HOW DID YOUR CHILDHOOD INFLUENCE YOUR WORK ETHIC AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS MONEY?
Growing up in the Fifties, things were quite tight. I was the fourth of five kids. My first job when I was 12 was washing cars locally on a Saturday morning. I did it because I wanted to have something to call my own. I was very jealous of my older brother because while I was still in school he'd left and was working. He used to come home every Friday with a little brown wage packet full of cash.
In the school holidays before I sat my GCEs when I was 15, I got a job at a brass foundry in Birmingham that my dad's cousin owned, because I desperately wanted to buy a Grundig tape recorder I'd seen in a shop window.
I worked from eight in the morning to six at night, with half an hour off for lunch, in the polishing shop, which was noisy, smelly and dirty. But I was enormously proud of what I was doing. When I went back to school, I wasn't really interested because I'd had a taste of the outside world and wanted to get back.
When I left school at 16, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I thought lorry driving might be a possibility, but dad didn't think that was a very lofty ambition. We came from a very large extended family. One cousin of dad's owned four garages down in the West Country, so I got my own digs in Gloucester and started training to be a mechanic.
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED HOW YOU WERE GOING TO MAKE ENDS MEET?
When I was in Gloucester, I was being paid only £6 a week and my digs cost £3. Unfortunately, like many of the other mechanics, I smoked and often had to make the decision between buying five Woodbines or lunch, and the cigarettes usually won.
After moving back to Alton because I was homesick, I got a job in car sales while I was gigging in clubs and ballrooms in the evening. Eventually my night job started affecting my day job and I was given an ultimatum.
I chose music, much to my boss's surprise. I had to give back the company car immediately and beg my dad to borrow his car.
Within three days of quitting, I got a job at a pirate radio station, whereupon my wages more than quadrupled overnight to £25. We'd do two weeks on the ship and then we had a week's shore leave, for which we were also paid.
On board, you couldn't really spend your money; the beer was free and cigarettes were a shilling for 20. Our wages were all cash in hand and we weren't paying any taxes. The taxman couldn't have it both ways, given that we were working in international waters. We were living for the day, rather than thinking of the future.
I remember the day when I went back home to see my parents, who were not happy about me becoming a pirate radio DJ. Dad came to pick me up from the railway station and said: "I suppose you're earning more than me now, son."
I ummed and ahhed and he said: "Good on you, well done!"
ARE YOU A SAVER OR A SPENDER?
A spender, definitely. My wife, Tiggy, is the complete opposite – she's very cautious, so she compensates for my carelessness. However, over the last few years since I turned 60, I've begun to realise that I haven't got that many years of earning left, so I need to start putting more money away, including my personal pension.
In the Sixties, it was all about having a good time going out, eating and drinking – we'd go to all the big clubs in London like the Speakeasy and Bag O' Nails, and see the Beatles, Clapton and Hendrix.
Then, from my Radio Caroline pirate days, I was obsessed by electronic gadgets and still am – I justify it by saying I'm helping to prop the economy up. An iPad to me is like a giant carrot. So far I've resisted because I don't really need it. I'm an Apple junkie.
We rent our house in Dorset and we have a mortgage on a flat in London that we use when we travel there. We sold a property last year, so we have the money in the bank to buy the right house should it come along.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR WORST BUSINESS DECISION?
By the late Eighties, I was newly divorced from my first wife, Frances, and I was trying to pay for her and my kids' home and maintenance costs, while funding a flat of my own in London on very little income.
I used to pay the mortgage on alternate months and eventually the lender suggested I take a six-month mortgage holiday, which I thought was very good. But at the end they said, you need to make up the £4,000 you owe us. Crikey, I had the flat and I had my prized Harley-Davidson motorbike. I could either sell the bike or let the flat go. One guess for which option I took!
I handed back the keys to the flat because we were on the cusp of the housing crash, and with interest rates rising I just couldn't see how I'd be able to afford the payments. The flat was in Notting Hill, so it'd be worth a fortune now.
I also had a financial adviser in the Eighties who had helped me get a house with an endowment mortgage with a pension, but I started smelling a rat when the guy came around to my house in a very expensive Porsche. Upon maturing it was supposed to not only pay off the house, but also have a lump sum left over.
When it matured a few years ago, it wasn't even enough to pay off the mortgage.
AND YOUR BEST BUSINESS DECISION?
Getting married to Tiggy. She saved me from my demons – my battle with drink and drugs – and helped me battle cancer just a few months after we were married in 2002.
The best-paid work used to be when you'd get a voice-over for a television or radio commercial. It was money for old rope every time the commercial got repeated. But those days have gone now – a one-off fee is your lot.
My ethos in life is not to pay too much attention to how much I'd get for a particular radio job. I'd always go for the job I thought was going to be the most interesting, challenging or satisfying. I've only once taken a job purely for the money; that was after I lost the Notting Hill flat.
I'd left Radio 1 and took a high-paid job at a radio organisation. It was a disaster and just reaffirmed my original belief.
WHAT'S BEEN THE HARDEST LESSON YOU'VE LEARNT ABOUT MONEY?
That I can actually survive on very little and you can't really put a price on human kindness. There was a period in the late Seventies when my marriage had broken down, and my wife and daughter, Beth, had returned to England while I lived in Virginia with our son, Sam. We figured having one each would be the best way of dealing with our lack of money.
A friend had promised me that we could live in the basement of his flat, but sadly that only lasted a week after his girlfriend threw a wobbly about it. So my son and I ended up living in my old beat-up Chevrolet station wagon. He was only four.
I didn't know many people in the area, but a wonderful man, who owned the local record shop, said he knew of someone with a room in their house and they welcomed us in – not many people would do that for a stranger with a child.
HOW DO YOU PREFER TO PAY FOR THINGS – CASH, CARD OR CHEQUE?
I prefer the convenience of a credit card; cash seems so rare now. I've got two credit cards, one for business and the other for personal purchases. I do all my banking online so I can keep track, but sometimes I'm scared to look at it.
The ease with which you can shop online is a great temptation for people like me, so that's why Tiggy keeps a tight rein on me. I think most DJs are notoriously bad with money.
DO YOU INVEST IN STOCKS AND SHARES?
No, I shy away from them because I simply don't feel comfortable doing it and you really need to know what you're doing. Otherwise you could make some seriously costly mistakes.
DO YOU HAVE A FINANCIAL ADVISER?
I don't have a financial adviser as such, but I do have a wonderful accountant, who started off working for Tiggy. He's realistic, down-to-earth and gives me good advice. When he finally persuaded me to take out a pension, he said a few weeks later that he wanted to take me out for lunch using the commission he'd got. I thought that was very honest and noble.
WHAT'S YOUR FINANCIAL PRIORITY NOW?
Tiggy is 14 years younger than me, so my priority is to make sure that when I die she's left in a solid financial position. I have a state pension, which I'm not drawing on yet because I'm still earning. I don't ever really want to retire. I hope my work enables me to work for as long as I want.
Johnnie Walker's Sounds of the 70s is on BBC Radio 2 every Sunday from 3pm to 5pm
