Steve Wright (Pic:Splash) Steve Wright (Pic:Splash)

HE cuts a shambling and eccentric figure in ill-fitting black clothes with cap askew.

But for the best part of 25 years, Steve Wright has provided the voice and soundtrack to weekday afternoons for seven million BBC radio listeners.

Yet aside from his three-hour Steve Wright In The Afternoon on Radio 2 show, he remains an enigma – even to his closest colleagues.

On air he is full of chat, one-liners and the master of a format he first brought to Radio 1 in the 1980s.

Off air he leads a surprisingly unassuming life for such a well-loved celebrity, shunning interviews and TV appearances. Instead he seems to prefer his own company, living on cheap microwave meals and junk snacks.

His one obsession is radio and he studiously listens to other shows, seeking to pick up tips and ideas. One friend recalls bumping into him at London's Paddington station about to board a shuttle train to Heathrow Airport.

"He told me he was off to New York," he remembers. "I asked where his luggage was and he just waved his passport at me. 'I buy essentials like toothbrush, underwear and socks while I'm there and throw them away at the end,' he told me.

"Wrightie was literally going to sit in a hotel room for a few days to listen to local stations. He is obsessed by the medium, which is why he's stayed at the top for so long."

Steve, now 56, is a self-confessed loner who, despite a £440,000-a-year salary, lives modestly.

But colleagues say his weight battle – he has ballooned to 18st in the past – may reflect a deeper sadness.

And they say instructions given by producers to broadcasting assistants to make sure the station's star DJs are taken care of tell their own story.

One colleague says a typical instruction for when Steve starts work each day would begin with the words: "I've one piece of advice: just get the meals right! F*** the rest up, but just get that right and you're sailing."

The insider goes on: "Assistants are told to get Steve's breakfast and lunch, and other things he might want including arrangements for his visits to his mum.

"After a list of production tasks, they will be told about Steve's 'feeders', his favourite restaurant takeaways."

Detailing his food desires, the colleague says assistants are told: "The producer will ring you when Steve gets in to come to get his order. He'll tell you what he wants for both feedings and will give you money."

For breakfast, he usually asks for poached or scrambled eggs on brown toast from a restaurant called Avelli's, porridge from Make Mine or Eat, a small bacon or sausage butty with ketchup from Eat and a skinny latte with one sweetener.

For lunch, he insists on a baked potato from Avelli's or chilli chicken box from Leon's or he may opt for a chicken pie from Eat.

Steve asks for his lunch at precisely 1.30pm and the broadcasting assistant is instructed to "lay out Steve's food on the white cabinet in his studio". A BBC source said: "Steve's eating habits have become stuff of legend at the Beeb. Staff have to follow a strict routine with him and he hates it when the broadcasting assistants get it wrong.

"Steve is constantly battling his weight but can't help himself, he loves his food and is always snacking on something."

The insider says that on Fridays at the pre-recording for his Sunday Morning Love Songs show, Steve usually offers to buy his production team breakfast – but rarely has the right money. Assistants are told: "He rarely gives enough dosh, so raid the swear tin." Following Steve's food choices comes the instruction about his 'feeders', with a list of his favourite restaurants, the insider says.

For Avelli's restaurant, they will be told: "Tell Pete it's 'for Steve' and he'll know how to make it."

Steve regularly travels to visit his mum on Fridays in Oxted in Surrey and he asks the broadcasting assistant to get him train tickets.

"Steve doesn't queue, so you'll need to get him the ticket before he leaves for the station," the source adds.

Bizarrely, he sometimes asks his staff to book him into the posh St George's Hotel on Regent Street, next to the BBC's Broadcasting House – although his own home is just a few minutes walk from the studios.

Friends struggle to pinpoint the root of Steve's weight issues and intense off-air shyness.

But some blame the breakdown of his marriage to US-born Cyndi – mother of his children Tom, 24, and Lucy 17. The break-up hit him hard, causing him to start losing his hair and to pile on the pounds as he dealt with his family idyll, including a Henley-on-Thames mansion, being suddenly blown apart.

"It came out of the blue," said a friend. "Cyndi just said, 'That's it. I'm off.' He thought they were forever."

Even in happier times, Steve seemed to be the one making all the running.

Steve once recalled the moment he knew Cyndi was the one. "We were watching the Mike Leigh play Abigail's Party on television when I looked at her and just thought: 'I love this woman'."

Did he say anything? Yes. He said: "I love you."

And what did she say? He can't quite remember. Probably, it was: "Shut up. I'm watching the telly."

Born in Greenwich, South London, the eldest of two boys, Steve was raised in gritty New Cross, in a working class family. There was never much money about and there was no bathroom to speak of, only a tin bath. His father, Richard "Dickie" Wright, was a tailor and the manager of the Burton store in Trafalgar Square. Steve was a quiet child, fonder of observing others than being the centre of attention, but never very scholarly.

When he left Eastwood High School in Southend-on-Sea, Essex – where he was cruelly nicknamed Big Nose and Concorde – he did so with only three O-levels.

He later said that he never understood the point of cosines or Greek mythology and, anyway, he was impatient "to leave and start earning money".

Steve's first job after leaving school was in the City, in marine insurance, but after three years he was bored witless and left to become a local newspaper reporter.

This eventually took him to the BBC, as a record librarian, then to his own shows, first on Radio Atlantis then on Reading's Radio 210 and eventually a six-month stint on Radio Luxembourg. But Steve hated Luxembourg, so when the call came from Radio 1 he whooped with joy.

In 1980, Radio 1 was the place to work and it was the beginning of a highly successful love affair.

After having a go at televison, Steve eventually ended up on Radio 2 in 1996 and has been there ever since.

His quirky Ask Elvis segment, the mysterious Old Woman and his famous "factoids" are among the inventive features which have kept his show fresh and endlessly popular.

Home for Steve is now a £1million bachelor flat in Central London, above a scruffy garage where he parks his black Range Rover.

His son Tom – a ladies' man, having dated such beauties as Sadie Frost and Mischa Barton and was part of Amy Winehouse's circle of friends – is one of his few visitors there. But at the weekends, Steve escapes to a country bolthole he owns in West Sussex, near to his younger brother Laurence, 52, a business manager at a scooter rescue firm.

The DJ enjoys bombing around the Sussex countryside in a bright yellow Lotus sports car he owns – that's if he's not tinkering with his rare collection of old radios.

And on work days, Steve usually arrives at the Radio 2 studios at around 9am and leaves after the show ends at 5pm.

He will have an occasional drink at the nearby BBC club.

But he prefers to pick up a microwave TV dinner and a mini bottle of white wine from his local corner shop along with bags of crisps and chocolates.

"The one thing that dominates ­Wrightie's life is his radio show," said a colleague. "It really is the only thing that gets him up in the morning.

"But we all worry about him because it can't go on forever."