“If I die, it’ll be their fault because they will have stopped playing my kind of music,” said the feisty and funny 96-year-old. She’s kind of joking, but not.

Either way, they better stick another Frank Sinatra or Jim Reeves track on the turntable down at Village Radio.

“Whisper to me, tell me do you love me true.”

That’s incorrigible Val Corston’s poison – her kind of music, her station.

“Or is he holding you the way I do.”

“It keeps me alive,” said the Tauranga nonagenarian. And that’s why Village Radio needs recruits, new announcers, new tonsils. To continue the important work of filling deep, empty spaces in peoples’ lives.

“[There’s] Lots of listeners like Val out there,” said Village Radio’s Ken Wadsworth. “Older, alone and we are their company, perhaps their only company. They listen dawn to dusk.”

The radio station needs three new announcers to take ownership of that problem. The job specs are basic. “Just an interest in music really. We will train them,” said Wadsworth.

Val’s love of Village Radio is testament to the responsibility the recruits will have.

“Village Radio goes on at 8am every day of every week, more or less since it started. And it goes off at 5pm. It’s my life, it’s what I love.”

Bubbly and beaming

“Though love is blind, make up your mind, I’ve got to know,” crooned a warm and forever familiar baritone from a very dated sound stack in the lounge of Val’s 15th Ave home.

But it still delivers, still belts out Jim Reeves, Bing Crosby, Old Blue Eyes and Nat King Cole. The dead-set favourites. Nine hours a day.

Moments earlier, when The Weekend Sun banged on Val’s door, the radio was going. Of course it was. And the muffled tones of Michael Cox’s Angela Jones were filtering out. We were expecting a doddery nonagenarian to shuffle out.

But then a bubbly, beaming, preened-to-a-T Mrs Corston burst through the screen doors. No she wasn’t Mrs Corsten, just Val.

A diehard fan – Val Corston has stayed tuned into Village Radio nine hours a day, every day, for 41 years. Photo / Brydie Thompson

During her teens, at the end of the war, all the big bands were the craze. Think ‘In the Mood’ by the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the like. “And we danced and danced and danced,” said Val.

Wonderful, stylish, romantic times. And they live on. Because when Village Radio plays Anne Murray’s ‘Can I Have This Dance?’ it sets Val gliding, dancing and singing around the lounge – dicky 96-year-old legs and all. No – she wouldn’t show us. Because we might think she’s nuts. By her own admission she’s “wicked”, but by our calculation she’s boisterous, cheeky and funny and extraordinary. Not what we were expecting at all. “I don’t feel extraordinary.”

‘They’re all lovely’

We did some number-crunching on Val’s listening patterns. “Village Radio had been on air for about two weeks when someone told me I should be listening.” They came and tuned her old radio to the station and it hasn’t been tuned out since.

So, every hour of every day for 41 years – more or less. That makes 14,965 days and 134,685 hours of listening – more or less. Any new announcer at Village Radio has important work to do to reward that commitment and loyalty.

It’s charitable work, it’s free work. But there might be a slab of sultana cake in it for the successful announcer candidates. “They’re all lovely,” said Val of the on-air crew at Village. “So I make them a sultana cake. Then three and a half days later I make another sultana cake for those who might have missed out.”

But no! She certainly won’t play favourites; she won’t name her preferred Village voice. “Because they’re all lovely.”

I’m miserable

Then she lets her guard slip, and so no one else can hear, whispers ‘Ken’ – Ken Wadsworth. “Cos he plays all the stuff I love, he starts with a bang, a signature tune and then it’s nothing you could say you didn’t like.”

And right now that faceless voice on the radio is actually a human face in the room, the man in Val’s lounge. It’s a lovely, warm connection between the radioman and the listener. “Well,” said Ken. “I quite like Val too.” And enough to pop in for afternoon tea and a chat about radio and music and stuff.

And enough that when Ken plays something on air that Val particularly likes, she will ring and thank him. “We encourage it. There’s a connection for them,” said the radioman.

So what does Val do in the evenings after Village Radio signs off? “I am miserable. I wish it would go all night. I would love to have it by my ear as I am trying to go to sleep.”

If you’d like to keep Val company over the airwaves, give Ken Wadsworth a call on 0274744441, or message him at: julieandken@xtra.co.nz or call Village Radio on 07 5713710.

Can you believe that when Val was little she wasn’t allowed to listen to ukelele-playing George Formby because of his “rude and naughty” lyrics?

“If you could see what I can see when I’m cleaning windows.” Shocking!