Nardwuar the Human Serviette, the quirky interviewer and encyclopedic indie rock expert, is set to celebrate two decades as a radio broadcaster with a 20-hour marathon broadcast beginning Thursday night in Vancouver.

Nardwuar has been a fixture on Vancouver campus radio station CiTR since 1987, when he was 19 years old.

Though the show began as just a 15-minute on-air gig, over the years Nardwuar's profile — and the length of time the station allocated to him — has grown.

The guerilla-style interviewer has also questioned everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to rapper Snoop Dogg.

"When I first started doing interviews, it was like yes, I said I would only talk to punk bands," he told Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio's Q.

A friend suggested he add some interviews with hair metal bands to his repertoire and, later, someone else urged him to expand to rappers, claiming that "rap is the new hair metal."

"It was my willingness to do interviews that gave me some sort of degree of pleasure that actually put me here today," Nardwuar said.

Through his unflagging promotion of up-and-coming bands as well as regular interviews aired on MuchMusic, Nardwuar has developed somewhat of a celebrity status among Canadians for his manic, effervescent persona and knowledge of music and pop culture.

However, he turns the credit back to the people he meets across the country.

"I love the feedback. People give me ideas.… It's great having people tell you tidbits of information," he said.

"Everything I've said has been said before and done before. I'm just a conduit through which I like to take the information and flow it through to other people."

The Live on Air Nardwuar Interview Marathon begins 9 p.m. PT Thursday and continues until 5 p.m. PT Friday.

After the marathon broadcast, Nardwuar will celebrate with a free, all-ages concert with his band the Evaporators at a Vancouver club.