Piccadilly Radio knew exactly who it was and what it was about. It was a new voice for a new generation. It was about the North West and everyone who lived there. This deep-seated identity was its strength and one that the station would articulate whenever it could via hundreds of outside broadcasts.
I remember when I was still a snotty-nosed little kid and Piccadilly came to Warrington town centre and did a whole show from the window of Dixons electrical store one Saturday afternoon—nothing in particular happened but to me it was amazing…it was the most exciting thing that Warrington had seen since Keith Chegwin had brought the Swap Shop Swaperama to the old market square. I’d never seen a rock star or been to a football match, but I had seen the DJ that I listened to on the radio in the mornings, live in the shop window on a Saturday afternoon. It was almost more than I could bear. These guys were the coolest cowboys in town and I wanted to be one of them.
From then on I was hooked.
Did I listen to the radio underneath the bedclothes at night? Yes I did, in fact one of the shows I listened to was called just that—UTBC—Underneath The Bed Clothes with Cuddly Dave.
Cuddly Dave was the late-night DJ who created a whole duvet-covered late-night world of intrigue and titillation throughout the bedrooms of the North West. He had the warmest of voices and a most alluring bedside manner. Never ‘pervy’, he somehow managed to attract what seemed like every single female who was listening to his show…while they were in bed! And on a weekday!! Till two o’clock in the morning!!! They couldn’t wait to talk to him. His show was huge, the girls listened because of Dave, and the boys listened because of the girls.
Dave also had a wing man that helped him out, a character called Naughty Neville. Neville would tour the areas of Greater Manchester during the show in his Love Mobile (all very Austin Powers). Dave would then encourage anyone listening to get up and out of bed and flash their bedroom lights just in case ‘Uncle Nev’ (this did sometimes get a bit worrying) was in your area. Watch out ladies.
The real excitement for me though was a show called TOTT. The acronym was a spoof on TOTP—Top of the Pops. TOTT stood for Timmy On The Tranny.
Timmy On The Tranny was an early evening show for school kids and students and was hosted by none other than Timmy Mallett! It was a nightly broadcast emanating from his fictional world of Timmy Towers.
It was Timmy, pre Wacaday, pre Mallett’s Mallett, pre ‘Blah’, pre ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’, and all the things most people know him for now. TOTT was for teenagers and students and we listened in en masse, glued to his every word.
Timmy was ‘the man’ and so compelling to listen to. His show was faster than a speeding bullet. No sooner had he announced a competition than somebody was on the air trying to win the prize; if they failed to do so, the prize would be doubled or tripled or quadrupled for the next time. He used to give away towers of records:
‘Tonight we are playing for 55 inches of singles and if the first caller doesn’t win—60 inches!’
Wow! With ten records making up an inch, this added up to over 500 singles!
Like Cuddly Dave and most of the DJs at the time, Timmy also had characters but lots of them and all over the place, really funny characters, like Steve Wright was doing in the afternoons on Radio 1, but Timmy’s characters were far more outrageous and naughty.
Timmy talked about Smash Hits and squeezing spots which he called zits and girlfriends and boyfriends. He took telephone calls in lightning quick succession, three, four, sometimes even five at a time. He would send the radio car out to somebody’s house which would often end up with them, along with most of their street, co-hosting the rest of the show from their kitchen, toilet or garden shed. If there was a band in town, Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet or Madness, you could be sure they would make an appearance on TOTT.
I was addicted to this show. The energy that was coming out of my radio every night was electric. Who on earth was this guy? What did he look like? How could he juggle so many elements and make them all sound like they made sense? He was like a mad professor in a laboratory full of wonderment and endless possibilities. I had to meet him.
The problem was, he was in Manchester, I was in Warrington.
Mum, help!
Top 10 Most Significant Cars in My Life
10 Ferrari 599 F1 (my current car, the best car I have ever driven)
9 Ferrari 250 Lusso (my wife’s 30th birthday pressie)
8 Ferrari 250 California Spyder (the pride of my garage)
7 Ferrari 360 Modena (the car I proposed to my second wife Billie with. I filled it with roses and sent it round to her apartment)
6 Ford Mustang convertible (the car I drove when I lived in L.A.—I still have it)
5 Bentley Brooklands (bought it on the spot for cash, my first-ever new car! It was close to £100k and after I paid for it I had about £1500 left to my name)
4 Ferrari 246 GT Dino (my second ever Ferrari)
3 Ferrari 328 GTS (my first ever Ferrari)
2 Dad’s Vauxhall Victor (his pride and joy)
1 1972 Mini reg. no. VJA 879K (the car that kick-started my dreams)
One of Mum’s many financial miracles was managing to buy me the car placed at number one on my list of Top Ten Most Significant Cars.
Mum hated debt—she still does—but she was prepared to go into debt to get her youngest son on the road. She took out a £500 loan to buy me an orange Mini, actually the colour was officially listed as ‘blaze’—the car had loads of extras—registration VJA 879K. It was the nuts and it was to be my passport to Elysium.
Piccadilly Radio had announced a series of summer outside broadcasts, a whole bunch of what they called Funday Sundays. These were roadshows broadcast from the top deck of an open-top double-decker bus.
I had never been to one of these outside broadcasts before but a few days after I passed my driving test there was one scheduled to take place outside Old Trafford football stadium. Not only that but Timmy was hosting. I had to go.
I set off that Sunday morning on my own. It was easily the furthest I’d ventured thus far in my new mode of transport, and as I pulled off the motorway at Salford and drove nearer to the ground I could hear the station output over the speakers in the distance cutting in and out with the wind. The traffic was getting heavier. I checked my watch—it was nearly time for the show. I decided to park my car and run the rest of the way.
I heard an almighty roar. The show had started and I was missing it. I now began to sprint, I turned a corner and there it was: to some people it may have been a tatty old orange Greater Manchester open-top bus with a rather pathetic cheap Funday Sunday banner hanging forlornly from the side of it, but to me and the rest of the crowd it was a magnificent sight to behold. For it was the chariot that bore our hero and there he was, Timmy ‘King of the Tranny’ Mallett—with the funny glasses.
In true radio style, Timmy was nothing like I imagined. He was small and pointy and he was young but old-looking. Nowadays he is the opposite. The truth was I hadn’t really thought too much about what he would look like, but I was pretty sure what he wouldn’t look like and as it turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not that this mattered: he was still the top dog as far as I was concerned. He could have had two heads, seven eyes and tennis rackets for arms, I would have