Pete Myers
Myers was born to Anglo-Indian parents in Bangalore. His father worked for Indian Railways. His career in radio started in Ghana, where he arrived as a teenager in 1957, three days before independence. Myers became friends with Smokey Hesse, who hosted Jazz Scene on Radio Ghana and let Myers regularly sit in during broadcasts. One day, Smokey realised he had forgotten his script at home, rushed back to get it, and was hit by a bus and killed. Sitting in the studio, and unaware of the accident, Myers was asked to fill in and present the programme instead. He did it so well that he was hired as a broadcaster at the station. He became the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation's top radio personality and the favourite radio voice of Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah. While in Accra, organized a weekly discotheque session that helped popularize rock and roll in the capital and also directed the country's first musical and helped found what became the country's national theatre. During the Congo Crisis he and friends went to Katanga to entertain United Nations peacekeepers in the Congo. Later, Myers was part of a troupe that included an orchestra, and 85 dancers that was sent to Moscow to perform.