As much as it is necessary, social media has also become a place for distasteful death hoaxes. Recently, rumours of the famous radio announcer Ameen Sayani’s death started doing rounds on the internet on Monday. This came as a shock to everyone and as a result his fans started paying their condolences and tributes. But, putting an end to the fake news, Sayani’s son Rajil Sayani took to Facebook and informed everyone about his father’s recovery. He said through a post that his father was completely alright and was watching TV at 10 pm on August 31. He also told that Sayani hasn’t stepped out of the house since 16 March.
87-yr-old Ameen Sayani was born in Mumbai in a multilingual family on December 21, 1932 and has been active since 1951. The legendary radio personality started his career as an English broadcaster but after independence switched to Hindi. Sayani's shows began to be hosted on Radio Ceylon (which was broadcast from Colombo) in December 1952. However, he achieved fame mainly in South Asia when he presented his Binaca Geetmala program of hits over the airwaves of Radio Ceylon.
Binaca Geetmala was the first of its kind show in India which was completely crafted and hosted by Sayani. It happened to run from 1952 to 1994, 2000 to 2001 and then 2001 to 2003, with slight variations in its name. Not just that, he has also been aired on various stations throughout the world, from Vividh Bharati (All India Radio) to Red FM, Radio City, Big FM, Hum FM in the UAE, Spice Radio in the US, and the BBC in the UK. Sayani has produced and spoken for a total of over 54,000 radio programmes and 19,000 jingles.
