Radio London - Happenings July 2003

July 2003
(June 2003 is here...)

2000 Cardboard Shows
Congratulations to Keith Skues (pictured at the 35th Anniversary Offshore Reunion with one of his old bosses) on presenting his 2000th show for BBC Eastern Counties. It would be impossible to calculate how many shows Skuesy has presented for various BBC stations over the years, but hopefully the Beeb will present him with a gold-painted cardboard long-service medal!

The BBC Radio Northampton website features a video interview with Skuesy, which includes clips of Radio Caroline and our man aboard Radio London.

Full details here.

'Bittersweet' experience for Noel
The BBC has announced that Noel Edmonds will be taking over the Radio 2 Drivetime show (weekdays 17.05-19.00 ) while Johnnie Walker continues his cancer treatment.

Noel, whose broadcasting career began on Radio Luxembourg, is scheduled to be presenting the Drivetime slot from August 4th to October 3rd. But he admits to having mixed feelings about the job. A huge fan of JW's, Noel says that although he is excited to be back behind the mic, having to temporarily fill Johnnie's shoes will be a bittersweet experience.

The feeling must be familiar to Noel, who many years ago was thrown in at the deep end at Radio One when he found himself presenting the lunchtime Saturday show to replace the sacked Kenny Everett.

Bob's Exclusives
This month, Bob Le-Roi is proud to present some exclusive unseen photos and air checks of Tony Allan and friends. 'One Subject One Link' is 'News - or lack of it', and the Scrapbook has photos from the recent x-trax summer party.

www.bobleroi.co.uk

The Ross at 'Rosschester'
Steve Szmidt has a selection of photos which he took this month aboard the Ross Revenge at Rochester. The photos are under the 'Newsbeat' section here. Click on "The Ross Revenge in Strood".

A Great Day Out, We All Fort
Ex-'Wets', Greg Bance and Guy Hamilton (aka Gerry Zierler) took a nostalgia trip recently when they joined a day excursion to sail around the Red Sands and Shivering Sands forts. They were joined by Greg's friend Richard, Guy's wife Roma, Mary Payne from Radio London, Alan Field compiler of Radio London Field's Fab Forty and the Pirate Radio Hall of Fame webmaster, Jonathan.

It was a hot, sunny day, the sea was flat calm and we all sailed home with glowing faces.

(Right: Roma, Guy, Greg and Fab Alan)

More photos of the trip are here. Gerry's photos from his days on Radio 270 are here.

A Nice Day for a 'Wet' Wedding

Congratulations to another Wet, Tony Monson and his new bride Jadwiga. They married on July 8th, with the popular Peter Young as their Best Man. PY (below, with Roger Day) says:

The wedding was a joyous occasion for one and all. Just seeing the great man in a suit was enough! Jadwiga (pronounced Yarjah) is from Poland and is one of the nicest and most kind-hearted people you could wish to meet. Otis is a very lucky man. My speech went down well, probably because I kept it fairly brief!

Radio London on Sounds of the Sixties

Congratulations to Joe Fraguela (apologies if the spelling is wrong) for grabbing the 'Three-in-a-row' slot on BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the Sixties (12th July) with three climbers from the final Radio London Fab 40 on 6th August 1967.

Interestingly, the tracks 'Is It Love' by Jon, 'The Sound of Summer' by Chocolate Watch Band and 'She Needs Company' by Helen Shapiro, were announced by Brian Matthew as having been 'DJ climbers'. 'Is It Love' was shared as a climber by Willy Walker and Keith Skues, and was also played on John Peel's final 'Perfumed Garden'. 'The Sound of Summer' was the climber of Chuck Blair and Dave Cash. However, according to Field's Fab Forty, 'She Needs Company' (written by Paul Jones) was a climber unallocated to any DJs and our other chart expert, Brian Long, does not list it as a climber at all. The record does not appear on the typed list sent out to the ship from Curzon Street, but we know that many unlisted singles were 'slipped in' during the final weeks of broadcasting.

You can hear the 12th July show during the next week via the BBC Radio Two website. The 'Three-in-a-row' slot appears during the final half-hour. (Go to www.bbc.co.uk/radio/. Click on 'Launch BBC Radio Player', click on 'Radio 2' and select 'Sounds of the Sixties'. You'll need RealAudio already installed on your computer.)

National Orgasm Day?

In Issue #18 of The Radio Wave, editor Ian MacRae says he has received a great deal of mail on the subject of networking and a poll in which it is claimed that radio listeners are 'reporting high satisfaction with their radio programming choices'. Of course, it's quite probable that those surveyed had never heard real radio and therefore had nothing with which to compare the current output.

You may or may not be interested to read of the complaints received about a 'fake orgasm' competition which was broadcast during Canada's National Orgasm Day. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Commission ruled the offending item to be 'not sexually explicit'.

To enjoy these stories in full (and much more) subscribe to the newsletter by sending a blank email to: radiowave@allaboutradio.net

Musical Education from Peter Young – a case of 'Back Field in Motion'!

PY says:

I had a very surreal experience on June 28th. I was sitting in the middle of a school playing field in Esher, spinning records like 'Psychotic Reaction' Count 5 and 'Louie Louie' The Kingsmen. My friend Richard Day's children attend the school and they were having their annual fete! He had set up a PA system for the day, complete with a studio in one of the classrooms and I went along to play a few toons. Richard had a minidisc machine there too, so the residents of Esher were treated to my 'Oooooh in 'eeee bold' jingle!

I played an almost exclusively 60's set and the 7 and 8-year-olds were going nuts dancing to the music. I've just turned the next generation on to original American 'Garage Punk'!!!

One funny moment occurred when I was asked to play Gareth Gates, which of course I didn't have. I mentioned this over the PA and called him 'Gareth Grates' for a joke. The next thing I know, three kids come up to me and say, "Hey Mister, you got it wrong, his name's Gareth Gates"!

I never thought I'd end up in a field in Esher playing 'Got My Mojo Working' by Muddy Waters along with the garage punk! Maybe I should have played Fats Waller 'Your Fete's Too Big', but I resisted the temptation to play 'Cast Your 'Fete' To The Wind'!

Richard e-mailed me to say that the response from parents on Monday was ecstatic! I've already been booked for next year – not as a DJ, but as the 'bouncy castle'. I said I'd rather be an exhibit on the coconut shy!!!

PY – always outstanding in the DJ field

More News of Abie Nathan

Mike Brand in Israel has updated two stories which appeared in our June Happenings. First, Mike sends further news of Voice of Peace founder, Abie Nathan:

To everyone who has sent me e-mails asking me to pass their wishes on to Abie, I have done so. One has to remember that a lot of people passed through the VOP in its 20-year history, so you can forgive Abie for not remembering everyone.

Abie has suffered a stroke, and is in a wheelchair. His speech is slurred, but he is fully aware of what is going on around him. I went with someone else, and although Abie cannot speak full sentences, he was answering our questions with one or two-word answers, that were very much to the point.

Thank you for you e-mails, keep them coming in, as Abie appreciates it very much. It is most important for him, that though he is in an old age home, and in bad health, he is not forgotten. Now I know where he is, I will try to visit him every so often. Visits are important to him. So if you are coming to Israel, please get in touch and I will give you my phone number so that I can tell you exactly where Abie is, if you wish to visit him.

Mike also kindly responded to last month's request from Carole Anderson for memories of Kenny Page and has offered to send Carole recordings of Kenny's shows on VOP. Mike says this brought him to realise that:

After listening to Kenny on the VOP's breakfast show, he was a pretty hard act to follow. When he was 'on form', he was one of the most inventive DJ's around – a kind of second Kenny Everett.

Montague's Magnificent Story
Bob Baker has contacted us about 'Burn, Baby! BURN!' – no it's nothing to do with Otway, it's an autobiography he has co-written with 'Magnificent Montague'. The DJ may be unfamiliar to us in England, but from the following blurb, it's clear that the book is bound to appeal to fans of both radio and soul music.

With his dynamic on-air personality and his trademark cry of "Burn, baby! Burn!" before spinning the hottest new records, Magnificent Montague was the charismatic voice of soul music in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. In this memoir, Montague recounts the events of his momentous radio career, which ran from the era of segregation to that of the civil rights movement. As he does so, he also tells the broader story of a life spent in the passionate pursuit of knowledge, historical and musical.

...and talking of Burn, Baby, Burn

Richard Holgarth, John Otway's long-suffering co-star on the 2002 number 9 hit, 'Bunsen Burner', recently became the father of his own baby – a girl. Exhausted after the Glastonbury weekend gigs, proud dad Richard reports:

As many may already be aware, Nancy has courageously produced a rather splendid pink-flavoured baby called Edie. They are both very gorgeous and very healthy.

Specifications: Edith Grace Holgarth; born 5am on Mon 23rd June; weight, 7lb 4oz

Big thankyous to everyone who has sent messages, cards, emails etc. – It felt good to know that so many were happy for us. We really appreciate it.

Richard (left) suffers for his art

Mystery Half-Naked Newsman – can you help?
Jonathan's July update of The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame features a photo sent by Keefers of a half-naked Caroline colleague who is proving difficult to identify. So far Keefers and Steve Young (who are pictured in a photo with 'Mr X') have both had a stab at identifying him and so has Webby. But nobody is absolutely certain of the man's name. Also in this month's update:

The spotlight falls on "your thinner record spinner" Roger 'Twiggy' Day; Tommy "TV on radio" Vance returns to the airwaves – in Spain.

Washington's Ignorance of Webcasting Methods
John Schneider the founder of Radiopoly.Com wants to keep us "informed on the stellar quality of communications coming from Washington":

The following is a direct quote from a letter I received yesterday from our local Congressional rep Nancy Johnson, in response to the letter I personally handed to her on 4/5/03 (nothing like timely response huh?) regarding the webcasting fee issue. This is exactly as the quote appears in the letter I received yesterday:

"There is a distinct difference between webcasting and radio. Webcasting is digital, therefore a perfect copy can be a song can be drawn from it, this is not the case with radio."

Now that we've all had a good laugh, here is the factual correction: Streamed audio must be encoded and significantly compressed before it is sent up for people to hear on the Internet, which renders it far from digitally perfect. You might hear audio quality equal to that of AM or FM radio, but certainly not digitally perfect, not easily copied, and not in a nice little individual package like the Mp3 files utilized by illegal file trading sites. There is apparently still concern in Congress that streaming audio poses the same infringement threat to copyrights as file trading sites. Please help us tell Washington that this is NOT TRUE!

I've added some new information, including links to contact Congress by either free Internet based fax or email. Please write to your reps and let them know that there is no fundamental difference between traditional and Internet radio! Tell them to support small business!

Please check out the updated info site Radiopoly.Org .

'Fab' Novelty Discs
After initial teething troubles, the new Internet oldies station Fab Radio has arrived on the virtual airwaves. On their website, a newspaper article from the local Stoke-on-Trent 'Sentinel' tells the story of the station's creation and the people behind it.

Fab Radio has its own 'Fab Forty' (no connection to the Radio London Fabs) compiled from listener requests. Strangely, novelty discs seem to be extremely popular. Comedian Jasper Carrott's sole UK hit, 'Funky Moped' and 'Laughing Gnome', the single David Bowie would probably prefer to forget, both appear in the Top Ten. Carrott's single originally became a hit because people were buying it for its B-side, 'The Magic Roundabout'. His spoof on the children's BBC TV series was not deemed suitable for BBC airplay!

Kenny welcomes the Irish Canadian from Radio Scotland
Both Kenny Tosh and Ben Healy himself, have written to reveal the good news that during a visit to Belfast this month, Ben will guest on Kenny's Citybeat Revival Show. Ben broadcast on Radio City before joining Radio Scotland to become Head DJ. He was born in Ballina, County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland and now lives in Alberta, Canada. Ben will appear on Kenny's show, (available via an Internet feed), on Sunday 27th July, 0900 - 1300. Previous popular 'Revivals' have been presented by Caroline DJs Mick Luvzit and Graham 'Spider' Webb. Ben says: