Adrian Coen RIP

Many of you will have heard the extremely sad news that long time Colne Radio contributor Adrian Coen sadly passed away recently. Everyone at Colne Radio sends their deepest sympathies to Adrian’s family and loved ones and thanks him for his wonderful contribution to community radio over the years.

Bill Lawrance, his long time radio partner in crime, pays tribute….

Adrian Coen passed away on 29 July 2025 after a short illness.

He contributed to many shows at Colne Radio since 2016,  working with me as ‘Guppy Productions, and in many roles – as editor, producer, writer, performer – and often as the central inspiration.

Though Adrian lived in the city of Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, in Indonesia – an 8000-mile journey from northeast Essex, he never felt constrained.  He had firm views on how ‘Community’ exists on a local, national, and international level, and the positive role that radio can play to unite, support, and strengthen individuals and groups within the community.

Adrian and I made shows on an ever-widening range of topics and styles, that reflected Adrians’ own wide range of knowledge of sport, culture, arts, politics, and global affairs.  He had a deep knowledge of music, from classical to modern, and from across the world.  He started a Jazz Trios chat box, which, by his death, had over 30,000 active members.

He had started a football prediction game in 1987 that still runs today, with players from around the world.  He played chess regularly and combated with friends and others on every topic, using his beloved WhatsApp voice notes.  But he also used voice notes to support, encourage, and stretch contributors to his radio shows.  Though he led a somewhat reclusive lifestyle working from home as a translator, his online interactions were a constant reflection of his energy and interest in the world around him.

He had been a successful musician when a student at Cambridge University in the early 1980s, and his band ‘Ideal Dave and The Superbs’ made 2 albums.  He left the UK to follow his ambitions to explore and to work with communities and was posted to the very remote West Papua region on the Asian equator.  Soon, he married his Indonesian language teacher, and with a young family, he and his wife travelled and worked for many years in Japan and Australia.

Adrians’ contributions to Colne Radio were significant with a wide range of different types and styles.  He began in 2016 working on ‘Bill & Bryn’s Football Show’ and its sister show ‘Extra Time’.  He became producer and editor for ‘Your Community and Sport Show’ the following year, and then worked a co-producer and editor ‘Box 39’ and its later evening support show ‘Box 39 Red Button’’

He created and compiled ‘Bills Big Bag of Jazz Onions’, following his creation of what really was the jewel in his crown, ‘Bills Big Bag of Onions’.  This unique show mixes found sound, strong contemporary music, and original 100-word stories written by listeners.  With astonishing effort and care, Adrian produced over 600-hour long episodes of this show, all with original content.

Unique also to Colne Radio, and perhaps to radio in general was his ongoing dramatization of the stories of 2 Colcestrians, Phil & Paula who gave up their life in Colchester to build a new life in the rainforests of the remote island of Sulawesi, east of Borneo.  The story. ‘From Colchester to Sulawesi’  was served up in 15-minute episodes, at the end of Bills Big Bag of Onions across several seasons.

Adrian was never satisfied with producing ‘average’.  He delighted in making sure that his shows were technically strong, and the content never drifted into the mundane or uninspired.  He was reflective, and we would talk for hours about what could be done better.  He liked to push his own boundaries with his radio content, always imagining how ‘his listener’, a nighttime security guard, would want the show to be better.

He would be forensic in his edits, delighting in adding Easter eggs and much more to the original live broadcast version.  And he loved nothing more than sneaking a bit of Frank Zappa music into every show he worked on – over library of over 1,000 hours of original listening at the time of his death. ”