RADIO 1
Covering my time at Radio 1
In the past, but unforgettable!
Check out the gallery for photos.
1989-1993
California Jeff phoned me out of the blue one day to ask me if I was watching the Eurovision Song Contest because one of the singers looked just like me. (Thanks, Jeff!). We arranged to meet up and I gave him a tape of the recording of that weeks BFBS Show. He phoned me a couple of weeks later to ask me if I'd like him to submit it to Radio 1. It was ages before I heard. 'They're worried you're going to come back and say 'Wow man, listen to the colours' and things like that' he told me! Eventually I was offered two weeks sitting in for Richard Skinner midnight til 2am. Shortly after, Roger Scott died and the BBC offered me his Sunday evening 10 til 1 show, produced by Phil Swern, beginning January 1990. Then, three months later, I took over permanently on the midnight to 2am slot. I was on air when the Gulf War was declared. It was that (nearly) six hour show that demonstrated the advantages of a permanent overnight service and my new Midnight to Morning (12 til 4am) show launched Radio 1's 24 hour schedule on 1st May 1991. It was absolutely great. There is something very special about broadcasting at that time of day. There is an intimacy that just doesn't happen elsewhere. The people who listened to the show were absolutely brilliant. It was estimated we had an audience of nearly 1.5 million through the week. We heard of people taping the show in a rota system, exchanging tapes at the weekend so they could play programmes they missed!
I worked throughout with Phil Swern. We had an 'unplugged' session on most of the shows, with such as Bob Seger, Paul Brady, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Jimmy Barnes, Marc Cohn, Cry Of Love, Walter Trout, Pops Staples, Shawn Colvin and Marillion coming in to play live.
Although I could see it coming, I was still desperately sad when it all came to an end. I arrived in Broadcasting House reception at around 4.30 in the morning at the end of the final show on 27th October 1993, to discover scores of people who had travelled to London from all parts of the country to take part in a kind of overnight 'vigil' in the street outside. It was so cold, the commisionairs had invited them in. (Somewhere we've got the photos!).
But it was a wonderful time at Radio 1, made possible, in truth, by the direct support of the station controller, Johnny Beerling, who really believed in our show.
There were two fantastic live experiences, too. Broadcasting from Knebworth '91 (interviewing Elton John, Paul McCartney, Dave Gilmour) and introducing Del Amitri to 125,000 people from the stage of the Radio 1 25th Birthday Party at Aston Park, Birmingham in 1992.
And, I've done odd stuff for network since. I sat in for Johnnie Walker a few times on Saturday afternoons and helped make and voice the 'Curves Contours And Bodyhorns' documentary, a three-part history of the Fender Stratocaster Guitar, which went out in January 1994.
For nearly a quarter of a century, Radio 1 represented the focus of my broadcasting ambitions.
Time has now moved on. But thanks for the memories...
FIRST RUNNING ORDER
Radio 1 – 19th August 1970
1. NEIL YOUNG Cinnamon Girl
LP: ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere’.
2. TYRANNOSAURUS REX: Pavilions of the Sun
Session
3. VAN MORRISON Into The Mystic
LP: ‘Moondance’.
4. WISHBONE ASH Errors of My Ways
Session
5. COUNTRY JOE & the FISH Silver and Gold
LP: ‘CJ Fish’.
6. LOS CALCHAKIS Pescadores
LP: ‘La Flute Indienne’. Barclay 820 054 Serie-Panache
7. LOVE Alone Again Or
LP: ‘Forever Changes’.
