email [email protected].