Once I had heard someone normal on the radio I was forever changed. A bloke who at least twice a week would play records at the wrong speed, and instead of making a zany joke about it to cover the foul-up would just mumble about his own incompetence and apologetically put it on at the right speed. A man who would often talk in affectionate tones about his family, especially his beloved wife. I recall the giddy excitement in his voice after the birth of one of his sons, Tom (one of whose whose middle names, and indeed those of his other three children, was a tribute to Liverpool FC). Also the anguish and occasional petulance he would exhibit when his beloved Liverpool lost a game. You couldn’t fail to be entranced by the genuine enthusiasm in his voice when he played a record fresh out of the envelope and, like us, was listening to it for the very first time. The moment when he described the single ‘The Word Girl’ by Scritti Politti as ‘achingly beautiful’ was the moment that I knew that being a deejay could be so much more than we were being given during the daytime.
John Peel is the reason that I said yes after I had sat in that office with my agent, Lesley Douglas and Jim Moir and they offered me my own breakfast radio show.
Corner Sounds
‘I Wanna Be Like You’ – Pookiesnackenburger
‘Ying Tong Song’ – The Goons
‘Angelina’ – Louis Prima
‘Double Barrel’ – Dave and Ansell Collins
‘ABC’ – The Jackson Five
‘Take Me Over’ – McKay
‘Roll With It’ – Star Turn
‘Flowers in the Rain’ – The Move
‘Intro/Sweet Jane’ – Lou Reed (from the Rock n Roll Animal LP)
‘Phoenix City’ – Perfect Thyroid
Chapter 3 The Golden Age of Wireless
These days it’s pretty much taken for granted that the breakfast show on any radio station is the most important show of the day. But why is that exactly, and how did it happen? Like anybody else facing such an all-encompassing question I googled it. Just typing in ‘breakfast radio’ yielded 32 million results. That might be a bit time-consuming. So I narrowed down my parameters a little and tried for ‘history of breakfast radio’. Yes! 16,400,000. Let’s narrow the field a little more: ‘history of breakfast radio in the UK’. 4,100,000. This was all well and good but I had a few specific questions about the form, which I’m not sure even the mighty Google could handle.
One of the most fascinating developments in broadcasting over the last twenty years is how many universities and colleges have started to focus their attention on training people for jobs in media in general, but radio in particular. Most people who I have encountered in radio were pulled towards it by a desire to work in the field, but at the time there were no formal qualifications as a radio presenter or producer. People would generally start by volunteering and then if they were good at their job and got noticed they’d be offered the odd paid shift, and on it would go. Several high-ranking editors and producers I have worked with over the years started their careers in just such a fashion.
One of the country’s leading facilities for learning about radio today is the Media School at Bournemouth University. Indeed the first time I visited there was to present one of the 6 Music breakfast show’s regular outside broadcasts from the student radio station. The night before I went with my producer Phil Wilding (of whom, much more later) to present one of our regular outside broadcasts from the student radio station. The night before, we went to interview Swedish pop outfit The Concretes who were playing a student club in town called The Firestation. I remember walking up to the exterior just after we arrived in town and looking round at Wilding whilst uttering, ‘Wow, it looks just like a fire station.’ I have often been grateful for the restraint that Phil showed over the years, especially in the face of my colossal ignorance. Especially when it came to quite obviously repurposed municipal buildings.
We were due to be interviewing singer Victoria Bergsman and set up our microphones in some dim backstage nook and patiently waited for her to finish soundchecking. As various healthy, Nordic members of the band and the crew darted around us conversing with each other in Swedish, Phil and I could only sit there gurning like idiots every time a new face poked round the door. Each friendly Scandinavian face offered a friendly smile usually followed by, ‘Can I help you?’ Each time this happened one of us would blurt out something about being from the BBC and waiting for Victoria. ‘Ah yes, she is soundchecking at this moment, but she will be with you soon, I think!’ I couldn’t be that polite in English, let alone a second language.
I wandered out into the auditorium to watch them running through the brilliant opening track from the In Colour album, ‘On the Radio’. I always had a weakness for songs about radio. One of my favourite bands, The Members, had two belters in ‘Radio’ and ‘Phone-in Show’. Joe Jackson had ‘On the Radio’, Costello sang ‘Radio Radio’, electro keyboard whiz Thomas Dolby had ‘Radio Silence’. There was ‘Rex Bob Lowenstein’, ‘Radio Sweet-heart’, ‘The Spirit of Radio’. Possibly my favourite song about radio is ‘This Is a Low’ by Blur which uses the Radio 4 shipping forecast as inspiration. The list in my head was growing as I watched the band wander through another perfunctory rendition for the benefit of their sound man. As I dwelt on this, Wilding gave me an urgent wave: it seemed our interview was now on.
Now I can’t speak a word of Swedish, and that as far as I’m concerned is my loss. But even without it I could sense that Victoria was not too happy to be doing an interview now. This would always throw me in an interview situation. I was always far too reliant on the good will of my subjects. I found it almost impossible to maintain a sheen of journalistic detachment. Whenever this happened, I’d try to find some common ground or some link with the band, which might open up the talk a little. Victoria’s English was OK and possibly a little better than she was giving us at first, but I took a gamble on a compliment. ‘Can I just say, Victoria, that having heard the new album, and seen you soundchecking briefly, you do remind me very much of another band…’
She eyed me with curiosity. ‘Really? Which band?’
‘Fairport Convention.’ She smiled and the rest of the chat was a breeze. It was a calculated gamble that paid off. I often wonder how things would have gone if I’d said Dollar.
The studio facilities at Bournemouth University were actually a little bit better than those we had at Broadcasting House. It was a much newer desk, and there were two fully functioning vinyl decks as well as the CD players. The room was full of students, all of whom were studying for a career in radio. In fact shortly after this Jo Tyler (who lectures in radio at Bournemouth) invited me to do a question-and-answer session with a group of students. After an over-long and quite sweary session, I thanked the students and made my way out of the room. As I did so a smiling, bearded man approached me.
‘I think you know my son-in-law, Dylan Howe! I’m Zoe’s dad, Sean.’
Professor Sean Street has been working in and around the world of broadcast radio for forty years. As he was now the Director for the Centre of Broadcasting History Research, I felt quietly confident that he could give me a good deal more background on breakfast radio than the internet. Well, perhaps not more, but certainly less than 32 million websites. I started out by asking him how breakfast radio came to be so important to the daily schedules rather than at night like prime-time television is.
‘In the beginning both here and in the States it was the other way round. Before television, families would gather round the radio in the evening. In pre-1940s