DJ Derek, Britain’s oldest DJ believed dead after body found
DJ Derek, who was believed to be Britain’s oldest working DJ, disappeared in July 2015, almost 2 years to the day that he announced his retirement from DJing. The former accountant was 73 and had been playing records since his mid-30s. That’s a forty year DJ career.
DJ Derek was last seen at a pub in his hometown of Bristol and then there were reports of him being sighted at Waterloo station in London in December, but the mystery continued as no one, including his family had heard or seen him since July 2015.
DJ Derek was known for playing a blend of reggae, soul, rocksteady and dancehall and aside from regular club gigs, toured Britain regularly and event played at Glastonbury. He also featured in a Dizzee Rascal video once.
He was reported missing in quite a strange way when his niece, Jennifer Griffiths, posed the question 3 weeks after his disappearance on Twitter and Facebook by saying,
“Has anyone seen Derek in the last three weeks? This is urgent, please let us know. Police are now informed and he is being treated as a missing person.”
The full name of DJ Derek is Derek Serpell-Morris and the remains of a body were found in the woods just outside of Bristol.
Closure will be a good thing for the family as they have maintained an exhaustive search for him since July last year.
“In a way it would be closure for us if this was Derek but at the same time it would be awful; it would be the worst-case scenario. He used to get the bus to Cribbs Causeway all the time and we always felt that he could have ended up around that area.
“It just feels that we wasted all that time looking in the wrong places when he was there all the time. We are waiting to hear from the police. We are just waiting for that phone call. It just feels awful, we are all sitting here expecting the worse,” niece Jennifer told The Guardian.
So far there has been no official identification of the body nor the cause of death established, but it seems a good possibility that DJ Derek has spun his last tune.
Here’s the last ever gig DJ Derek performed…
[youtube_sc url=”6wiAsZgBabk”]SOURCE
