Pete Myers

Pete Myers (18 April 1939 – 5 December 1998) was an international broadcaster with the BBC World Service and Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

Biography Myers was born to Anglo-Indian parents in Bangalore. His father worked for Indian Railways. His career in radio started in Ghana, where he arrived as a teenager in 1957, three days before independence. Myers became friends with Smokey Hesse, who hosted Jazz Scene on Radio Ghana and let Myers regularly sit in during broadcasts. One day, Smokey realised he had forgotten his script at home, rushed back to get it, and was hit by a bus and killed. Sitting in the studio, and unaware of the accident, Myers was asked to fill in and present the programme instead. He did it so well that he was hired as a broadcaster at the station. He became the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation's top radio personality

While in Accra, Myers organized a weekly discotheque session that helped popularize rock and roll in the capital and also directed the country's first musical and helped found what became the country's national theatre. During the Congo Crisis, he and friends went to Katanga to entertain United Nations peacekeepers in the Congo. Later, Myers was part of a troupe, which included an orchestra and 85 dancers, that was sent to Moscow to perform. sharing duties with Terry Wogan presenting Late Night Extra, while also continuing on the BBC Africa Service. He was constrained on his Radio 1 show by the station's restrictive playlist and policies, denying him the on-air freedom he had on the World Service. From 1993 to 1994, he hosted Radio Netherlands' venerable Happy Station Show.

Myers died, aged 59, of cancer and complications from AIDS.