More about: Shaun Keaveny

To be in conversation with Shaun Keaveny is to engage in an almost constant state of verbal excitement. The (up until very recently, anyway) radio DJ best known for his idiosyncratic, ever-dry weekday BBC Radio 6 show has recently been made “how do you say it? Unemployed,” but of course none of what made him such a beloved host (irony, warmth, a touch of surrealism) has left him. We discuss the freezing temperature (“Baltic” being Shaun’s favourite adjective to employ here). “I feel like I’m part marsupial and should be in a pouch somewhere,” he delivers. Thankfully, Shaun’s public yarn-spinnings are from from over.

Ever since leaving his position at BBC Radio 6 Music in September Shaun has been suitably able to use his considerable talent for words. September 14—four days after his emotional 90-minute last show on the BBC—saw the launch of podcast The Line-Up with Shaun Keaveny. In episode one, we are introduced to Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons as well as to the concept of the weekly podcast: a fantasy festival extravaganza in which the featured guest reveals the five acts they would have at their dream festival. They will also be asked to order their acts, cherrypick a location and, as Shaun says in a press note for the show, reveal “what their favourite carbs are (which is also hugely significant)”.

As a long-time veteran of the festival scene, Shaun is an inspired choice of host for the show, which is the brainchild of friend and BBC staffer Matt Everett. “They were just looking for the right talent for it,” Shaun says, “to put talent in inverted commas there”. Season one starred Joy Crookes, Jodie Whittaker, Carl Cox, Shaparak (Shappi) Korsandi, Declan McKenna, Keith Urban and Bobby Gillespie. So far so star-studded. Season two, which is currently underway, has already welcomed Gregory Porter, Tim Burgess and Nadine Shah, with artists like Rag’n’Bone Man and Paul Weller yet to broadcast.

The exercise has, Shaun says, “slowly improved my interview capabilities”. “I’m still not great at it,” he adds: “I’m not John Pilger at the end of the day”. Anyone who has listened to any of Shaun’s projects will agree that this is just what makes Shaun so likeable. As one of very few people who can use big, need-to-Google-that words without sounding like a pompous arsehole, you’ll likely be surprised to hear that Shaun is not a big reader. “I limp through books,” he admits, “I’ve always wanted to be one of those guys who bangs through about seven books a month but it’s more like five a year”. Where, then, does this man get his vocabulary? “It’s my only superpower,” Shaun states, achieving self-deprecation even while admitting to his affinity with words. “My brain doesn’t really work in many other aspects, so I’ve got a theory that there’s an unnaturally large part of my brain given over to language at the terrible expense of everything else.”

Not to the expense, we can reasonably assume, of humour, which anyone who has ever listened to Shaun speak will know he has in spades. As such, The Line-Up is, more than anything else, very funny. Some of it quite accidentally. Take Bobby Gillespie for example, who noted that his food of choice would be…a salad. “I’ve never knowingly had a salad at a festival,” Shaun says, baffled. Mr. Keaveny’s food of choice for the event, to answer your clamouring question, is pizza: “My heart gladdens and quickens when I look across the site and I see one of those vans and you can just about make out the word 'pizza'. As long as they’re not microwaving the bastard then I’m very excited about it. Relatable, portable, you can nosh one in seven or eight minutes flat and you’re good to go”. He says of the popular guest choice espresso and a cigarette: “it’s a fast track to gastric success”.

I’m also interested to hear what his five choices of artist would be. “I’d be pretty predictable about it in a sense that there are people I’ve always wanted to see live that have been dead for some years and that precludes their involvement in normal festivals,” he says before naming Jimi Hendrix as his headliner. Stevie Wonder, Riley Walker, “1969-era The Beatles" and the “magical” Little Simz, who Shaun has yet to see live make up the final four.

Crucially, he would be glamping at his dream festival, something that he recommends for all those who have gotten “past forty”. “When you’re younger, you haven’t got a choice usually. In fact, glamping wasn’t a thing in 1997 when we first started going to festivals so it was like The Battle of the Somme….[now] it always has to be glamping. As long as it’s not you and 11,000 other people in the same hectare, surrounded by other peoples’ fecal matter, it’s alright”.

“Isn’t it Jean-Paul Sartre who said ‘hell is other people’? And he said that about 70 years before Reading Festival 1991. Had he gone to Reading Festival 1991 I think that would have confirmed his theory.”

*****

Since leaving his BBC Radio 6 show (which has since been taken over by Craig Charles), Shaun has battled with a strange emotional situation. “It’s a bit like a grieving process in a funny way because it’s such a big part of your life, your job,” he muses, speaking more slowly now he’s considering his emotional state. “It’s taken me a long time to untangle the mess of it in my brain. You have to recalibrate your entire existence in a way, and everybody around you has to do that. It’s very weird. And it’s not altogether pleasant at times. You have to get your head around some big stuff."

You do realise after the fact how much of a privilege it is, how much you miss doing it, how much you miss the listeners…it is a bit like a bereavement”.

He continues: “at the same time, I think it’s probably a healthy thing because I’m good at getting stuck in happy ruts and doing the same thing over and over again like some kind of mad parrot. Even though it was something that happened to me a little bit, it was a good opportunity to step off the broadcast bus for a minute and look around and think ‘fucking hell, ok, what are you when you’re not being a broadcaster, and what does your life look like, and what do you want to do next?’”

The answers are not all forthcoming yet (it has been only three months since his departure, after all), but some things are coming into view. First off, another podcast to join The Line-Up. This one will be titled Shaun Keaveny’s Creative Cul de Sac and will by the sounds of it have the same energy as the beloved Breakfast (and later afternoon) show that so many listeners miss. “I sit up here in my top room, just me and my microphone, and go through a load of shite or brilliant but unrealised ideas from my box full of notebooks. We do that with a guest as well: we’ve got people like Vic Reeves, Nina Conti and Tim Key. And then hopefully we’re going to get the listeners to send in their old, dead ideas.”

The idea is this: all of those forgotten phone notes or genius but since-dead notebook jottings will be resurrected for discussion. “It can be small or big,” Shaun notes, “you could even talk about your fucking shopping list from three weeks ago.” “Sometimes it would just be me slowly unravelling,” he adds.

Shaun is also in the process of writing a book (non-fiction, no other details yet) and is toying with the idea of resurrecting a sitcom treatment he began for Stephen Graham before the pandemic—“maybe that’s something I’ll go back to”.

To put it lightly, Shaun, still only 49, has a long, rich career beyond BBC Radio 6. “I’ve just got to get my shit together,” he says, “we can’t all be Damon Albarn, overachieving every day he puts his trousers on. I’m more The Stone Roses really: there’s a four year wait between albums. Whatever it is, hopefully it’ll be decent when it comes out". The BBC will be begging to have him back in no time. 

The Line-Up is available on Apple, Amazon Music, Spotify, Acast and all podcast providers. 

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More about: Shaun Keaveny