“The phase of the political circle for me is gone. It is gone and buried,” notes John Bundy, when I ask him the reason behind his radio station’s decision to steer clear of politics. Coming from a man who used to be synonymous with politics in the 1980s and 1990s, this is a strange declaration. After all, John Bundy was the man behind the “pajjiz tal-Mickey Mouse” phrase, which has now entered common parlance, and behind the Nationalist Party rap song Solidarjeta’.
But time has passed since then and Bundy has since re-emerged from a low period of unemployment after leaving the Nationalist Party’s Radio 101 and is now running a radio station as well as presenting a new quiz programme, Hawn Ahna! on PBS.
“I still keep myself up-to-date with what is happening, but these days I decide things the way I see them from the outside, because when you’re in the inner circle, where politics is the agenda of the day, in some way, you’ll be influenced. When you are on the outside, you tend to become more balanced, you become more realistic,” says Bundy when I meet him at his office in Bugibba. The building is on three levels and on the other levels he also runs the disco and the Blues Room Club.
“I was the one to decide that this radio station would not deal with political issues. I wanted to stay away from it. If a DJ on A3FM talks about politics, it has to be a general issue – like the environment, like smoking in bars. Our news comments always have a humorous touch, because when you start talking about politics in a serious way, you have to take sides. This is Malta – and if you don’t take sides, people will put you on a side. We are interested in music and a better way of living for the people of this country, which means the environment, traffic, health, nutrition… Everybody has understood this policy and abides by it – and it’s working well.”
John Bundy’s career reads like a page from Malta’s broadcasting history. “I think it was born in me to be a person in the media. I don’t remember playing with cars, or balls or a bicycle. Instead I remember that at a very young age, maybe four or five, I used to remove the Rediffusion’s back panel and put my face into it, imagining that I was on Rediffusion. People like Victor Aquilina, Norman Hamilton were my idols… I wanted to be like them. I adore music...”
John Bundy started off at the age of nine when he presented a show called Studio ghat-Tfal on Xandir Malta hosted by Fr David Azzopardi – today David Azzopardi, Philip Farrugia Randon and Renato Agius Muscat. Fr David, who was a teacher at St Paul’s Missionary College in Rabat where Bundy was a student, discovered his talent and invited him to be part of the show. “From that day I never looked back, I just wanted to be in the media.”
In 1985-86 he started hosting a Saturday show on Radju Malta but was stopped after three months. “In those days political issues overcame all other interests,” says Bundy. “The reason I was given, however, was that it would be better if I were to try the career of a shoemaker instead of a Radio DJ. The day this was said to me, I said: ‘I will give these people an answer’. Six months later I was approached again and they gave me the breakfast show on Radju Malta. This was the same person who told me that I should try to become a shoemaker. He only offered it to me because he did not have anyone to do it. But I took the opportunity and that was that. It was a different type of broadcasting from what we had in those days. Malta did not have any other radio stations except the state station – and I was different – and everybody was tuning in...”
In 1990 John was approached by the Nationalist Party. “I was already involved in the Nationalist Party’s youth section and in the district in which I lived – in those days the situation was so hot that everyone was involved in some way or another.” He was told that the PN intended opening a radio station. At the time he worked for the Mizzi group, in the Finance Department at the Delta Home Centre.
The new job required full-time commitment, however. “I worked very hard for Radio 101 and on 28 September 1991, I was the first voice to go on air at the official opening. I did the breakfast show for nine whole years at that radio station.”
Then, after nine years, John Bundy left Radio 101. “When I left Medialink, it was one of the most difficult decisions I ever took in my life. After I left I was unemployed for a year. That was the worst moment of my life. During that year I understood what an unemployed person goes through.”
Why such a long period of unemployment, I ask him. “Because I had the political shadow on me and nobody dared to employ me because of who I was. Nobody would take the risk.” Eventually, however, John was offered a part-time job with Bay Radio. Later he was approached by the Franchising Company Ltd of Hard Rock Café. He also had a TV programme on PBS and was finally approached by contractor Charles Polidano, ic-Caqnu. “He wanted me to negotiate a radio station, Island Sound in those days, so he could take over and buy it. He offered me a position as partner in the operations and we gave birth to A3FM.”
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But behind John Bundy’s public persona during these years there was a man who was struggling to care for his family and who was only coming to grips with being a public figure. “When I decided that I wanted to go into the media, I never imagined that it would mean becoming a public figure. I never thought of it like that.
“My wife was pregnant when we launched Radio 101; three months later I had my first child. It wasn’t an easy life. I was waking up at four in the morning every day to do the breakfast show – because at six I went on air – then you work late, you go home exhausted and you don’t want to listen to a baby crying – and all the responsibility was on my wife for three whole years. Moreover, you also lose your privacy. I got phone calls all the time at home, people came up to me in the streets, if we were having lunch somewhere on our own, people would come and sit at my table… and then when it got hotter and hotter, there are people who love you and people who hate you; unfortunately the people who hate you are the people who don’t know you. They just think that whatever you do – because you don’t agree with them – you are against them. I’m not that type of person – maybe people see me that way but I consider myself one of the most democratic people in the world. I reason things out. What is black is black and what is white is white. And that’s what made me a hot personality. Even on Radio 101, if there were things done by the Nationalist Party that I didn’t like, I said so. I have always shown a balance in expressing myself.
“It wasn’t easy for my daughter, either. Everybody was asking her whether she was John Bundy’s daughter… She used to deny it and say: ‘My father’s a hairdresser’. I remember one incident when I went to pick her up from a birthday party at one of her school friends. I was early so I thought I would wait outside. But as soon as I arrived, I found her outside, alone on the porch – she was six – and I asked her: ‘What are you doing here?’ She was crying. She said to me: ‘Papa, please take me home, because I can’t take it anymore, everybody talks to me about you all the time. Nobody plays with me except to talk about you.’ That struck a note… even my wife wasn’t comfortable with the situation, because even if she went to the supermarket and paid by cheque, ‘Eh, int il-mara ta John Bundy?’ Wherever she went. My wife hates exposure.
“But we couldn’t get away from it. There were times when we had threats, there was a time when I had police at my door, they were difficult times, but as they say, time heals all wounds. They were experiences which are now past. I have no doubt that those times will not be back.
“Today I consider myself a lucky man because I have achieved what I wanted to achieve. My wife has a paper which I wrote for her – that when I die my tombstone has to be plain and simple. ‘In memory of the man who loved his family, his country and music.’ That’s all I want on my tombstone – nothing else.
“But apart from all the disadvantages and problems, I love this job – and I wouldn’t do any other job if possible – not even for seven times as much as I get paid.”
Hawn Ahna!
“One of the comments we received about the new programme, Hawn Ahna! on PBS is: ‘Ma nistax nidra lil John Bundy fi programm serju’. Because people know me as a fun entertainer. It’s true that I am a fun person, but people don’t know that when there are serious things, I am very, very serious.
John Bundy agreed to do Hawn Ahna! because it is very professional, he explains. “This year I had decided not to do any television because I was bored with doing the same things. To do television of a high standard in Malta you need a lot of money. I am not a rich man, so I cannot do TV of a high standard on my own. So I said, this year no TV. Until I was approached by DeeMedia. I told them that I would only agree to do a programme if it was of a certain standard. Eventually they presented the idea for this quiz show and we discussed it and rediscussed it and we came up with a very professional quiz show.
There is a whole team behind it and they have invested a lot in the studio. I have never done a show with a studio set-up like it, it’s fully digital, lights, laptops, pcs, plasma screens – it’s incredible. I’m really enjoying working with this team because they’re fantastic people, they understand me and everybody is meticulous on the job. That is good, although it creates a lot of pressure, shouting, and name-calling… but it’s healthy – at the end of the show, we all laugh at what we do to each other.”
Running a Radio and other commitments
John Bundy’s fun-loving image also conceals a man whose dedication to work is enormous.
“Once, when I was still with Radio 101, 30 seconds before going on air I received the news that my father had been rushed to the ITU with a heart attack. I had 30 seconds to decide whether to go on air for three hours or not and I decided to go on air anyway. I couldn’t let the radio station down like that.”
Besides presenting Hawn Ahna! and running the radio station and its nightclub, John is deputy chairman of the Malta Song Board and is involved with several voluntary organisations. “I help anyone who asks me to, because I am a lucky person. I call myself a ‘normal’ person – without any physical disability – and I have given no more to God than they have given him, so I should be used to help these people: I should be their right-hand side or their left-hand side, whichever they want to lean on…”
To keep up with his commitments, John starts his day early and ends it late. “I get up at six every day. I always wake up in a very good mood. I look forward to the morning. I don’t sleep much. The most I can sleep is five hours. I am here by 7.30am, every day. And I leave this building at around 8.30 or 9pm. Because I’m responsible for the nightclub downstairs, I sometimes go home at about three or four in the morning.
I’ve been advised by the doctors to calm down. I try, but so far I haven’t managed, the moment hasn’t arrived yet. I have a radio station to take care of. Scheduling, presenters, music, productions, advertising – running a nation-wide radio station is not an easy job. This is one of the most difficult jobs I have ever faced in my life.”
Of Al Pacino and other actors
“I am a movie freak. I watch a movie every day, sometimes two movies – sometimes I start watching a movie at nine and at midnight I start watching another movie. My favourite film is Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino because that film has so many lessons. It’s my all-time favourite movie.
“I also listen to music 24 hours a day. When I go home I get my guitar, I play the piano for my daughter. Sometimes at the weekend we’re singing at two o’clock in the morning. After I finish from the Blues and go home, she waits for me – even if I come in at four, I find her awake and she makes me a cup of tea. She’s 12 now – she’s my girlfriend.
“I want to be with people all the time. I enjoy being in the
company of people who have a sense of humour,” says John Bundy.
In despite this, he is not a drinker. “I am an anti-alcoholic person, I have never tasted alcohol in 44 years and I have spent my life in the entertainment business where alcohol is around me 24 hours a day. I have seen so many people drunk and doing stupid things that – why should I get drunk?
“Once I was at a disco and this guy came up to me and told me (he assumes a persuasive rendition of a stoned voice): ‘Man, qed timmeraviljani, where do you get your energy from? X’tibla, man?’ I said to him: ‘Hold on, do you think I take drugs? Look here, if somebody takes drugs, he wouldn’t have my energy, he would be either on the floor or having fits somewhere.’ One thing I never touched was drugs – never. And I have lost three of my best friends to drugs. Whenever possible I try to get that message across on the radio too.
“I always wonder what I’ll be doing if I am lucky enough to be alive when I’m 60. Something new, but always with the media, which a 60 or 65-year-old man can do. I admire Charles Arrigo, Charles Abela Mizzi, Norman Hamilton – they have changed their style but they are still there.
“I’ve always had a wish that has never came true: to be part of the cast in a movie. I wish the time would come when someone will involve me. I love the stage too. I did some plays – my debut was at the Manoel in the play Il-Huttaba and I got good reviews… that’s a future wish. But the future for me is an hour from now…”