This is taken from The Independent:

Alan Black
Pirate DJ who joined Radio 1
Published: 22 March 2007

Alan Black, disc jockey and cartoonist: born Rosyth, Fife 15 January 1943; married (one son); died London 5 March 2007.

When it comes to naming the key disc jockeys at Radio 1, Alan Black is unlikely to come to mind, but for a few years he was part of the fabric of the station and the highly influential In Concert series was his idea. "I thought Alan Black was a terrifically good DJ," says the broadcaster Bob Harris, "He had great warmth on air and that is hard to achieve."

Black was born in Rosyth, on the Firth of Forth, in 1943. He was educated locally and had plans to go to art school. At the last minute, he changed his mind and spent six months with a band of gypsies. He joined a commercial art studio but became disillusioned with the weekly pay of £1 10s. Taken again by wanderlust, he took casual labour on coasters and ocean liners. He developed his talent for drawing cartoons by working for the D.C. Thomson company in Dundee and contributing to a wide range of comics and magazines.

In 1963, Black moved to London, working for agencies as a commercial artist. He was intrigued when offshore pirate radio stations started, and secured a job with Radio Scotland, joining the ship in the Firth of Forth for its launch at Hogmanay 1965. He established himself as a popular broadcaster but he then moved to Radio England, which soon went into voluntary liquidation.

He was with Britain Radio when its ship, Laissez Faire, suffered considerable storm damage - not helped by some of the crew jumping ship. When the Marine etc Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 became law, the stations were forced to close down. Meanwhile, the BBC had been shaken from its lethargy to create the new teenage station Radio 1, and Alan Black made his début with Midday Spin in July 1968.

Black was one of several animators involved in the highly innovative film Yellow Submarine (1968) and, during a holiday in France, he met his wife, Mariepierre, known as Pierre. One of his producers at Radio 1 was Jeff Griffin, who remembers,

"Alan had heard a programme in France in which bands would both play live and be interviewed about their music, which gave them a certain credibility. He thought that this would work in the UK and we did a pilot with Led Zeppelin, who chose Liverpool Scene as their special guests. Alan introduced the programme and it was broadcast in August 1969. It was well received but the station's management wanted John Peel to present the subsequent concerts. I felt sorry for Alan Black . . . a few months earlier, they'd all been criticising John. The programme later had a number of presenters, each chosen according to the performer, and Alan did some of those."

Bob Harris recalls "I started at Radio 1 in August 1970 and slotted into a strip of programmes called Sounds of the Seventies. I took over the Monday programme and Alan was doing the equivalent programme on Friday night. Each of the programmes had a different musical style to them, and Alan's great musical interest was jazz-rock. He is the first person to be playing Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears. We co-presented an album review programme together for about a year and a half and it was a good combination because we overlapped very little. I didn't like a lot of the stuff that Alan liked, and vice versa. This led to us having some heated discussions on air."

Black also presented the What's New programme with Anne Nightingale, which was produced by Bernie Andrews. He proved a delightful companion: a laconic Scotsman who would entertain his colleagues with sharply observed caricatures. However, he never attained the popularity of a Dave Lee Travis or Tony Blackburn. "You have to have a big ego if you are going to be a big DJ," says Jeff Griffin, and it's to his credit that he didn't have a big ego. He was a genuinely lovely man and I don't think I ever heard him say a bad word about anyone.

In the late 1970s, Black developed new talent for Polydor Records and did some presenting at Radio 1. In the end, he decided that he had had enough and took jobs outside the industry, but he continued to draw cartoons whenever the opportunity arose.

Spencer Leigh