I arrive at the East Coast Radio offices in Umhlanga at 10.30am. Dave Guselli, who is on air, gives me a friendly wave as the PR, Dawn Spencer, having spotted me at reception, makes her way to greet me. She then heads off to find Alan Khan for our interview.
Khan hosts the Bokomo Big Breakfast show every weekday between 6am and 9am while keeping a firm hand on things as deputy managing director at the radio station.
While strangers might, given his broad-shouldered frame, find Khan's presence somewhat intimidating, he is anything but.
And there are no smoke and mirrors either; he is exactly as he comes across on radio - straight-forward, intelligent, affable and humble.
Khan takes me back to how he first got into radio. At the time, he was studying to become a chiropractor at Natal Technikon (now known as the Durban University of Technology).
"In my first year, we had to do a subject called anatomy, which was body dissection. We used to wear these white lab coats and we would often smell like formaldehyde, which was used to keep the dead bodies fresh.
"While my friends and I were making our way to the cafeteria, we saw these two guys - Mark Burgess and David Young - carrying a massive speaker. I did the honest thing and offered to help. They were from the campus radio station, T&T Radio, and that is the start of it actually," he recalls.
Two weeks later, Khan did his first show at the campus radio station and decided that being a chiropractor was not for him.
He studied journalism instead and majored in broadcasting and political science, graduating in 1995.
While studying, he freelanced at the now-defunct Capital Radio 604. In 1994, he was offered work as a sports journalist at the station.
After graduating, Khan got a shot at presenting Give it a Go, a show specifically for young, aspirant radio jocks, which aired on Saturday mornings.
"I just took my chances at Capital and then got my big break when I was offered the 10pm to 1am slot when Lee Downs, who used to be here, left to go to Cape Town.
"After that I moved to daytime radio for the noon to 3pm show for three months.
"Then I got a chance to host the breakfast show for two years until the better part of 1996."
During his final six months at Capital, Khan presented Capital Live (between 11am and 1pm). It was a talk show focused on current affairs and issues involving the community.
"I enjoyed that a lot," Khan says.
"It was different to what I was doing for the last three years as a music radio presenter."
When Capital closed on November 29 1996, Khan had already secured a spot on East Coast Radio.
However, he did not leave the station until the very end because, "it just wouldn't be good after the opportunities Capital gave me".
Given his years in the industry, I asked Khan how much radio deejaying has evolved over the years.
"Initially, radio DJs were seen as pure entertainers and were allowed to do their own thing, so to speak. Now radio has become a very structured environment.
"While it may sound unplanned, a vast majority of what you hear on radio is planned. Market research of the radio station and the programming ability plays an even bigger role than what it did say five or 10 years ago.
"As a radio presenter, the content needs to be aimed at what we call the market category. Our core market is ages 25 to 49, middle to upper income bracket, across all races," explains Khan.
While hosting the breakfast show "is just another job" for him, Khan shared his thoughts on why over-inflated egos seems to be a growing trend among younger radio presenters.
"Because you are on radio, people tend to put you on a pedestal. It comes with the fact that the presenters have public profiles, and some are on television so they have good media profiles.
"Now that everyone has a decent shot at presenting, people tend to come in not purely to entrench themselves in radio for 20 years.
"A lot of youngsters use the medium for the fame, fortune and popularity that they perceive to be there. And then they use it as a stepping stone to get into television or to get on national radio."
Hosting the breakfast show, which is the flagship of any radio station, as well as attending to his duties as deputy managing director is a definite challenge.
"It has been a challenge over the last year. My specific roles are obviously to help Trish Taylor, the MD, in leading the company forward.
"I am involved in heading the human resources department and I work on the regulatory side of our business, which ensures legal compliance with the regulator Icasa," he confesses.
Of the preparation that goes on behind the breakfast show, Khan says production for the next show starts within 15 minutes of the show ending.
Apart from the music, content is deemed the next most important aspect. This involves everything from traffic reports, short and to the point news and sports bulletins and, of course, the weather forecast.
"If you listen to the show regularly you may realise that smut - whether sexual innuendos or jokes - is heard a lot on some stations, but it is not common on the Bokomo Big Breakfast show because I don't want to alienate parents out there.
"We have our traffic joke at 8.15am in the morning because it does tend to get a bit risque."
Since the loss of his co-host, Sorisha Naidoo, to Highveld Stereo in Johannesburg, Khan has gone solo and says that there are no immediate plans to find someone to fill her shoes.
"Yes, I miss Sorisha. It was nice to have someone to bounce ideas off and also to just to give the show another perspective.
"Obviously the station did try and retain her services, but you can't stand in the way of people's progress. At this stage there are no plans to replace Sorisha.
"The research indicates there is no massive deficit on air with Sorisha not being there - people seem to tolerate the change."
Keeping the Yin and the Yang in perfect balance is accredited to Khan's golden rule: no social events during the week.
His afternoons are spent with his two adorable little boys, helping out with the homework, etc.
"I am lucky that I have an understanding wife. So my support structure at home is spot-on. If it wasn't I would never be able to cope."