Chairman General and Dan Kay: radio’s brightest spot in the morning
Hopefully after the last event of the 2018 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, the Celebration Concert, takes place at the Independence Square on Saturday, there would be some quietness on the entertainment front.
That is until the next VGMA comes to town.
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This event engenders enough emotions to launch a rocket to space and considering we have been going at this since the announcement of nominations in January, there is indeed the need to rest it for a while.
Good thing is that we are close enough to the day.
Radio has to be interesting to listen to.
At least that’s how I see it.
I shouldn’t be listening to radio for the sake of it or I shouldn’t when I feel it is a chore or a routine to go through on a daily basis.
The content should grab and hold me during its duration and I shouldn’t feel I wasted my time listening.
Many years ago, there was a chap on the BBC called Steve Wright.
I was a junkie of the show Wright presented called Wright Round the World.
You would never have an interesting guy on the radio with a very wacky sense of humour like Steve Wright.
I loved him and I loved his show and whenever I tuned in on my father’s SW radio it was my most joyous moment.
For whatever reason, the BBC decided to end the show and it was very sorrowful for me (just as it was when they decided to end Network Africa and Sports Round Up).
That has been my approach to radio.
I love dialogue and I love humour and believe me, I worship at the altar of humorous dialogue.
Ask anyone who is close to me about this (except my wife, who would most likely say I am not serious) and they’ll confirm it.
In the early 2000s, one particular dialogue that I couldn’t wait to have enough of on the radio was that of Komla Dumor and Sonny Decker.
It was so good when Sonny appeared on the Super Morning Show to present the newspaper review.
That short moment was everything you wanted in a humorous dialogue.
Many years after the Dumor-Decker “airomance” would be another one between Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah and Ato Kwamena Dadzie.
Those were some good moments of irreverence taken to another level on morning radio and it was sad when it ended.
I think over the last few years that relationship between host of Kokrokoo on Peace FM, Kwami Sefa Kayi or Chairman General, as his guests and audience call him, and the lead sports presenter of the station, Dan Kwaku Yeboah is another one that ticks the box.
And awesomely so.
There are many people who do not listen to the entire show that Sefa Kayi presents from after the 6am news till 10am or 10:30am or 11am (or whenever he so desires on any given day), but they would make time to listen to that short banter between him and Yeboah.
Chairman General sits on his throne and the lead sports presenter and his other team members, including Ernest Bruce Smith, come in to present their highlights of the morning’s sports news and that’s when he ends up drawing him into his web of anecdotes, jokes and anything humorous that comes up.
And the “fans” love it to death.
Dan Kwaku Yeboah or Dan Kay is a willing partner in this action to crack the ribs of their listeners.
In fact, he is more than a willing partner as there is some of the banter that lasts between him and Sefa Kayi on some mornings that he instigates.
The subjects of their humorous conversations varies.
It could be on politics, or they could be stoking the fire in the sports arena or even just any social or religious issue at all could be the subject on which the two jump on to discuss in the best way they can.
Sometimes the banter takes so long it limits the time available to read mentions and present the show, but I don’t think anyone has complained to you about that.
It would by all means come and you’ll have the dose of sports news you want from Dan Kwaku Yeboah.
What makes it even annoyingly funny is the guffaw that follows or precedes every joke they tell themselves.
Dan Kwaku Yeboah has his own style of laughing and Kwami has his and together they make it stick on the listener.
The most glaring thing from this banter is that the other persons who accompany Yeboah to present the sports are always there to be spectators watching the two men tickle themselves and everyone else to laughter.
Another glaring aspect of this bromance is the fact that when the two are not together on the show it shows very palpably well.
Kwami’s replacement, Nana Yaw Kesse can’t bring out the humour in Yeboah nor can Yeboah bring it out of Kesse.
There are many people who tune in to Peace 104.3FM around the time the sports segment is presented, circa 7am, just to hear what new tale Chairman General and Dan Kay have on the table and then go back to where they were before tuning in.
For me, it is the brightest spot on morning radio.
It happens ahead the politics that would be played on the same station by the all-knowing social commentators who sit before Kwami and the many other morning show hosts across the nation on weekday mornings.
Long may it continue!
