I got trippy about Angela Rippon while high on E
Tony Blackburn tells of brushes with drugs
RADIO king Tony Blackburn has poked fun at his sex, drugs and pop music antics – and becoming enamoured with Angela Rippon while high on ecstasy.
The Radio 2 DJ, 79, also became obsessed with traffic lights during a “fantastic” trip on hash cakes.
Despite enjoying the Swinging Sixties, Tony insists he was “never interested in drugs” – or even offered them – in that decade.
And while he is adamant he does not “do” drugs, he admitted: “I have experienced them.”
On one occasion, Tony took an ecstasy pill he believed to be paracetamol – given to him by his late pal, the DJ Steve Walsh.
“I thought it was a headache pill but I suddenly went really hot,” Tony said. “I went home, sat down and watched the Nine O’Clock News and really enjoyed it.”
Laughing, he recalled finding the episode “lovely”, noting: “Angela Rippon was doing it.”
And on a trip to New
York in 1985, he stopped off at a soul station and
“was next door to a DJ who had a sack load of cocaine”. He said: “Doing the show, he was stuffing the stuff up his nose. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“But afterwards, the programme controller offered us this hash cake. And I thought, ‘Why not?’ It was the most fantastic time of my life. We had the most wonderful time.
“We got in this cab and every traffic light we stopped at that was red, we split ourselves laughing.”
He joked to Danny Wallace and Phil Hilton on their Manatomy podcast that his fondness for traffic lights has continued to this day.
“The M25, Junction 23. There’s the most fantastic sequencing of light down the roundabout,” he said.
“There’s never a traffic jam. I sometimes go just to look at it.”
Tony admitted his biggest regret was revealing in his 1985 autobiography Living Legend that he had slept with 300 women.
“I’m not proud of it,” he said. “My mum and dad weren’t too happy about it. It was a bit tacky.”
He also discussed becoming addicted to Valium in the wake of his 1977 divorce from Tessa
Wyatt, with whom he shares a son. Tony also has a daughter with second wife Debbie.
I took ecstasy thinking it was paracetamol... then watched Angela reading the news...