In Götz Alsmann's biography three dates stand very close together. There is the 12 July 1957 for the day of his birth, 1959 for the year in which his family acquired a television set, and 1961 for which we read the illuminating sentence: "Götz decides to be a musician or to find some other way of getting on TV." If all four-year-olds were that determined, advisers at employment exchanges would have an easier time steering youngsters to a particular occupation.

Some time later, however, something must have profoundly irritated Alsmann's view of the world, for at some point he decided to block out current world events and to revel only in the past, to use the modern world but to keep his distance and to guard his personal museum of taste.

Proprieties are important to Alsmann. Always and in every situation. Meeting this man at the corner shop in his jogging suit is unthinkable. From an early age, Götz learned that one must dress properly, even at home. His parents dinned a certain type of self-respect into him and with that a good dose of self-assertion.

This the interpreter of antiquated swing hits certainly needed in times not so heady as the present. For a long time he struggled to convince others of his musical preferences—his inclination for crackly shellac and vinyl records. He calls himself Professor Bop when he digs around in music history and plays the old records on WDR radio. His Ph.D. music thesis is filed at the German national library under the title Nichts als Krach (Nothing but noise). It treats independent record companies and the development of popular American music between 1943 and 1963.

Alsmann absorbed many trends. He was in London when the first punks turned up there and in spite of his finely cultivated denial of all things new he has also drawn honey from current sounds. Thus he celebrated his first significant success outside his hometown of Münster in 1985 with the swing version of the Depeche-Mode hit "People are People." Since then the man with the strange quiff and the bizarre old-fashioned glasses is known further afield.

Then television makers became aware of him. As early as 1986 he moderated Roxy, a magazine program for young adults on WDR television. Neither it nor later commitments were particularly successful; they rarely helped him climb more than a few steps on the ladder of success. The journey upwards often stopped after a short time. There were quite a few who saw Alsmann as a guaranteed flop.

This changed when together with Christine Westermann he started moderating the show Zimmer frei! (Room Available!). It was only intended for the slow summer season in 1996. No one suspected that it would run an impressive number of 500 sequels by October 2009. Alsmann plays Alsmann and awakens from his clownish rigity as moody stooge whenever he gets to play music with a guest on the program. Then he bubbles over with pleasure, enthusiasm, and a joy of life. It is this feeling that he promotes during his always sold-out concerts. He feeds the audience what it wants—the way he learned from television early on—but he does not try to chum up to the medium. To a certain degree he is still the four-year-old who fulfilled an early dream. It is for this single-mindedness that people love him.