The new star of the Radio 1 schedule was just 14 when he made his debut on the national network, a Nottingham schoolboy who was invited to London to demonstrate his skills behind the decks as a guest of hip hop presenter Tim "Big Dawg" Westwood.
Some 12 years later and Peter Dalton, aka MistaJam, is the golden boy of Radio 1 bosses Andy Parfitt and Ben Cooper, having just begun his own two hour Saturday night show. Not that Westwood can take too much credit for talent-spotting. At a BBC party, Dalton approached the Big Dawg to reminisce over their first meeting only to be told: "Remind me, dog, remind me."
Nonetheless, Dalton still cites that 1997 visit to Radio 1's Yalding House base as the moment that convinced him he wanted to be a broadcaster. "It was amazing walking into Radio 1, seeing Oasis mini-discs lying around and being in the halls where the likes of John Peel were broadcasting, then being on air with Westwood. That was my first experience of real radio."
If anything Westwood was slow off the mark, because Dalton's mother has recently recovered a recording that he made aged three, imitating a radio presenter. By the age of seven he was acting with the Central Junior Television Workshop, the start of an alternative career that has led to appearances in EastEnders, Crossroads and Peak Practice and a part in the West End show 125th Street.
Dalton, 26, acknowledges that his acting background has given him confidence in making his radio show. As Dalton and as MistaJam he comes across as good-natured and funny. He plays a mix of urban genres (rap, drum and bass, dancehall and dubstep) but eschews the hood up, grimy attitude of the housing estate stairwell. To be otherwise, he suggests, would be both narrow-minded and outdated. "Growing up in the Nineties I have been exposed to so many different things," he says. "My style is just me. I've grown up in Nottingham in a multi-cultural society and I'm mixed race myself."
He had that open outlook as a teenager. "It was weird for me at secondary school because at nights and weekends I was a hip hop DJ and during school I would play drums in an Indie band with my friends and we'd play Oasis and Shed Seven covers. I always wanted to do something in music but being a very rubbish drummer I wasn't destined to be a musician"
His DJing with the Nottingham hip hop crew Out Da Ville led first to promoting the successful British rap event, UK Takeover, and then to a job with the BBC Radio's black music network 1Xtra in 2005 (though at first he continued to work in a credit card telesales post). He is now a pivotal figure on 1Xtra, presenting from Monday to Thursday between 7pm-10pm.
Humour has always been part of his presenting style. He gently parodied the funky house club hit "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes" by KIG, a song known for having its own club dance moves, calling the Mistajam version "Eggs, Soldiers, Beans on Toast". Not exactly gangsta. "Humour is very important to me because for a long time people have seen black and urban music to be very cold. There are a lot of people who take themselves far too seriously. I love a laugh and a joke," he says. "For me the DJs that I love are the ones that aren't the chin-stroking, po-faced, über supercool people because they're not really cool," he says.
Having been given a first break by Westwood, MistaJam now hands over to him on the Saturday night Radio 1 schedule. Indeed, many would see him as the natural successor to a presenter who has turned 51 and has dominated urban music broadcasting for two decades. Criticised by some for his transatlantic accent and bizarre lexicon, Westwood has recently been cleverly lampooning himself in video clips, Twitter postings and an online soundboard of catchphrases such as "Up in the building, lookin' real big tonight!" As a broadcaster and as a rap fan, MistaJam approves. "Westwood is almost a pastiche of himself, he's absolutely hilarious on air but he's playing the most credible, cutting edge hip hop."
When The Observer critic, Miranda Sawyer, gave MistaJam a try and suggested his show was a "refreshing alternative" to Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie on Radio 2, he was delighted. "I thought 'Wow, that's ridiculous, a Radio 2 listener hearing my show and getting it'."
But he is also taken seriously by his musical peers, having performed at Mark Ronson's New York club and at shows by superstar rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West, not to mention holding down a summer residency at Ibiza superclub El Paradis. He might be a trained actor who broadcasts under a street-fashionable nom de plume but there is something very honest about MistaJam. "I'm very proud to be Peter Dalton," he says.
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