Ebook: No off switch

One year Andy Kershaw was Billy Bragg's roadie, the next he was presenting Live Aid on TV to 400 million people: the new voice of youth. A passionate enthusiast for music, he is a man with an obsessive curiosity about the world. Over a 25-year career, he has worked for the Rolling Stones, shared an office with John Peel, and introduced world and roots music to Radio 1 (and later Radio 3). He has also filed numerous reports for Radio 4, majoring in the Axis of Evil, and for a time was the only BBC journalist present during the Rwanda genocide. In 2007, his relationship disastrously broke down and he was denied access to his kids, which led to a month in prison on the Isle of Man for a non-violent transgression of a restraining order. This year, he returns to BBC radio as the voice of the key autumn series, Human Planet.

Andy Kershaw writes about all of this with candour, insight and immediacy. This is a real book by a man who has no truck with celebrity...