Not so Funny Valentine

Remember Valentine? He was the morning host at WLIT for a few years, broadcasting live from LA. You'll never believe what happened to him after he left the airwaves here. From the RAMP Newsletter...

In 2011, Valentine accepted a radio position in Dubai, and relocated halfway around the world with his wife and three young children. The gig lasted two years before he was let go. After an unsuccessful attempt to land a position at a competitor (he says his former boss intervened and blocked his hire), Valentine was urged by friends to launch his own Internet radio station. After only a week in operation, however, he says his website and stream were mysteriously blocked. And that's when his story took a truly terrifying, Midnight Express-style turn. Valentine says he was visited by Dubai's secret police, jailed for 10 days and his passport confiscated. "Mind you, all of this for playing music on the Internet," he told LARadio.com. Unable to leave the country himself, Valentine sent his family back to Los Angeles and waited to be formally charged with something. Ten months later, with all of his money gone, no passport, and his options running out, friends of friends managed to have Valentine smuggled out of Dubai, literally hidden in the bottom of a boat, at great personal peril. He was transported to Iran, where, after nearly three weeks he found his way to the American Embassy on Cypress. "I received an emergency passport there and came home a few weeks ago," he said.

Now that's a radio story.