David Hamilton's Long and Winding Road

Book excerpt: A Journey through Seven Decades of Radio and Tv David Hamilton’s ‘Long and Winding Road’ has taken him from the remote farm in Sussex where he grew up, dreaming of the bright lights, to working all over the UK and in America in a broadcasting career that has lasted for seven decades, eventually bringing him back after over fifty years to the same farm where he started, from which he would broadcast on national radio in his mid-eighties. This road took David to Germany where, during his National Service in the RAF, he became one of the first DJs to play rock ’n’ roll. Four years later, he did one of the first TV interviews with a new group called The Beatles. Since then he has presented thousands of radio shows and on television has hosted Top of the Pops, beauty contests, sports and game shows and appeared alongside top comedians. In this amazingly frank memoir, David tells what it was like working with such comedy greats as Ken Dodd, Benny Hill and Tommy Cooper; of the two serious car crashes he had in his twenties; of how he rode in a speedway race at Wembley Stadium; about his time as a football club director and how he played in the England team that won the World Cup in 1966. David writes of the beautiful women he has loved. His life, his loves, his laughs. It’s all here, from one of Britain’s most enduring broadcasters.