Gary Davies: 'Radio 2 feels a bit like Radio 1 did in the 1980s'

Sounds of the 80s is on Saturday at 6pm on Radio 2. Add it to your collection

Ask Gary Davies to name his favourite pop song from the 1980s and it’s pretty much the only time during our chat when, if not quite stumped, he’s temporarily lost for words.

“It’s like asking me who’s my favourite child! On any given day, I’d give you a different answer.” OK, so what’s today’s answer? “I’d say the Communards’ Don’t Leave Me This Way. On another day, it might be Boys Town Gang with Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. On another day it might be Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. They’re all different, it just depends on how I’m feeling.”

Davies has likely played as many records from that era as anyone over the course of his 47-year broadcasting career, which has included presenting Sounds of the 80s on Radio 2 for the last six years. Now, as he prepares to take his nostalgic pop shtick to paying punters on a cruise down the Rhine, he offers his own theory about why 80s tunes continue to touch parts of us that more modern songs fail to reach.

“It was an amazing decade for music, wasn’t it? So many musical genres broke through in a short space of time. It saw the birth of electronic music and your New Romantics. Hip-hop didn’t exist before the 80s, neither did house music. It was such a creative time, and the artists who came through during those 10 years became icons and are just as big now. Everybody wants to put 80s songs on soundtracks for TV shows and films. The music has stood the test of time. ”

For the man who presented the last edition of the original Top of the Pops in 1991, the way we consume our music has also had an impact. “Kids growing up today don’t care where or when a piece of music is from, it’s just about whether they like it.”

Back in the 80s, it would have been inconceivable to have this kind of discussion about 40-year-old hits – no chat at my school started with “Name your favourite Glenn Miller track” – and yet here we are. Are we also nostalgic for the sounds of our younger years, with the tunes offering a leap back to an era of hairspray and promise?

“I’m loving life at the moment, but that decade was a ground-breaking time for me for sure,” agrees Davies. “It was when I got my dream job at Radio 1 and I started hosting Top of the Pops. It felt like my feet never touched the ground during that whole time.”

As well as taking listeners on a musical trip down memory lane with his own show, the 68-year-old has become the go-to stand-in presenter whenever a Radio 2 host is absent, whether by design (he has been covering Drivetime until Angela Scanlon’s arrival in November) or more suddenly, as in the case of Scott Mills’s departure earlier this year. Davies seems entirely relaxed about the ad hoc nature of the arrangement.

“I’ve got the best job in the world, because I can come in and do a show without any responsibility. I’m responsible for audiences for my own show, but if I’m sitting in for Sara Cox or Vernon Kay, I know they’re not my own shows, they’re somebody else’s problem. I can just go in and have fun. I love the variety, plus I get to have some time off, so I can go and play golf.”

For Davies, it’s particularly sweet to be back in the Radio 2 chair after a 23-year absence from the BBC between 1994 and 2017. “Radio 2 feels a bit like Radio 1 did in the 1980s,” Davies says now. “I had all those years doing other stuff, so when I came back nine years ago, I had fresh energy.” Was it like getting back on a bicycle? “Yes, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed riding that bicycle.”

Of course, wherever he goes, he is accompanied by shouts of “Wooh! Gary Davies”, a jingle first coined in 1987 when he took over hosting the Top 40 countdown. Does it ever get tiring? “No, it’s flattering. It’s stayed with me all that time, carrying me through thick and thin. And when I do live shows, it’s something to put on the T-shirts on the merch stand.” Caroline frost

Gary Davies will be DJing on TUI River Cruises’ “Rewind on the Rhine” in November 2026