John and Sharon agree to become our new columnists

HE'S like the ying to her yang, the Simon to her Garfunkel, the toast to her butter.

Smooth Radio breakfast double act John McCauley and Sharon Oakley never share so much as a cross word outside of their Easterhouse studio.

Inside, however, it's a different kettle of fish – or tofu-based fish substitute.

"It's like living with a monkey," said John, who regular listeners to the 105.2FM frequency will know doesn't hide his derision of Sharon's vegetarianism.

"In the room there are bananas, grapes, kiwi fruit, raisins, nuts ... there's no actual food. It's like working in a zoo.

"She's always moaning about being hungry, but never eats anything."

But new mum Sharon, who cut her broadcasting teeth as Showbiz Shaz on Radio Clyde's Eye In the Sky, is the perfect foil for his taunts.

"I save the chocolate and the coffee until the afternoon," she confides. "He never sees that. He thinks I'm a health freak, but I'm not."

"A health freak?" cuts in John, 57. "She's been off for months with a bad back and needs her wisdom teeth out.

"Look at the state of me: there's not a bit of me hanging right and I'm never off sick, touch wood."

Five minutes in the door of the main studio of the Glasgow Business Park headquarters Smooth shares with Real Radio and the duo provide a glimpse of the repartee that Evening Times readers can expect to enjoy in their new weekly column.

Starting tomorrow, John and Sharon's differing views on the world will take over from the showbiz gossip of fellow Smooth DJ Heather Kane, who left us last week to go on maternity leave.

The duo's insights will be a mix of the light-hearted topics they touch on each weekday between 6am and 9am, such as cheesey bands, bad drivers, the joys of parenting or ageing.

"Sharon has just had a certain birthday – she was 40 and we were asking people for suggestions on how to keep young and beautiful," said John.

"Someone suggested Preparation H."

"Everything has just tightened up beautifully," adds Sharon with a smile.

QUITE often it's a bit like a soap, so there are themes that continually come up," she continues.

"Like the vegetarianism, like the fact that I've had a baby and I'm a busy mum, but I'm not really.

"I get teased for that, or I've had a bad back, and now I've got a bad finger."

Sharon joined the breakfast team in May 2008 after John had launched the show in 2007. His was the first voice on Smooth Radio.

"They seemed to think you needed a good woman, didn't they?" she said.

Sharon, from Motherwell, returned from maternity leave late-last summer after giving birth to baby Alice, who is now 10 months-old.

She is one of 17 new and soon-to-be mums among the staff. Sharon said: "It's great. No one can prepare you for it, no one can tell you what it's going to be like. It's marvellous. Best thing ever."

Caledonian University graduate Sharon has worked in radio for 12 years, moving from Radio Clyde's marketing department to the skies over Glasgow as its roving traffic reporter.

Each day she boarded the Cessna 310 light aircraft at Business Aviation Centre at Glasgow Airport.

"I was sick as a dog in that," she recalls. "I did that for years and it made me ill most mornings!"

Having broadcast from Glasgow's Hogmanay and T in the Park, she has interviewed stars on the red carpet of Live 8 in Murrayfield and the Q Awards in London.

THE pair first met at Radio Clyde 10 years ago while Sharon was a producer and John a presenter.

But the early morning starts have turned the duio's body clocks upside down.

John, a father to three teenage sons, sets his alarm for 3.15am to drive an hour from his home on the Firth of Clyde coast.

"I don't mean to moan about getting up early because some people have got to get up at that time and do jobs that they hate, so I'm fortunate," said John, who started his radio career at Ayrshire's West Sound in 1981 and won a gold award at New York International Radio Awards in 2000

Smooth might be broadcast on the same frequency as its predecessor Saga, which was bought by GMG Radio in December 2006, but the duo stress that is where the similarity ends.

Their music schedule – chosen by the mythical 'Captain Playlist' – is dictated at head office level with input from a panel of listeners who volunteer their services online.

"Our audience tends to be from 30 to mid-60s," said John. "We play a mixture of currents, soul hits and classics. Nothing earlier than late-60s."

Since forming their breakfast partnership, they have been in demand on the fundraising and showbiz scene, hosting the Christmas Carol Concert at Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery last December.

Sharon, meanwhile, conquered her fear of heights by scaling some of Glasgow's highest buildings for the Big Build campaign, the Evening Times-backed appeal that funded a new Marie Curie hospice.

In writing a new column for the Evening Times, they have to pool their efforts again, if not their opinions.

"In life though, we've never had an argument," said Sharon. "Never ever, off air, which is quite boring, isn't it? But we've never had a fight."

'