“Do you know how to edit audio?”

These were the first words Roque ever uttered to me.

“No”

I answered back in a blind panic. It was my first day on work experience at the uber-cool Xfm and already I’d been found out. Was I supposed to know all this stuff?

“Well don’t worry, you’ll soon get the hang of it”

And by noon with a bit of patient tutelage from him I was making rudimentary edits. For reasons unknown he decided to adopt me like a puppy, and so for a seven year period spanning Xfm to Virgin to Absolute Radio, I spent every working day with him. In fact, during some busy periods I’d spend more time with him than with my girlfriend, which is why we seem like an old married couple to the outside world.

And in those seven years, any of the meagre skills I’ve in gained in radio production are all down to him. But its not just me he took under his wing. Everywhere we worked he always took time out to give people a bunk up. If you take a look around the younger talented members of the programming team like Gareth, Eloise and Dave all of them at one time or another have benefited from Roque’s help. And this is why I think he’ll make an amazing teacher. He is generous with his time and takes genuine delight from helping others.

I’m also hoping he’ll use his creative radio brain to try and stimulate some of those ASBO hooligans he’ll be teaching. In the old days when the breakfast show prep consisted of going down the pub at 12pm and then leaving answerphone messages on our office phones, he was behind a stream of ideas that will go down in radio history. Here are a few choice selections:

“Chris Martian”
(An alien Chris Martin descending in a spaceship to talk to us)

“Mrs Roque reads”
(Getting his wife to read out mundane things like mustard labels to see if her sexy voice could make anything sound… well sexy)

“The Shop”
(A quiz so convoluted that you’ll have to ask him about it yourself. It was so shit, it was abandoned halfway through the first attempt)

“The outtakes”
(Playing out bloopers from the show that never really happened and on reflection were never really funny)

“Chuck-a-naan”
(A proposal for a curry company promotion, to see who could throw a naan bread the furthest but with a re-recorded version of Feel for You, with the words Chuck-A-Naan, substituted for Chaka Khan)

“Down the boozer with your money”
(Listeners would send in money and we would go down the pub and piss it all away. A feature I’m sure would be illegal under current Ofcom regulations)

Its hard to believe that the brain that came come up with such awful fare, could be one of the main driving forces behind Christian’s Breakfast Show which to date has clocked up Six Sony awards, but he was. On many a dark winter morning when we were all pissed off about having to get up in the middle of the night to try and entertain people, he would have us all spitting our tea out in laughter by sunrise.

Of course there were some bad times as well as the good times. If you have time today, go and ask him why he once called Steve LeMac the C-word at the NME awards, shortly before getting sick into his jumper and why he once nearly got the sack because of Robbie Williams.

I’m going to miss him awfully and I know most of you all will too, so it would be great if everyone could come and bid him adieu in the zoo at 4.30 and then join us afterwards for a bit of a shindig at the Sun and 13 Cantons.

Brian