Paul Coia's voice was the first to be heard on Channel 4 when it launched on November 2, 1982. Born and raised in Glasgow, he now lives in London with his wife Debbie and their two children.

We met at prep school when we were four or five. I remember he disappeared for a while because he broke his leg, but I don't remember a time when we weren't pals.

He was this little boy with masses of curly hair and big thick specs, who was up for anything. He'll tell you he was a shrinking violet but I can assure you he wasn't.

There's a picture of us in the rugby team at secondary school which kind of sums us up. His socks don't match - he always had hopeless dress sense - and he's got a huge smile on his face. Meanwhile, I look as worried as hell. And it's because he's taken a compass from the maths class and stuck it into me. He was a sneaky bugger.

There's another picture of us as students, on holiday in Disneyland, and we're filling our faces. I need friends with a huge appetite; I always go for big portions. But, whereas I have to watch now, he's as

skinny as a rake.

At secondary school we shared a major interest in music. We were forever buying albums and then we got guitars and formed a band. Paul always played with his tongue sticking out. I dunno, maybe he needed that for balance or something.

We also did a lot of sports. But where I was a lazy athlete, doing sprints because they were over quickly, he'd go for the long distance stuff. He took it to wonderful lengths, representing Scottish Schools, and he's still dedicated. At university he knuckled down. He was working to get his science degree, working away in the lab, while I was just having a laugh, letting my studies slide while I did gigs for Radio Clyde.

Although we were going in very different directions, we never stopped being friends. One time, I'd met a girl and invited her back to my flat for coffee and, 10 minutes later, Paul arrives with a whole bunch of mates - this is the middle of the night, you understand - to ask if I've got a projector bulb they can borrow.

I suppose he felt he had a right to muck up my chances - after all, he knew more about my love life than anyone. The first date I ever went on, with one of his sister's friends, I was so terrified I invited him along too.

In the early eighties I had to move to London because that's where the work was. But I always came home at the weekends and the two of us got together, went to parties. When I was doing Pebble Mill, he'd come to see me and we'd do

Birmingham together. We also went to Los Angeles.

He's a great friend to have. He cares, he's very protective, extremely loyal, both to people and to projects, and it's impossible for anyone who meets him not to like him. He's also the worst godfather you could possibly imagine. He always forgets birthdays - and even Christmases.

Now that I live down here and he lives up there we don't see each other so much. Mostly we phone; he makes it down when he can and vice versa. When he does visit, he always remembers to bring me real caramel shortcake because you just can't get it here. He brings a big bag of it. That's lifelong friendship for you.

Paul is a business advisor with the small business gateway. He lives in Glasgow with his wife and young son.

The first thing I remember about Paul is that he had a tan, strangely enough. And that he and his brother, his twin Gerard, fought like cat and dog. They were always scrapping - though they're now close friends - and I just thought: ''Who are these guys?''

By the time we got to secondary school, Paul and I were friends. We went through everything together, all the various stages of school, the carry-on with teachers, and we were both terrible at maths. We were atrocious. When we got our prelim papers back, I saw that he'd got 18% and I burst out laughing and said: ''Oh my God, that's terrible.''

And then I got my paper and I'd got 17%. So there we were, roaring with laughter - it was just a nervous thing really - and the teacher was looking at us like we were mad, because we'd got the worst marks in the class. We did eventually get our Highers, but only after a lot of butt-kicking. We were in a band at that time. Oh, that was a dreadful experience. I hope we don't ever have the call to reform, like the Blues Brothers. In fact, we were so pathetic we didn't even have a name. We used to drag our sorry asses to a pub in Cambuslang where we rehearsed, and we were just bloody hopeless. We never even did any gigs; once, one guy threatened to get us a gig and we nearly died of fright.

We were very into our music though, into soul stuff, anything Motown, and we had a rule that, if one person bought an LP, the other didn't buy the same one. To this day, we have entirely different record collections; I'm sure he's got lots of records that I really wanted to buy, but he got there first. When Paul's DJ-ing career was taking off I would occasionally deputise for him, warming up the crowd for the first couple of hours at the students' union. Bears, they were. There I'd be, trying to educate the masses with some Chaka Khan, and they'd be demanding punk.

Even though our lives took very different directions we've always been able to pick up where we left off. We've lived in entirely different parts of the country for the past 20 years yet we always get in touch.

I'm very impressed with the way Paul handles being famous. People can be really rude sometimes, but he's remarkably placid and just moves away from them, or makes some quiet remark back. Fame and the big house in London hasn't changed Paul. I think that's down to his family; they're very close-knit Italian and everyone's the same, no-one's allowed to get above themselves.

I see my job, as his mate, to help him keep his feet on the ground. And improve his fashion sense. It took us ages to wean him off white socks worn with grey trousers - that Miami Vice look. It was my duty as his best friend to tell him that fashion had moved on.

We've had a lot of really good times, visiting each other over the years in Birmingham and LA and London. When we were young, oddly enough, he didn't think of himself as good-looking and I really had to push him to get him to ask girls out. It took him a while, but he was re-born after that. He's learned a lot from me, you see.

Interview: Roz Paterson