INTERVIEW
Busman’s Holiday
for
DJ Rick
W
hen he’s not entertaining an
army of listeners to the popular
drive-time show on Wave 105,
DJ Rick Jackson can regularly be found
brandishing a paintbrush or drill down at
Ryde’s old bus depot.
That’s because the Island-born presenter
is one of the team of volunteers currently
helping to turn the bus depot into a
transport museum – and for him you
could say it’s truly a labour of love.
Rick’s first job, you see, was as a 16 yearold apprentice coach painter with the
Island’s bus company Southern Vectis.
“Like a lot of boys, I always loved buses,
trains, ferries – so I was really pleased to
get a two year apprenticeship with the
bus company when I left school” he says.
His job involved painting liveries and
promotional designs on the buses –
including imaginative designs featuring
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images of smugglers for Blackgang
Chine and Queen Victoria in front of
Osborne House.
Rick worked with the bus company
for two years, but much as he loved
it, his attention was also being drawn
to another passion of his, as a young
volunteer radio presenter with Hospital
Radio at St Mary’s.
“As a kid, I’d always told people I was
either going to be a ship’s captain or a DJ,
so the interest was always there”.
His talent and enthusiasm soon
became clear in the hospital radio role,
so it wasn’t long before he landed his
first paid radio DJ job on the Island. By
21 he was being billed as the youngest
presenter of a flagship breakfast show
in the UK – and by the age of 23, “the
mainland came calling” as he puts it, with
a job offer at Power FM.
This presented Island-loving Rick –
who cheerfully describes himself as
a “Caulkhead” – with a big dilemma:
leaving the Island.
“I must admit I was really homesick,
especially in my first job away which was
in Bournemouth. I had an apartment in
Boscombe, and could see the Needles in
the distance, which didn’t help!”
It’s a homesickness that has never quite
gone away, although now Rick lives in
Alverstoke – which he says at least allows
him to keep an eye on his home town of
Ryde, just across the Solent.
He moved from Power FM after eleven
years to Ocean FM, and then to the
regional station Wave 105, which also
takes in the Isle of Wight, and is in fact
the market leading commercial radio
station here.
“That’s the station I really wanted to