My daily show on Capital FM started at 10am, so I knew I had limited time to try and record the wind up, edit it, have my daily pre show meeting with the Programme Director and get stuff ready for the show at 10.Īt 8:20am I went into a studio to make the call to 10 Downing Street, and like any wind up you only get one chance to get it right, it’s a one go hit. On the Tuesday night I rang Jon to ask him if he could do an impression of the then leader of the opposition William Hague, he did it for me down the phone and it sounded perfect, so I asked Jon to meet me at the studio in Leicester Square at 8am the following morning, which he did. I had recently met an impressionist (new to London) who at that time had told me he was finding it difficult to find work, he was struggling to get noticed in London and was thinking of moving back home to the north, his name was Jon Culshaw. The idea behind my next call to 10 Downing Street, calling Tony Blair, was to see how far I could get through the security phone system of number 10 and my thought was, for my listeners that would be the interesting and entertaining part of the call, little did I know what was about to happen. I ran that wind up a few years earlier on my show at Key 103 in Manchester and the listeners loved it, so I knew this time, and with a different Prime Minister, I needed a fresh approach. I had called 10 Downing Street a few years earlier to talk to John Major, who was at that time the Prime Minister, I called as a simple minded member of the public with a complaint about the price of onions in my local supermarket and insisted I speak to the Prime Minister immediately, but never got any further than the tough lady on the switchboard at Number 10, who told me the British Prime Minister “has more important things to worry about than the price of a pound of onions” and the call ended. On Tuesday January 20th 1998 whilst doing prep for the show the next day, I had the idea to call 10 Downing Street, but I needed a fresh approach.
#Steve penk wind ups shaggy driver#
I had been presenting the mid morning show on London's Capital FM for just over a year, with my trademark Wind-Up phone calls being the highest rated part of the show.Įverywhere I went the wind up calls were the number 1 topic of conversation, it’s all people wanted to talk to me about: every London taxi driver would spend the entire journey telling me about their favourite calls. January 21st 1998 is a date I will never forget.
#Steve penk wind ups shaggy full#
On the 20th anniversary of that famous call, Steve Penk tells the full behind the scenes story of the day that surprised everyone. What happened on the day British broadcaster Steve Penk wound up Tony Blair, the thought process behind it, why he did it, and the fallout afterwards.
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