The Fabulous Martin Kelner returns to regular radio shows across Yorkshire

From media.info
Posted 25 July 2016, 12.49pm bst

Ten years after the end of his networked weekend evening programme on BBC Local Radio in the North, Martin Kelner is to return to a weekly radio programme on commercial outlet Radio Yorkshire.

After guesting a few times earlier this year, the station has now announced Martin Kelner's Pre Match Tension - a new weekly programme starting on Saturday 6th August between 10.00am and 1.30pm.

Radio Yorkshire is available on DAB Digital Radio across Yorkshire (including Leeds from August 1st), and is also available online.

Martin said: "I'm delighted to have been let loose on prime time. I'm looking forward to helping release the inevitable tension prior to an afternoon's football, with the tried and trusted mix of popular music, sport, and news updates from outlying areas of Yorkshire such as Kings Lynn and The Phillipines."

Director of Broadcasting for Radio Yorkshire, Sam Brydges, said “It's great to have Martin back. The takeover shows were excellent and very well received. We've just been waiting for the right moment to get Martin back on the station and it's even better he can join the lineup on a regular basis."

"It's also fantastic our DAB coverage is getting a wider reach, it's been a frustrating period but this is some very good news for listeners."

Martin Kelner last broadcast to the airwaves of Yorkshire through the BBC Night Network of BBC Radio Leeds, York, Humberside and Sheffield every Friday and Saturday night. The programme was also taken by a bewildering and regularly-changing number of other BBC Local Radio stations in the north.

Kelner's radio history also includes Leeds's Radio Aire, Sheffield's Radio Hallam, and he's also been on LBC, Piccadilly Radio, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio 7, Jazz FM (Manchester), talkSPORT, and more. He's a panellist on BBC Radio 5 Live's "Fighting Talk" programme.

After his programme on BBC Radio Leeds on March 18th 2016, after eighteen years with the station, Kelner was informed that his contract with the station had ceased with immediate effect. He described it at the time as "the most charmless sacking I have ever suffered"; most other media commentators were rather less polite. The first set of figures post-Kelner aren't expected until October this year.

Radio Yorkshire currently has 46,000 listeners, while Radio Leeds has 220,000. Audience figures for Radio Yorkshire were, however, double the size when it had DAB coverage across Yorkshire; its return to Leeds on DAB should enable the station to increase its audience once more.

Radio Yorkshire promises that Martin will be "joined by weekly studio guests and big names on the phone", although it is unclear from the press release whether these 'big names on the phone' will just be lines from the Leeds phone book shouted by a man on the phone with a cod French accent.

Kelner has published two books: "When Will I Be Famous", an enjoyable journey seeing talent playing in pubs and clubs, including one lady who produces fifty flags from somewhere you probably shouldn't put flags in the first place. In Benidorm. (The act, not the flags). He's also published Sit Down And Cheer, a history of sport on television, which, unlike the first one, we haven't read.