It is the fate of the radio presenter: you are more likely to be recognized by your voice than by your face. This certainly applied to Jan van Veen, who for years recited amateur love poetry on a radio program with his characteristic deep voice Candlelight. Van Veen died on Sunday after a short illness at the age of 79 from the effects of ALS, his family told the ANP news agency.
Van Veen started at Radio Veronica in 1964 at the age of 20 as a DJ and program maker. He was personally brought in by Willem van Kooten, with whom he had served in military service. He combined his radio work with a job as a sales manager for his in-laws’ textile empire. He left Radio Veronica in 1970, where Van Kooten had already left two years earlier. In 1969 he scored a modest hit as a member of the occasional trio Los Piratos (which also consisted of colleagues Lex Harding and Rob Out) with We are pirates. He had more success five years later with his only single More:
Candlelight
Van Veen became best known as a presenter of Candlelight, in which he recited romantic poems that listeners submitted themselves. The program started as a joke, when Van Veen once read out a love poem that someone had submitted. When other listeners subsequently sent their romantic-poetic soul stirrings to the station, Candlelight born.
The program ran from 1977 to early 2003, but later continued on the Internet. From 2008 to 2018 Candlelight can be heard again on radio station 100%NL. A year later, the program was taken over by Omroep Max, but Van Veen was fired after just a month. In 2009, the DJ was appointed a member of the Order of Orange-Nassau.
The program had many fans, but was also regularly the target of ridicule. Particularly known is a parody of André van Duin, who with his Dik Voormekaar Show made fun of Van Veen’s presentation style: