Andy Kershaw started his national broadcasting career on television in 1984, joining the presenting team for Whistle Test, previously titled The Old Grey Whistle Test. In 1985, he joined Janice Long, Paul Gambaccini, and others to host the Wembley Live Aid concert on television and radio. That same year, he began presenting a weekly evening show on Radio 1, briefly on Saturdays, then on Thursdays until 1989. The exact date of his death has not been confirmed, nor is the specific type of cancer he was treated for mentioned in reports.
At Radio 1, Kershaw and John Peel shared an office in Room 318 at Egton House, the old Radio 1 building next to Broadcasting House, with their producer John Walters. According to The Guardian - Culture, Kershaw described Walters as his confidante, adviser, and inspiration. Both Kershaw and Peel were uncomfortable with the idea that Kershaw was being groomed as Peel's successor. In his 2011 autobiography, No Off Switch, Kershaw downplayed Peel's reputation as a 'rebel', writing rather uncharitably that Peel had no stomach whatsoever for a fight.
the BBC's ubiquitous musical anthropologist
Kershaw's Radio 1 show moved around the schedule, switching to weekends, then Mondays, then Fridays, until he was dropped by Radio 1 in 2000. The reasons for his departure beyond these schedule changes are not detailed in available reports. Throughout his 15 years at Radio 1, he travelled the world to present music specials, including joining the Elvis Presley faithful on a memorial tour marking the 10th anniversary of their idol's death and discovering more about the music of Zimbabwe.
According to The Guardian - Culture, The Times described Kershaw as the BBC's ubiquitous musical anthropologist. He added politics to the mix when he travelled to South Africa in 1995, meeting some of its most influential musicians and discovering how the country was settling down in the year following the end of apartheid. The identities of those musicians are not provided in reports. He also broadcast on Radio 4 from 1987, going on a three-part musical journey through Mali in 1989, taking the political temperature in an unstable Haiti in 1991, and reporting for the Today programme on the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and civil wars in Angola in 1996 and Sierra Leone in 2001.
Kershaw made shows for five of the main BBC national radio stations, though the full list of these stations is not enumerated in reports. According to The Guardian - Culture, Kershaw described how initially Radio 1 wanted another John Peel, but he quickly got bored of the awful, insipid demo tapes he was receiving from Liverpudlian indie acts, especially as he was beginning to discover properly fantastic, amazing music from Malawi, the Congo, and South Africa.