For around four years in the late 1980s, Culshaw was a DJ on commercial radio station Viking FM, based in Hull, and also had a breakfast show on Pennine Radio (now the Pulse of West Yorkshire) and Radio Wave in Blackpool. It was a receptionist at Viking FM who persuaded Culshaw that he should go onstage with his impressions and make it his living. Culshaw later appeared on BBC Radio 2's "It's Been a Bad Week", appeared as a guest on the BBC Two "Star Trek Night" quiz in August 1996, and was also a regular guest on the Chris Moyles afternoon show on BBC Radio 1 from 1998 to 2002, where he would phone up commercial organisations such as a Kwik-Fit garage in the voice of Patrick Moore or Obi-Wan Kenobi politely requesting whether they could service his X-wing fighter and how much time it would take.