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Lindsay Yeo was ousted last week after more than a quarter of a century in commercial radio. You'd think he'd be disoriented, sad and bitter. Not a bit, as Diana Dekker learned.
IF LINDSAY YEO needed a handkerchief to cry into when he lost his breakfast slot on Classic Hits last week, it has long since gone through the wash and been returned to the drawer. He's almost sickeningly well-adjusted, buzzing with the possibilities the likely end of his long run in radio opens up.
Bitter and twisted?
"Not at all. People come up to me and hold my hand and look at me as if someone's died, talk to me as if they're giving a eulogy. I say `Excuse me!'
"A lot of people are shocked on my behalf and upset. We live in a time when this sort of thing is prevalent. None of us is immune to change, particularly in the deregulated radio industry. I'm a very philosophical person. What will be will be."
If anyone could stand the unmistakable message they were too old and too out of touch for the job, couched politely in Radio Network manager Gordon McTavish's explanation that the station's new focus is younger listeners, it is Yeo.
His life has not been entirely dependent on ego-swelling feedback from an impersonal audience. He has always been happy at home. And now, at 52, he no longer needs a regular income from an employer.
He and his astute wife Jan - they met when she was 14 and married when he was 24 and she...