Snelly: Has he really got no mates?

by Sonya Abiade, Chad Thompson and Stephen Carrison

They love Snelly in the morning - a big day for Stephen, Chad and Sonia

Tony Snell officially revealed his intention to quit his popular morning local radio show recently - something which he exclusively told us when we interviewed him shortly before he made his announcement.

We had decided to ask him down to the Netherton Now news room to find out about his career at City FM. Over the twelve years Snelly had been at the station, he had become one of their most popular DJ’s with his quickfire humour and brilliant personality.

Tony says he had always wanted a job in the music business but his careers’ officer told him "don’t be silly" and gave him an application form to be a bricklayer - a job he unwillingly did for 2 years before packing it in.

It was then that he went to the job centre and saw a sign saying ‘are you interested in radios?’

"I thought it meant stereos," said Snelly, "pulling them apart and putting them back together again, I liked that sort of thing anyway.

"But when I went for the interview I found it was something completely different, but took the job anyway." That’s when the real adventures of the Snelly gang started!!!

A big feature of Tony’s morning show was the telephone scams when he would ring an unsuspecting listener, purely for wind-up purposes. But how did he feel when the tables were turned on him?

"Oh, yeah, that was terrible!" Tony said. "I was going to Dublin and obviously one of the security guards recognised me before I went through the metal detector.

"He put his hand in my pocket and pulled out a penknife. You know when you go cold and you get a cold sweat and start to shake, then you think ‘oh, my God, where’s this come from?’

"But they were obviously all in on it and they carted me off and I’m looking back, thinking ‘I haven’t done anything!’" Even though Snelly was frightened, he took it with a good sense of humour, which, he says "is the best thing to do."

Snelly has done many good things during in his years on City FM. He is always happy to do work in schools and for charity, but one of Tony’s big regrets is about his own time at school.

"When I left school, I got into this radio business, but unfortunately I didn’t leave with many qualifications - which was foolish of me really." He says he would like to go back to college to study languages.

Every listener knows that Tony is a die-hard Evertonian, but every avid blue out there will be shocked to hear that he once wore a Liverpool kit and paraded in front of the Kop. But it was all for a good cause.

"All the proceeds went to Dr. Barnardos to raise money for the kids," he said, before adding: "I actually took a lot of stick for it. But to me, raising money for the kids is more important than whether Tony Snell wears a Liverpool football shirt."

In all of the time Tony has been on the air, nothing had ever gone wrong for him. That was until last November when the milk disaster happened.

"I honestly thought I would lose my job then," he explained. "I spilt milk all over the equipment in front of me. At the time, the red light to indicate that you are on-air was off, so it was okay to have conversations amongst yourselves.

"But when I spilt the milk, it went into the mikes and the liquid created a circuit. We thought the mikes were still off, but they were actually on and I swore a lot!"

Luckily, Snelly got away with it because it was a genuine mistake and because he had almost unanimous support from the listeners, but he still had to pay for the damage.

Snelly was a pleasure to interview as he is very relaxed and has a very bright sense of humour. He also has the gift of the gab, but without being bigheaded!

"The only thing that matters in radio," Snelly concludes, "is that people will listen! If nobody is listening then you’ve got nothing. You’ve got to remember that the listeners are keeping you in a job. If you haven’t got an audience then you haven’t got a show." That shouldn’t be a problem for Tony Snell, though, as he has just started his new, later show for City FM’s sister station, Magic!

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