John Turner

John Turner was born in Bristol in 1947 and educated at Cotham Grammar School. After leaving school aged sixteen, he was a musician in France and Germany; had a short spell as a Sapper in the army; but was rather more successful selling vacuum-cleaners door to door. He later managed The Troubadour folk club in Clifton, Bristol, became a session musician (bass) on several records produced locally, and was a founder member of The Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra. During a stint as a travelling Guitar teacher, he met his future wife, Pat Vedmore, who taught at one of the schools he visited. His BBC career began in 1974, when he composed the music for a TV series, The Age of Innocence, and during the seventies he also presented a folk music programme for BBC Radio Bristol. This began a lifelong fascination with local radio, which encouraged him to learn the techniques of interviewing and presenting, and led to him taking over the mid-morning programme, Compass. This included the highly popular phone-in section, Person to Person, during which he would play devil's advocate to a succession of callers. He presented Compass for many years, often with a co-presenter, such as Jenni Mills and Polly Lloyd, but a change in Radio Bristol's management in the 2000s, led to him being moved to present the Breakfast show, with which he never seemed to be entirely comfortable. In 2007, aged 60, he decided to retire from broadcasting and spent much of his increased leisure time with trips to France, one of his favourite countries.