James Whale dead: Broadcasting legend finally loses his long cancer battle aged 74

Broadcaster and journalist James Whale, who pioneered talk radio, changing the face of the medium forever in the early seventies when he began taking late night calls from listeners, and often arguing with them, has died at the age of 74.

He passed away peacefully in a Kent hospice this morning with his wife, Nadine Lamont-Brown, holding his hand. Nadine told the Express: "James slipped away very gently this morning. It was a beautiful passing, and he left with a smile on his face."

The Daily Express columnist beat kidney cancer in 2000 after being given a 50% chance of survival, but revealed five years ago that the disease had returned, spreading to his brain, lungs and spine.

With endless good humour and stoicism, he documented his struggle in the pages of this newspaper and via a popular podcast, Tales of the Whales, with second wife Nadine Lamont-Brown. Even after becoming too ill to travel to the studio, he continued to appear on his Talk Radio show and deliver his weekly columns.

His last broadcast interview was with Nigel Farage and took place in July in his back garden in Kent.

Over a 52-year career, he became famous for cutting off listeners he disagreed with - becoming arguably the world's first 'shock jock' in the process, though never receiving quite the recognition he deserved for revolutionising broadcasting. "Having a disagreement is far more entertaining than agreeing all the time," he said earlier this year. "Nobody wants everybody to agree with them - certainly not me - and I should know, I've made an entire career out of it."

Blessed with a rich voice, dry wit and the hide of a rhino, listeners were occasionally furious, sometimes outraged and often in total agreement, but certainly never bored with the nation's favourite motormouth. Later broadcasting stars like Chris Evans and Jeremy Kyle would be influenced by his anarchic style. In 2021, he joined the Daily Express as a weekly columnist, bringing his unique take on current affairs and the idiocy of politicians to readers.

But it was almost by chance, he admitted, that he became famous for pioneering the idea of talk radio. While earning £50 a week presenting the 10pm to 2am show on Metro Radio in Newcastle in the early seventies, he became bored of just playing records and decided to try out some new kit that allowed callers to be put seamlessly on air.

"I asked the boss if he minded if I took a few calls late at night," he recalled. "He said, 'James, you can do what you like because we're not really interested in anything after 6pm. So, for the first couple of weeks it was: 'Hullo James, could I have a record for my auntie?' But I soon got bored of that so I started chatting between records, giving my opinions on things happening in the news. If you were working in a steel mill or shipyard during the day, you'd want music to listen to, but at night people liked to talk."

One night, after clashing with a caller who made racist comments, Whale "gave him a verbal kicking" and booted him off the line, thinking he might be fired over the controversy. The next morning, his wife Melinda woke him to tell him his boss wanted to see him immediately. "I thought c'est la vie," he recalled. "But there was a radio station opening on Teesside and I thought perhaps they might give me a job."

In fact, his boss, a former headteacher, told him while he wanted to sack Whale, the episode had garnered more positive publicity than the station had ever received. "So from then on, I did phone-ins on Tuesdays and Thursdays. People wanted to talk about the issues of the day - like when they were in the pub," he explained.

"There was no engineer or producer, I did everything. I'd play a record, go into the control room, answer the calls, line them up on the production desk, then talk to them, play another record and so on."

The show became a sensation, beating the morning slot in ratings and turning Whale into a star broadcaster as other stations around the country scrambled to catch up. He knew he had arrived when he was branded the "rudest man on the radio" by the Sunday People newspaper.

"I was a Tory by inclination and I was broadcasting to a fairly working-class part of the country," he recalled earlier this year. So I may have seemed fairly extreme. I wanted to be entertaining, so I set out to provoke. But I never took a view that I didn't agree with. For instance, I think we should renationalise not only the water firms but power companies too. That's not very right wing, but it's sensible."

Born Michael Whale in Ewell, Surrey, on May 13, 1951, into a middle-class family, his father David worked in the family "rag-trade" business S&R Whale in Brixton, south London, making dresses, aprons and overalls for plus-size retailer, Evans.

His mother, Ann, was a professional ballet dancer and his grandfather, Vivian, used to take the young Whale to the nearby RAC Club in Epsom for lunch - the "first time I ever saw proper people, the gentry". Whale was severely dyslexic and, having failed his eleven plus, was "kicked out of school at 16 because they thought I was stupid".

With the family business struggling, David was made redundant and bought the tenancy of a Watneys pub, The Harrison Arms in Kings Cross. Whale, a junior archery champion, stayed with his grandma, Daphne, known as "Gummy", in Ewell, working for a friend of his parents who delivered sand and cement. But his mother had other ambitions for him.

"She said, 'You cannot carry on doing this. I don't mind what you do but you're not going into showbiz'," he recalled. She helped him get him a trainee buyers' job at Harrods in the toy department where, after a spell in luggage, he "ended up with all the people who weren't very good", in men's toiletries, selling aftershave and handcream.

"I saw the customers walking around and wanted to be on the other side of the till." He sought acting and elocution lessons with a lady in Russell Square - taking the name James Whale for his Equity Card - and entertained thoughts about going on stage. But a small role at New Theatre Oxford for two weeks didn't lead to any further work.

So in 1968, when he learned Watneys, then a leading London brewery and pub chain, was running DJ training courses in a bid to lure young people back into pubs by turning boozers into "Birds Nest" discos, he decided to give it a go.

He subsequently worked in Waterloo, Muswell Hill and even Sweden. By now he had a son, James, now a tree surgeon, with his girlfriend Melinda, who would become his first wife. They were married for 48 years until her death from lung cancer in 2018.

Soon after, having persuaded Top Shop boss Ralph Halpern to let him DJ in the chain's flagship Oxford Street branch, he created Top Shop Radio - hoping it might pave the way into Radio 1 where he admired the likes of Johnny Walker and Tony Blackburn.

Instead, he was offered a job on Newcastle Metro Radio, moving to the north-east in 1973. Jobs followed at BBC Radio Derby - where he hosted a mid-morning show, hoping he might move to the nearby Pebble Mill At One magazine show, but struggled with the Corporation's rules and regulations. By now he had become increasingly well-known and his mother was, finally, proud - even if he was working in showbiz. A second child with Melinda, Peter, now a chef, also followed.

"I arrogantly thought I'd get myself onto Pebble Mill but I was so bored," he recalled. "They were so regimented, they had a coffee break on air for the listeners when they played a piece of classical music, there was no anarchy."

He lasted about nine months before returning to commercial radio, where he remained happily for the rest of his career. In 1980, he joined Radio Aire, serving Leeds and North Yorkshire, where he launched a show from 10pm until midnight.

The brand-new station was next door to Yorkshire Television and Whale's show started to be syndicated to other stations around the country. Through The Keyhole director Ian Bolt came up with the idea of the James Whale Radio Show, taking the talk format and putting it onto ITV.

Soon despite many in the industry believing such programming wouldn't work, the show was getting viewing figures of more than a million at a time when people were switching off to go to bed. A split from Radio Aire followed and, five years later, the show moved to London Weekend Television. Whale would record 300 shows for LWT over the next five years.

"I was blessed with a particular sort of voice, which I think helped, but I was also argumentative and didn't like people telling me what to think," he admitted.

Having nearly stood for UKIP as candidate for London Mayor in 2006 at the urging of Nigel Farage, two years later he was fired by Talk Radio for urging listeners to vote for Boris Johnson. The next few years saw him present shows for LBC, BBC Radio Essex and BBC Three Counties, among others, before returning permanently to Talk in 2016 where he presented a weekly show, latterly with Ash Gould, until his death.

In July 2016, Whale entered the Celebrity Big Brother house for its eighteenth series, becoming the sixth housemate to be evicted and coming ninth overall. The money paid off his mortgage; despite having earned millions of pounds over his career, he had never been good with money, he admitted.

In February 2000, Whale was diagnosed with kidney cancer and told he needed an operation to remove his left kidney and a large tumour. Though the odds of survival were just 50%, he came through the operation and, in 2006, launched the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer to fund research and raise awareness of the disease. The fund became Kidney Cancer UK in 2016.

A year later, his wife Melinda was diagnosed with lung cancer. Bizarrely, she was under the treatment of the same oncologist as tax consultant Nadine Lamont-Brown's husband. The pair met by chance in the local pub of the Kent village they both lived in.

"Melinda and I had a very good relationship, but after she died I just fell head over heels for Nadine," Whale admitted. The couple later married but, cruelly, the cancer returned in 2020 and spread to the 69-year-old's spine, brain and lungs. The pair launched their podcast, Tales of the Whales, to help other people going through the same thing.

In 2024, Whale was appointed MBE for services to broadcasting and charity. "Talking about this stuff helped me enormously," he said. "A lot of people think the last thing they can talk to you about is the fact you have cancer, I found it easy." He added: "All of this feels very unfair, especially to Nadine, but we've had five wonderful years together."

Nadine said earlier this year: "I'd rather have had these five years with James, and the journey with the cancer, than not met him."

He said shortly before his death: "In 52 years of broadcasting you'd have thought I'd have run out of things to say but I haven't. I'll really miss my listeners. I've been very lucky to have had such a great time doing what I loved."