Chuckling and chatting with Tony Sanderson

Whether you lived in Bishopscourt or Blikkiesfontein, you would had to have lived under a moss-covered rock to not have listened to the Chuckle & Chat Show at some point in your life. Starting with David Blood, Tony Sanderson made the Chuckle & Chat Show the biggest one to hit radio in South Africa. A show that broke all the rules and stereotypes for broadcasting on government-controlled radio. And then some.

He did not stop there, though. Sanderson then used his robust Italian humour, mixed with dry English wit and a smattering of brazen South African guts, to cross the Rubicon from radio into television – a feat not many radio stars have managed to accomplish successfully to
this day.

His first television soirée was with Late Night Live, followed by the Chuckle & Chat Show for TV – both adult late-night live shows in similar vein to our current overseas equivalents of Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Other ventures have included working on American, British and Australian radio and television, and building radio stations in African countries such as Tanzania and Kenya.

Now based in the rustic West Coast town of St Helena, Sanderson is back in full swing on a mission to launch a new radio station for the Western Cape, to be called Magic FM.

However, before we get there, it turns out there is far more to the man than a history of quick fiery wit with impressive interviewees behind a microphone.

There is an interesting past I thought should be shared with Leadership readers, which includes DJ’ing for none other than Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg, the English radio stations founded in the mid-1960s to circumvent the tight hold the record companies had on the broadcast of popular music in the United Kingdom.

It originally commenced transmissions as offshore radio stations broadcasting from ships anchored in international waters off the coast of England. They were labelled as pirate radio stations.

Then, to my surprise, I found out that Sanderson had an impressive three-year period as the first white man to coach the Orlando Pirates soccer club in the fire-and-brimstone period of the South African ‘70s.

This was certainly becoming intriguing.

Where did it all begin? It seemed strange he ended up in radio, as he was playing soccer and studying Economics at the London School of Economics in Holborn, but fate seemed to have steered him in the direction of a microphone.

Sanderson’s first and foremost ambition was to excel in the game of football, but his father had other plans for him.

“My father wouldn’t allow me to become a professional soccer player, so the only way that the club could get me to play was with my mother initially signing consent forms behind his back,” he shares mischievously. “However, my dad soon changed his mind when the club promised that I would stay at university, as they were willing to pay the university fees.

“As varsity students, we used to go to the lunchtime dance sessions at the Lyceum Ballroom (now the Lyceum Theatre) to ogle the lovely dancers,” says Sanderson with a glint in his eye. “You know what it’s like at that age.”

Following many visits to the venue, he was standing on the steps at the front of the queue when the Lyceum manager ran out and grabbed him, saying: “You come here regularly, come and be the disc jockey.”

The regular DJ had taken ill suddenly and although Sanderson was intrigued, he rightfully said he had no idea what to do. The manager replied, “You know all the music that’s got to be played. Just put a needle on and turn a couple of knobs.”

Egged on by his mates and the promise of two quid a session surrounded by a bevy of beauties, Sanderson took up the challenge – and the rest, as they say, is history: the bug had bitten.

He remained on as the DJ at the Lyceum and eventually started working for Radio Caroline and Luxembourg, while still continuing playing professional football. However, disaster struck, as it does to so many ambitious sportsmen, and an injury resulted in metal pins being put into his arm.

TV was due to come to South Africa in 1974/75 and Sanderson realised this was a great opportunity to get his foot in the door at the beginning of the South African entertainment surge.

He got a position as a specialist tape representative for EMI Records and worked his way up to the position of record producer.

Although his dreams of taking his own soccer game to the next level had been scrapped, Sanderson started playing for the Southern Suburbs FC run by Roy Bailey (Gary’s father). This was when his soccer dreams would be realised in other ways. “I was invited by a black gentleman to go and watch a game at Orlando Stadium,” he recounts. “The stadium and the atmosphere were electric and I was the only white face in a sea of black.”

At halftime, Sanderson got the shock of his life. He had not realised the gentleman who had taken him to the game was actually in the Orlando Pirates Club Committee.

“I was sitting on the side and enjoying myself when the guy I was with said, ‘You must give the team a halftime talk.’ I was flattered, and went and said a few words – the next thing I know, they asked me to come on board permanently, and for three years I did that,” he recounts.

Sanderson must have certainly done something right, as the Orlando Pirates side of 1973 included many greats such as the Bafana Bafana coach Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba, and Jomo Cosmos owner Jomo Sono, and they made a clean sweep of all the titles on offer: The League, The Life Cup, the BP Top Eight Cup and The Champion of Champions, which has never been done before or since.

“I had fabulous times. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world and I didn’t get paid for it. It was my labour of love,” admits Sanderson. “I even got beaten up severely by the cops one night after leaving the stadium: they called me kaffir boetie, but these were some of the happiest days of my life.”

He then went on to work as a broadcaster at Swazi Music Radio, and then at 702 as a sports announcer in 1981, with some of the radio greats such as John Berks and Chris Gibbons.

In 1982, Sanderson moved to the SABC and was responsible for a weekly four-hour sports show and, like so many of the other examples in his life, he happened to have the right attitude in the right place at the right time to grab an opportunity that came his way.

He bumped into Keith Lindsay, the presenter of the Saturday Shadow Show for Radio 5 in the corridor at SABC, and the guy was in a panic: “What’s up, old son?” Sanderson enquired. Keith then spun out about the sports presenter not showing up for the slot and they were at the end of their tether. Sanderson immediately jumped and said he would fill in.

As weeks went by, he would pop into the studio next to his and join in on the Saturday Shadow Show. This went on for about a year and the listenership figures went through the roof.

Then, on one occasion, Sanderson’s humour got the better of him and he went “overboard for the conservatively run SABC” and was banned from the show. The outcry from listeners was deafening.

A station manager at Radio 5, Malcolm Russell, noted the value of Sanderson and announced: “Anybody who wants Tony on their show can have Tony, providing they control him.”

This is a word that still sends Sanderson into a frenzy today. “That’s the word in this country that scares the heck out of me, ‘control’, because we were giving the listeners want they wanted to hear and it wasn’t that bad, especially compared to what is going on today on radio!”

The listenership figures and the advertising revenue did not lie, so they could not control Sanderson as much as they wanted to. Effectively, the money was talking to them more than he was at the station, and they liked that.

“What I was doing was innuendo, which isn’t an Italian suppository,” laughs Sanderson. “That was the kind of thing I would do on air. I told the story about the gay whale that went down on a submarine and swallowed the seaman. They banned me for this. I think I was banned more times than anybody else.”

Blood was doing the David Blood Show every evening and they decided to put Sanderson and Blood together – and the Chuckle & Chat Show took off.

The show rose to 1.6 million listeners every night, which was huge, even in today’s terms.

Tony had also honed his business skills away from the airwaves during this time and actually owned a few chemical manufacturing companies. This no doubt aided him in adding another first in radio history.

Sanderson and Blood owned the Chuckle and Chat show and contracted to Radio 5 – it was the first time a show was independently owned in a very controlled and conservative Afrikaans-run media circle.

“Nobody could understand how we got away with the Chuckle & Chat Show, but they couldn’t argue with the popularity and making millions of bladdie bucks off us,” says Sanderson.

“We had 92 adverts in four hours on that show, it was ridiculous. Rock solid. You couldn’t buy a slot on our show, ever.”

It started a whole new culture of evening drive shows in South Africa. Up to this stage, the only important slot was the morning one, now the evening slots had as much importance, if not more.

The natural progression at this stage was jumping to TV, and Sanderson successfully presented Late Night Live on SABC 1 from 1990 to 1993. He also presented the TV version of the Chuckle & Chat Show from 1998 right up until 2002, along with many other documentaries and You must be joking with Leon Schuster.

“I was incredibly blessed to interview some amazing people,” he says. “From Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu to entertainers such as Oliver Reed, who turned my desk upside down!”

It was during the ‘90s that Sanderson started getting heavily involved in training courses in station management as well as on-air presenting and broadcast engineering.

Several household radio names have gone through his courses, such as DJ Fresh from 5FM.

In 1993, he set up Solid Gold Radio and was part of the continuing negotiations with the past government through to the selection of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) itself, and continues to be part of the changing phases of broadcasting in this country.

In the past five years, Sanderson has been involved in radio lectures and trained in excess of 400 students. It has been a very long stretch since the last batch of radio licences was given out in this country – in fact, it was 11 years ago.

Sanderson remembers it all too well, as he was on the receiving end of a pointed stick in that outcome.

With the airwaves on radio and TV being suffocatingly held by one or three big boys, it has always been difficult for the Davids of the entertainment arena to take on the Goliaths. Sanderson’s Solid Gold Radio was one such application, which was sidelined 11 years ago in its effort to secure a licence.

He had successfully launched the Solid Gold Radio concept in seven countries through Africa (including Uganda and Botswana) and it was already a proven formula. A formula he and his team have copied and improved upon for their bid for Magic FM now.

“Back then, Primedia stood up and told the Icasa [Independent Communications Authority of South Africa], which was the IBA in those days, that it was all wrong and we shouldn’t be allowed a licence,” Sanderson exclaims.

“As soon as we weren’t given a licence, they started Solid Gold on the weekends. Now here is a talk radio station playing music. Please, come on, where are the licence conditions now?”

To add insult to injury, he was one of the 16 people on the Stakeholders Committee that drew up the new Broadcasting Act, and to be refused a licence in that way smacks of tenderpreneurship.

But that was then and this is now. Eleven years later, Sanderson is back – and this time he has even more clout behind his name. A Cape-based consortium – the only one based in the Cape, in fact, the biggest Cape-based black economic empowerment company – vying for a Cape-based radio station.

It is rather perplexing that as a country, we only have 50-odd radio stations, where on the same wave band, there are more than 400 radio stations in Britain and 12 000 in the United States.

“When we wrote the Broadcasting Act, we meant for it to be as diverse as possible, to allow as many radio stations as possible, and we were given an assurance that after the initial granting of licences, more will be granted in later years. It’s taken 11 years to come up with the next lot, which is this lot now we’re going for,” says Sanderson.

“The time is well overdue for other players to enter the South African radio market.

“Magic FM is first and foremost the only station based in the Cape for the Cape listeners. The rest are coming through Joburg. Besides many other factors, it makes perfect sense that this should be a station by Capetonians for Capetonians, with job enhancement and advertising revenue coming back to the Cape”, he adds.

“The research format is also tried and tested. We want to play ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s music. Musical memories that everybody knows across all cultures and creeds.

“And I’ll give you a good reason for that format being successful and it’s proven in every country in the world – it is the most successful format. We don’t have it here. We don’t have any such radio station,” says Sanderson.

“Cape Town is rather unique. We are not like Johannesburg and Durban. We are probably the capital of tourism. We are in the top three destinations in the world to come to. Magic FM would cater to both our local listeners and our overseas visitors.”

As a broadcast engineer, he intends assisting the community radio stations if Magic FM gets the go-ahead so that the youth station gets a community licence here.

In closing, I ask Sanderson for a final comment.

“You know, we really need to start realising that radio is an entertainment channel. It is not a soapbox for other agendas.

“We have to stop trying to force people to listen to what we want them to listen to because when you have a happy, entertained listener, he is not going to get so angry about his political surroundings or non-delivery of service and so on. Radio is about entertainment,” he says.

It has been a long wait, but I hope Sanderson gets his just rewards. And remember: “He who laughs last, laughs longest!” ▲

Robbie Stammers