As regular readers will know I occasionally write something in response to the prompts offered to us by John Holton in his Writer’s Workshop, and one of this week’s is a good one for me. You can find his post here, and the one I’ve chosen is his option 4:

‘Talk about your favorite radio station when you were in high school.’

In the latest episode of “Divided by a shared language” that translates for me as ‘my favourite radio station when I was at Grammar School.’

I went to Dover Grammar School For Boys from September 1964 until July 1972, and as those were the formative years for my musical tastes I listened to the radio a lot. My first radio, a hand-me-down from a work colleague of my Dad which I was given around 1960, was one of these:

That was known as a ‘suitcase radio,’ as it resembled a small case. You switched it on by lifting up the lid, and put the lid down to switch off. The flip top compartment at the top housed a very large battery, which I tended to wear out fairly quickly. It gave great sound, albeit in mono, and I loved it. It resided on my bedside table and I used to listen for hours. In the early days I only had the BBC stations, plus foreign language broadcasters, and that was a bit limited: in those days the BBC just had three channels, the Light Programme, the Home Service and the Third Programme, which played light music, talkie stuff like the news and some excellent comedy shows, and classical music respectively. The music choices were very limited, as the dear old Beeb hadn’t really grasped pop music at that time, so it was mostly ‘mum and dad music.’ Then I found Radio Luxembourg, which was officially classified as a pirate radio station, but at least it played music I wanted to hear. The only problem was that its signal was very temperamental, and even when you could pick it up it was like listening through a tornado.

Things really brightened up for me when the real pirate radio stations began broadcasting. There were many of these, the two main ones for me being Radio Caroline and Radio London, known affectionately as ‘the Big L,’ and I was in my element. The Big L quickly became my station of choice, and its DJs felt like friends, as I heard their voices so much: guys like Kenny Everett, Tony Blackburn, John Peel, and many others all cut their broadcasting teeth there. It was a top 40 (in London’s case, the “Fab 40”) offshore commercial station that operated from 23 December 1964 to 14 August 1967, from a ship anchored in the North Sea, three and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea, in Essex. I was 11 when it started up, and was very much into pop music: those were the days of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, loads of Merseybeat bands, The Kinks, The Small Faces and many others, and I couldn’t get enough of it. The station was started by Don Pierson, a Texan entrepreneur, who compared the number of stations then serving the population of his native northwest Texas with just two stations serving the entire UK. Amongst all the music, one of their innovations was the plentiful use of jingles to support the programmes. Each DJ had their own, and this is a small sample:

That really takes me back!

The pirate stations became extremely popular, so much so that they were seen in the corridors of power as a threat to the BBC’s monopoly, and the regulators set about closing them down. They eventually managed to pass the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, which came into force at midnight on 14 August 1967, the day Radio London shut down. They decided to close at 3pm, partly to guarantee a large audience as well as to enable the ship’s DJs and other staff to return to shore and board a train to London. A one-hour recorded show was broadcast from 2pm to allow staff to get ready to leave. The time also described a “Big L” shape of the hands on a clock face, but whether that was a real consideration is unknown.

Their Final Hour, as the programme was called, had recorded greetings of farewell and remembrance from big pop stars; included were the voices of Mick Jagger, Cliff Richard, Ringo Starr and Dusty Springfield. The 2:30 news bulletin, read by Paul Kaye, was the final live segment on the station. Programme Director Philip Birch thanked DJs and staff and others involved throughout the station’s life, as well as politicians and others who fought for the station – and its 12 million listeners in the United Kingdom and four million in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. That was followed by the last record, A Day in the Life by The Beatles, then the final announcement: “Big L time is three o’clock, and Radio London is now closing down.” Radio London’s theme tune, the “PAMS Sonowaltz”, popularly called Big Lil, was played before the transmitter was switched off just after 3pm. This was during the school summer holidays, and I can remember listening to all of that in my bedroom, and feeling desperately sad.

This reminds me of that day:

And this is how I was feeling at around 3.05pm on that day:

By that time my prized radio was beginning to show its age and for my birthday that year my parents bought me a replacement, one of the new style transistor radios, a Perdio like this one:

It was smaller and less powerful than the previous one, but I could take it with me wherever I went – I never did try to lug the suitcase around! Although my birthday wasn’t until September (the 16th if you want to send gifts) they gave me the radio early so that I could listen to the BBC’s replacement for the pirate stations. In addition to making those guys illegal, the Beeb had been working to sign up their best DJs for the launch of their new pop music channel, Radio One, which was part of a big shake up of their output: all of the above mentioned DJs went to the Beeb along with many others, plus guys like Johnnie Walker and Emperor Rosko from Radio Caroline. Radio One began broadcasting just over two weeks after the Big L’s demise, at 7am on Saturday 30th August, and for once I was awake early on a Saturday for this:

And this was the first record played on the new station:

I quickly got used to Radio One, which became my station of choice right through until the end of my uni days in 1975, by which time I was going more for albums than the pop single charts. But sometimes I look back at those days and feel a sense of the magic that was all around me and my music. Those days were brought back for me by the movie The Boat That Rocked, which took a comedic look at the last days of the pirate stations and was hugely enjoyable, with an amazing soundtrack. If you haven’t seen it I can recommend it – this trailer gives you a taste:

I’ve already played one of the tracks from that soundtrack – the Skeeter Davis one, as the Beatles weren’t included. Just for fun, here’s another that was, as its video is a nice snapshot of the social history of those days, with the teens being their usual selves:

I leave you with my thanks to John for the prompt for this piece, and for giving me another chance for a stroll down Memory Lane. I’m still trying to get used to the shock of England coming from a goal down to win last night, and am looking forward to some good games this evening for which I can be neutral: much less stressful! I hope you have an enjoyable and stress-free day, and I’ll see you again for Song Lyric Sunday 😊