Departures of note

Born in Deventer, the Netherlands, in 1950, Frederik Matthijs Van Stegeren began his radio career on Radio Veronica, the pirate station that broadcast from a ship in the North Sea to bypass the Dutch state monopoly. It was there that artistic director Noel Coutisson gave him the nickname Federico l'Olandese Volante (the Flying Dutchman), a name that stayed with him for the rest of his life. He never finished his architecture studies in Amsterdam, drawn instead to music and the microphone. He moved to Radio Monte Carlo, where the Federico Show was born, and in 1977 joined Rai Radio 2 to host A tutte le radioline with Herbert Pagani and Riccardo Heinen. He later helped build Radio 105 and spent sixteen years as the afternoon voice of RTL 102.5 with the program The Flight, before moving to R101 and, from 2015 to 2024, Radio Norba. He also scored a 1979 hit with the single Wojtyla Disco Dance, appeared on television, and published books about his radio years, including Il Principato and Il cartello olandese. He died in Monopoli in October 2026 at the age of 76, remembered as one of the last witnesses of the adventurous era of Italian private radio.