It is a few years now since I moved from my beloved Bahrain to Australia. I lived in, worked, played, and loved the island for over a decade, having arrived in 1999 to work as a DJ in the new JJ Murphy’s Restaurant and Bar, after touring much of the world since winning the title of UK DJ of the year. Originally I thought my stay in Bahrain would probably be around twelve months, and that I’d then continue on somewhere else; globe-trotting and working my way around the world. But how wrong was I? 

Bahrain was life changing for me in so many ways; I met my beautiful wife Wendy (who is Australian) and we had our gorgeous daughter Hannah, who was born in Bahrain and still thinks of herself as half Bahraini. 

On arriving in Bahrain I was struck by the lovely laid-back attitude of the Bahrainis. I first encountered the word ‘Inshallah’ whilst having my car fixed at a garage; it needed a service, so I asked the mechanic Ali when would it be ready, and he said; “tomorrow Inshallah”. Ok, so the next day I arrived at his garage only to be told “it’s not ready, please come back tomorrow and it will be ready, Inshallah” So again, the next day I arrived to be told “it’s not ready.” Now, I’m generally a very laid back person, so I said to him “Please don’t say, it will be ready 'tomorrow Inshallah', if it takes a week I don’t care, as long as I know when it will be ready.” Ali gave me a mischievous smile and said, “OK three days,” I said “fine,” and as I walked out, he quietly added, “Inshallah”… Ha!

Another great thing about Bahrain is that it’s a melting pot for so many different nationalities. I would never had believed you if you had told me before I arrived that I would be compèring events such as the Indian May Queen Contest, the Sri Lankan Festival, the Poppy Ball Celebrations and many others! The diversity was endless and I never knew what I was going to do next, and it made my life fun and exciting.

Let me tell you about how I started on Radio Bahrain. As I said, I was working in JJ’s when a lovely lady with lots of hair came up to me and started talking. She asked whether I’d ever thought about doing radio and I said 'yes', but 'had never had the time'. Well, the lady in question was Marie-Claire, and she set up a meeting for me with Salah Khalid, the head of Bahrain radio. I went to the Ministry of Information in Isa Town to see him and what a lovely man he was. His only vice (which is a big one) is smoking. I came out of his office smelling like an overflowing ashtray. Salah said that I could do the Friday morning Breakfast Show (from 6am till 9am). I thought fantastic! BUT I was also working every night DJ’ing until 3am, so, my first morning on the radio I slept for two hours on the sofa and trundled off to the radio station with all my CD’s in a bag. 

Now there's a big the difference between DJing to a live audience and DJing to a microphone in a little room all by yourself! The response you get from the 'live’ crowd is instantaneous, whereas in the radio studio on my first morning I felt so alone!! The newsreader that day was Nadia Swan, and luckily, we hit it off immediately. We had a chat after the news, live on air, which wasn’t really 'done' at that time on Radio Bahrain. I did the Friday morning show for about four weeks before I was asked to also fill in for a DJ who was having a three week holiday. The time slot was great; 3pm till 6pm. I absolutely loved it, but then came a bit of a bombshell; I was asked to take over the weekday daily Breakfast Show. Having no sleep one day a week hadn’t been too much of a problem, but how was I going to combine working at JJ’s till 3pm and then going to the radio five days a week? Actually it was easy - I decided to just sleep all day!

Lots of funny things happened on the Breakfast Show, some (err) I can’t tell you about, but others I definitely CAN reveal… 

During one of my first morning shows, the music was playing when Nadia came in with a welcome cup of coffee. Then, just as my lips touched the edge of the cup, the CD unexpectedly stopped! I quickly turned my microphone on and said 'Ooh, thanks for the luvely cuppa Nadia' and had a quick on-air slurp whilst changing to another CD and then just carried on with the show. Well, the DJ coming on after me (who had worked there a long time and I think still is) berated me; saying that I had been very 'unprofessional.' Being the new boy, I took this rather to heart and the next day I apologized to the listeners, but I had so many calls saying that it was good and natural (as well as few saying they didn’t like it because they were driving to work and wanted a coffee too after hearing me talk about it). Ha, when I present a show it’s just me, Kevin, that you get, nothing contrived and nothing put on!

If I could help it, life at Radio Bahrain was never dull. When we had a new Minister take over, one of his directives was a new dress code stipulating that shorts could not be worn on the premises, only long trousers. So me and my 'Krazy' dress sense, headed off to the souk to see Mohammed; my amazing tailor, to give him some rather loud fabric and to ask him to please make me some suitably long trousers for the radio. Talk about multicoloured and BRIGHT!

While we are on the subject of trousers, another funny 'trouser' story was when we had the Australian V8 Races at the Bahrain International Circuit. I had been interviewing drivers in the studio, and on that particular morning I got a call at 7am from Martin Whittaker, the CEO of the BIC, saying that he’s at the gate with Jamie Whincup (the reigning V8 Champion) and security won’t let them in ‘cos Jamie’s wearing shorts. So, I said “Martin you come in”, he came into the studio, I took my trousers off and gave them to him and he arrived back fifteen minutes later with Jamie wearing my nice bright trousers, and I did the interview with him, whilst sitting in only my underwear. It was so funny, but of course we couldn’t say anything about it on air. 

On the morning show I also loved working with the kids and, when I have put them live on air, some of them have put me in some rather funny, but awkward situations. Like the time a little girl called Amy rang and asked if she could tell me a joke. I asked her how old she was, she replied “six,” so I put her on air. She then said: “How do you make a pool table laugh?” I said “How”? She came back and said; “tickle it under its balls!” Oops… quick put a song on… out of mouths of kids ‘eh?

One really positive thing about becoming well known in Bahrain is that it opened a lot of doors for me, giving me opportunities that I’d have never thought possible. Some of the opportunities were perks that benefited only me and my family, but sometimes being able to open doors meant I was able to help others too...

One morning on the radio, I received a telephone call that really hit home. It was from a Sri Lankan friend who told me he’d just found out that he’d lost a close relative in the Boxing Day tsunami. Immediately I felt that I wanted to do ‘something’ and started telephoning around. From a few people working together to raise money to help victims and their families, it culminated in a twelve hour music fund-raising event at the Diplomat Hotel called 'Hands across the Water.' My goodness, the coming together of people for this event was inspiring. On the day we had raffles every hour, DJ’s, bands, and at the end of the night we had so much stuff left over we auctioned things off. Then I got a shout from the back of the crowd; “Krazy Kev, I’ll give you five hundred dinars if you shave ya head.” So in a shopping mall two weeks later just as Steve the hairdresser was going to shave my whole head, I said “shave half of it off”! For three weeks I walked around Bahrain looking like a loon, but raising even more money, then the last of my golden curls were shaved off too. My hair has never really been the same since, but it was so worth it. We raised nearly fifty thousand dinars which I presented to the Bahrain Red Crescent Society.

Another big moment for me was when I proposed to Wendy live on the radio on Valentine’s Day. I invited her into the studio on the pretext of helping me out with all the dedications and requests. Everything was going well, I’d ordered a bunch of flowers to arrive at the studio, and had asked one of the newsreaders to come in and say; “would you like a coffee” to let me know that they’d arrived. Anyway the time flew by as we enjoyed doing a great show together, until I looked at the clock and thought “oops, there’s only twenty minutes left of the show, where’s the flowers?” Suddenly, in came the newsreader and I thought, hey here we go! Of course, I didn’t know the size of Wendy’s ring finger, so I’d bought a (temporary) plastic ring with a smiley face from a vending machine. I stopped the song, got down on one bended knee and asked her to marry me, and what was her reply? “What with this plastic thing..!!” Oops, I gulped, but then she said, “Yes!”

So, Bahrain has really played a very important part in my life; meeting Wendy, and having our daughter Hannah, a name we chose because it means joy / happiness in Arabic. We added Ruby as her second name, so she could have the initials HRH; our little Princess.

With all these fond memories wafting through my head, I really can’t believe that it has already been twelve months since I was last in Bahrain. In my final week I was privileged to have a going away party at the British Embassy. I’d received a telephone call from Jamie Bowden, the British Ambassador (at first I thought that it was a wind up) but, when it dawned on me that it wasn’t, I thought me, 'Krazy' Kevin having a farewell party at the British Embassy… Wow! You just couldn’t ask for a better send off!

When Jamie spoke about things that I had done over the years with charity work, I became very emotional and just about managed to string a few words together (I know you don’t believe that) to say thank you. But Bahrain has done so much for me. 

Thank you Bahrain!