“I’d been doing a lot of DJing with Zane Lowe and Yoda,” says the bespectacled Dan Greenpeace when asked about his best live experiences.

“We did a tour last autumn. The first gig in Edinburgh was just crazy. A thousand people, packed in a small room with a very low roof, so it had a really grimy feel to it. They were well up for it. I did a two hour warm-up set, which after about five minutes ended up with the crowd chanting ‘Where the fuck is Zane Lowe?’ I thought, oh my God, I’ve got another hour and a half of my set…”

Every DJ’s nightmare: the live set going pear-shaped from the get-go, before the music’s had a chance to get going. It seems an odd choice as a gig that stands out for Greenpeace, until he explains the result: “I basically had to pull all the tunes out of the bag, play all the classics, and by the end of the night I think they’d even forgotten who Zane was! That torturous first twenty minutes… but it was a great feeling pulling the crowd around like that.”

That’s the thing about Greenpeace. Spend longer than two minutes with him and you’re bound to hear some crazy stories. The international trips, the name-checks, the artists he brought over to the UK or who stopped by his All City radio show on XFM. The first impression of Greenpeace is someone very sure of himself and of his status in the UK hip-hop continuum, perhaps even a little arrogant. But, to paraphrase Jadakiss, he’s not cocky, he’s confident. And he’s been around since ’86, so he’s put in the work. Arrogant? If you like. He’s earned it.

Check the method: inspired by New York city radio tapes of Red Alert, Clark Kent and Marley Marl, the young Greenpeace gets a pirate radio stint in ’86, and starts collecting records – and honing his deck skills. To go with the various club residencies he began piling up as the years went by, he became a contributor to Hip-Hop Connection magazine, and this is where the stripes got well and truly earned. (He now writes a column for the magazine.)

“At one point me and Andrew (Emery, fellow HHC columnist) were writing forty or fifty thousand words a month for HHC,” Greenpeace reminisces. “We were going to New York, interviewing all the Rawkus artists, mining out really obscure independent artists… I’d become the go-to guy for indie hip-hop (in HHC).”

The radio bug had bitten though, and XFM came calling, resulting in the All City Show – one of the few mainstream rap shows to compete with the Colossus That Is Tim Westwood.

If we’re going to pinpoint an area of hip-hop that Greenpeace has locked down, it’s radio. “A lot of it is down to my personality,” he explains. “I’m just me. I’d get The Game or Snoop coming on my show live on a Saturday night, and they’d see this white nerdy guy with glasses – like, who’s this guy? But I’d just be myself. I’d ask normal questions and do my research… I was the go-to guy.”

Again, that phrase: go-to guy. It fits. And for what it’s worth, all that experience has built itself up over the years into one pretty intimidating package. Greenpeace seems particularly proud of his ability to rock a party, talking with enthusiasm about mixing up hip-hop with current pop and rock music, about jumping on the crossfader and getting the crowd involved on the chorus or cutting up the drum intros over two copies of AC/DC. You can hear it on the radio sets he does – though not with AC/DC, these being strictly hip-hop orientated shows.

The XFM show is no longer active, though he podcasts regularly and does a weekly show on Pyro Radio. Greenpeace is, probably rightly, quite opinionated and cynical about the UK radio environment.

“Over the years it became a lot more watered down. Everyone was playing the same records, record companies stopped servicing records on vinyl. The music has become throwaway, disposable.

“I get so many MP3s, I don’t know if it’s the official single, if it’s a bootleg, if it’s a leak from the label. There was a lot more structure when I started and I like structure. I like the old-school way of radio. Now there are too many DJs, too many shows, just a bit wishy-washy.”

Of course, like most surviving figures from the early days of hip-hop, Greenpeace doesn’t do only one thing. Besides HHC and the radio and club gigs, he’s found the time to start a blog (the slick fatlacemagazine.com) and a distribution/management company (All City Music). It is the latter he considers the serious day job. All City is working its backside off at the moment – Greenpeace’s key artist, Sway, is about to drop the Signature LP. “Sway keeps me very busy,” says Greenpeace. “But he’s without doubt the hardest working rap artist in the UK. No-one has the work ethic that Sway has.”

Label duties will get put aside on 5 September when, thanks to one of DJ Spin Doctor’s wonderful Doctor’s Orders jams, Greenpeace rocks a show alongside the legendary Large Professor.

Turns out the two have a history: “I was the first one to bring him over! In 2003 or 2002, (Large Pro’s debut) First Class came out and I was doing a regular night at 93 Feet East on Brick Lane. People like Cormega, Estelle, Blak Twang, Non Phixion… then one time we brought Large Professor over. He came on the All City Show, with Edan.”

A Large Pro track even ended up on Greenpeace’s collabo album with his batshit-crazy DJ friend Yoda, Unthugged. “I produced it and it’s terrible! But I can say I produced a Large Professor track,” he says.

Dan Greenpeace plays the Doctor’s Orders party at Herbal on 5 September 2008.