By Paul Hawksbee
The outpouring of love for Danny Kelly since his death was announced on Wednesday morning has been both huge and heartfelt.
Tributes have poured in from colleagues past and present, from readers and listeners who appreciated his work over five decades, from football greats like Ossie Ardiles, from Public Enemy rap legend Chuck D, even from the football club he loved (well, most of the time), Tottenham Hotspur.
It’s been a testament to the number of lives he touched throughout his varied and storied career as NME and Q editor, creator of Total Sport magazine, e-publishing pioneer with Football365 and, of course, reinventor of the football phone-in alongside his great friend and chief collaborator Danny Baker.
And that’s before we even get to his cult late-night TV show Under the Moon and his brilliant hosting of The Athletic’s Spurs podcast, The View from the Lane.
Social media has been rich in Danny Kelly stories since the sad news broke.
Memories of little kindnesses and words of encouragement to aspiring journalists and broadcasters who came into his orbit, tales of support in tough times from colleagues, including an emotional post from his one-time on-air partner, former Liverpool striker Stan Collymore, even an acknowledgement from our talkSPORT colleague Simon Jordan that he wouldn’t have developed as a broadcaster without Danny’s advice and guidance during his early appearances.
Danny joined us at talkSPORT in 2007 and quickly became the station’s Swiss Army knife.
You could put him on air with anyone: the seasoned ex-pro turned pundit, the recently retired sports star taking their first tentative steps in the media, journalists, politicians, musicians, comedians… if Danny was hosting the show, it was in safe hands.
And that was partly because his breadth of knowledge was frankly ridiculous.
Danny knew a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, especially sport and music.
He kept odd hours, possibly a hangover from his NME days of late-night partying and post-gig deadlines. This meant he stayed up late listening to his album collection and watching sport. Lots of sport.
And he could be effortlessly informative, funny and engaging about all of them.
Cycling was a particular love, and my co-host Andy Jacobs and I would always happily turn to Danny for a Tour de France update, knowing we’d get every bit as expert a take as we would from those camped at the base of Mont Ventoux.
During a fallow year for the World Cup and the Euros, Andy and I spotted that one of the few leagues still continuing throughout that summer was in Ireland, where Danny had relocated in 2018.
So the call went in: could he bring us an entertaining weekly on-air report, unearthing the weird, wonderful and downright quirky from the League of Ireland?
Silly question. Of course he could.
He delivered eight weeks of trademark Kelly gold, to the point that when the feature finished as the Premier League returned, listeners were telling us they were hooked and had started following the fortunes of St Pat’s and Bohs!
He also had a mischievous knack for taking his radio guests out of their comfort zone.
So the Fleet Street sports editor, booked for their considered take on the day’s big breaking football stories, might suddenly find themselves discussing the merits of reggae pioneers Toots and the Maytals or another of Danny’s favourites, 70s prog rockers King Crimson.
And boy, could Danny talk. About anything. For a long time.
If there was a version of the movie dance marathon ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ for radio presenters, Danny would’ve scooped the award every year, then given a fantastic impromptu two-hour acceptance speech at the awards ceremony.
And yet he somehow still managed to be an incredibly generous co-host, always listening, always enjoying the to and fro of conversation.
And it wasn’t just what Danny said, it was the way he said it.
One of the most poignant posts I’ve seen since he died was from Danny Baker, who wrote simply: “I cannot believe I will never hear his voice again.”
And we all knew what he meant, whether you were a friend of Danny Kelly’s or someone who never knew him but felt like they did because of the connection he made over the radio.
It was such a distinctive voice, and hearing it was always a prelude to something entertaining, something funny, something interesting.
As I write, Mark Pougatch and Sam Matterface have just marked Danny’s passing on ITV’s coverage of the England v Croatia game, yet another indication of his profound impact on British sports media.
We may have lost the man, but we still have the body of work.
The seminal NME interviews, the SJA award-winning ‘My Sporting Life’ in-depth chats that Danny conducted on talkSPORT with the greats of world sport, along with so many other memorable on-air moments (just Google ‘Gordon’s Wooden Bow Tie’ or ‘I Love Football Stan! I Love It!’).
We shall all miss him.
And sports journalism will be a poorer place without him.
What an experience and thinking of all his former colleagues. I need to access some log in info for the site which I can’t do to the ongoing tech issues, as soon as it comes back, I’ll get this lovely tribute posted.