Former pirate radio DJ Johnnie Walker joined the mainstream, soon becoming a successful BBC presenter and later veteran with a career spanning more than half of a century.

The radio presenter, 79, hosted Sounds Of The 70s and The Rock Show on BBC Radio 2, and had recently been battling health issues.

Walker had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPS), a terminal condition which causes the lungs to become scarred and makes breathing increasingly more difficult, according to the NHS.

The NHS website says it is not clear what causes the condition and that treatments can reduce the rate at which it worsens, but that there is “currently no treatment that can stop or reverse the scarring of the lungs”.

Born in Birmingham in March 1945, he left school at the age of 15, training to be a mechanic and was a car salesman before finding his passion for music with a Friday night slot as a disco DJ under the name Peter Dee.

After spotting an article about a new pirate station Radio England, he quit his job in 1965 and spent six months at the station.

Walker departed for the pirate radio ship Radio Caroline, which was located off the coast of Essex, where he made his name and continued to broadcast in defiance of Government legislation against broadcasters without licences in 1967.

Speaking about being on the MV Mi Amigo when the law came into force, he told the Radio Times: “It was such an emotional time… I was frightened to death.

“I was exhilarated, excited. It was just incredible. I knew the moment that the second hand swept past the 12, that if I said a word I’d be a criminal, liable for prosecution for the next two years, living in exile in Holland. It was a huge moment.”

However, he summoned up the courage to play the tracks We Shall Overcome, the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love after telling listeners: “This is Radio Caroline, it is now 12 midnight.” Walker would later consult on the 2009 Richard Curtis movie The Boat That Rocked about a fictional pirate radio station.

In 1969, he joined the new BBC Radio 1 for a Saturday afternoon show and earned a reputation as a DJ who accorded more importance to the records he played than the chat between the tracks.

Walker moved on to a daily afternoon show and the names he pioneered included Lou Reed, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles.

He was front page news in August of 1975 after calling the popular Bay City Rollers “musical garbage”.

But his outspoken views, and his choice of music, led to a showdown with his Radio 1 bosses and a move to California in 1976, where Walker recorded a weekly show which was broadcast on Radio Luxembourg and time on local radio station K-San.

In the 1980s, he returned to the UK and was back at Radio 1 to present its Saturday Stereo Sequence followed by stints on the BBC’s London local radio, the newly launched BBC Radio 5.

Following a return to the BBC Radio 1, he left the station for good in 1995 and that same year was given the Radio Academy-Music Monitor award for outstanding contribution to music radio.

He was offered his own weekly show on Radio 2, before taking over the Drivetime show.

In 1999, he was suspended by the station after allegations about cocaine use were published in the now defunct News Of The World following a sting by the “fake sheikh” Mazher Mahmood.

Walker was fined £2,000 after he admitted possessing the drug, but station bosses reinstated him after the court case.

Mahmood was later sentenced to 15 months for conspiring to pervert the course of justice following a case involving another celebrity.

Walker was married to Frances Kum in 1971, which ended in divorce, before tying the knot with Tiggy Jarvis in December 2002. He had a daughter Beth and son Sam.

After feeling ill on his return from his honeymoon, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2003.

The DJ, who has lost both his father and his brother to the devastating disease, underwent chemotherapy and an emergency operation in October 2003, before making a come back to his Radio 2 show after a nine-month break.

Walker announced to his millions of listeners live on air that he had been diagnosed with cancer, and later revealed that he “died” on the operating table three times during surgery to repair his burst intestine.

In 2004, Walker received the Gold Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards, the industry’s equivalent of the Oscars.

Two years later, former The Big Breakfast presenter Chris Evans – who later left the BBC – took over the drivetime show with Walker moving to a Sunday slot.

That same year, Walker was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) at Buckingham Palace for services to broadcasting by the then Prince of Wales, now King.

In 2019, he underwent surgery for heart problems later saying that he suffered a heart attack and needed a triple heart bypass.

In June 2024, he revealed on a special episode of Sounds Of The 70s that his idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPS) is “terminal” and getting “progressively worse”.

He spoke about his condition on an episode, titled Walker & Walker: Johnnie & Tiggy, along with his wife, who acts as his carer, saying that he has “a finite amount of time left here in the physical before I pass over”.

Walker had to use an oxygen machine for his IPS and was wheelchair-bound towards the end of his life.

He told the Telegraph in the same month that he does “panic occasionally when I can’t breathe”, but was “not in pain”.

“For many people, Sounds Of The 70s is part of their Sunday afternoon. As long as I can keep doing the show I will. It gives me a purpose. If I stopped doing it I’d probably die a lot sooner”, he said.

“Anyway, when you play records you are bringing back memories for people as well as playing records that they love.”

In October, Walker said he was “not worried about dying” but shared his fears about what his last moments may be like due to his health condition in an interview with the Daily Mail.

“I’m not worried about dying. I have an unshakeable belief in an afterlife. I think it’s a beautiful place”, he said.

“Unless you’ve done some awful things down here, I don’t think there’s anything to fear.

“What I am a little bit frightened of is what the end will be like when you’re fighting for breath. It doesn’t sound a very nice way to go.”

The same month, Walker announced he was retiring from radio after 58 years during his Sounds Of The 70s show as he was struggling to keep up a “professional standard” for Radio 2 due to his condition.

His last show was October 27, with broadcaster Bob Harris taking over his Sound Of The 70s show, while Shaun Keaveny became the new presenter of The Rock Show.

Walker decided to hang up his headphones as it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to record his shows due to his breathlessness, and he wanted to step away before he was asked to leave.

During his last episode of The Rock Show he played some of his “favourite rock anthems” while his final Sounds Of The 70s show was filled with some of his most-loved tracks.

His last show also featured messages from his wife Tiggy and Sir Rod Stewart, who thanked him for helping the careers of many rock bands over the years.

Walker closed out his time on the airwaves by saying: “Here we are at the end of a 15-year run on Sunday afternoon’s Sounds Of The 70s and 58 years on British radio.

“It’s going to be very strange not to be on the wireless any more. But also, by the same token, life will be slightly less of a strain, really, trying to find the breath to do programmes.

“So thank you for being with me all these years and take good care of yourself and those you love, and may we walk into the future with our heads held high and happiness in our hearts. God bless you.”