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| I’m an anorak’s wet dream, I am. |
Jeeez.
Spare me.
It’s August the 14th.
Noooooooooo.
Back in 1967 this was the day that all the pop pirate radioships fell silent (except those operated under the callsign “Radio Caroline”).
Sigh.
Radio enthusiasts (anoraks) celebrate or mark this day every year as if it was the day of the passing of something or someone important.
Yet, it was only radio.
It was radio that was very easily forgotten and not missed by anybody but the lonely young spotty youths of the day with no life and no friends.
Pretty soon the ordinary folk were completely happy with whatever a mixture of the BBC and Radio Luxembourg were able to bring them.
Alas, a couple of hundred ‘anoraks’ were left behind and to this day mourn the passing of these ships that did nothing but steal copyright and put marine workers in peril from their jamming of distress frequencies.
These old aged pensioners, well the ones that are still alive, spend this day sitting with their old fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorders and playback recordings they made nearly 50 years ago as they all but re-enact Krapp’s Last Tape.
Very sad or what?
England's England 
is the BBC presenter Roger Twiggy Day on BBC in the South sad too then. obviously it is anoraky to go to iplayer now and listen to the evening show from 7-9pm on 14th 🙂
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Why would anybody sane want to listen to a local radio presenter from an area they don't live in?
Thank god all the pointless over-expensive un-local radio shows like these are to be culled at the end of the year!
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if they want it to be live, like the music, the personaility and the occasional boat story. yes there's the occasional tactless mention of the town in comes from (Maidstone) or “we are only on over in Berkshire tonight”. but the travel is more local than it would be on a national station. and did I mention the boat stories. perhaps you prefer the Heart etc approach in which there is no pretence of localism and you drift seamlessly from one Heart to another as you move around the country – northward even:).
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Just 15 in August 1967, pop music seemed immensely important to me and Radio London brought not only hits from the American charts but tracks that were little promoted but might have caught a dj's ear and got played just because he liked it. I don't know why it was important – there was school all day, an occasional TV programme that you had to watch with parents and so I guess the chance to listen to enthusiastic and knowledgeable people in my room for an hour or two each evening beat reading and gradually I became enthusiastic too.
I just adored the whole thing and there was no alternative that I was aware of. 208 was hard work with LW fading in and out. London's last show was remarkable and Kenny Everett finishing with A Day In The Life, leaving the disk to play so you could hear the needle lift and then the eerie silence as the station closed, was, for that 15 year old, pretty sad stuff indeed.
Yes, I found and loved Caroline which filled the gap for a while and Radio 1 slowly improved but it was always the djs that made the memories for me. I don't go round waving placards or filling my Social Network pages with 'remember' articles but, just as I would replay an old Prisoner or Blake's Seven series and thoroughly enjoy it, so too, would I replay my old tapes if my reel-to-reel still worked.
What's wrong with that? I knew nothing about the law or frequencies then. Perhaps I was poorly informed but no-one actually talked to teenagers in the 60s, just at them. The music made those days great times. These are great times now and I shall doubtless try and persuade my kids to listen to recordings of recent events that I loved listening to or watching just as I did in 67.
As for tuning in to someone presenting in another area, if a dj who I enjoy listening to is on another station and there's a tedious one on locally or nationally then, sure, I'll re-tune. As I said, it was the dj who made the shows for me and that hasn't changed. Johnnie Walker, when he has a free hand to choose, will always have me listening, wherever he is, for instance. A bit of odd traffic or Maidstone news doesn't hurt and drifts in one ear and out the other, like Please Release Me used to.
I have long been an admirer of your articles but I might suggest that you move the bed closer to the wall again before the urge to write in that vein returns.
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I'm a bit confused about a number of things you've said. Surely 208 was Medium Wave not Long Wave? Also, Kenny Everett had left Radio London long before it closed down, and the 'Big Lil' (as it was called) theme tune was the last thing they played, not A day in the Life, although that was played ahead of the final announcement ahead of Big Lil, surely?
To be honest, listening to anything these days being presented by Johnnie Walker just makes me cringe. It's as embarrassing as hearing Paul McCartney trying to sing at the Olympics, in my opinion.
But we can't all like the same things.
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You're quite right. Luxembourg, Medium Wave, of course. Sorry. And Paul McCartney's recent vocal activities. We're all sorry. And the final close is, indeed, as you say which leaves me feeling a bit embarrassed and curious as to why on earth I should have such a strong memory of Kenny and the Beatles' track ending and what I was convinced was hearing the needle lift. I really do have to get a tape recorder now!
Anyway, the world needs you to keep us straight on the facts for which I am grateful and others should be too; my confusion I shall put down to reaching 60 a couple of weeks ago, similarly my soggy emotional attachment to those times and a tendency to write long sentences.
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I'm wondering whether my tape has both Kenny's last show in March 1967 as well as the final hour in August. That might explain things.
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I enjoyed Andrew Hill's article. Whilst I prefer on balance that I am exactly 10 years younger, and did not really get into pop until 1968, I can empathise with that period he describes. However for some reason I became a radio anorak in about 1977, as a result I hooked on Caroline until it sank in 1980. Whilst that event did not exactly bring the aiwaves or the music business to a stop I was rather cut up. I ignored Tony Blackburn's insistence that Caroline was a shadow of its former self after 1967. Johnnie walker summed it up better I feel- it is nice to know it was there (even if you did not listen presumably). I do recall one of Christopher England's mates reference the wearing of a black tie in March of the following year, but this was undoutably aimed at me and the other two nerds listening. As for the final hour of Big L I for a long time I thought it ended with Dusty Springfield's “you don't have to say you love me”. Maybe that was played earlier on. Andrew sums up the logic in listening to Roger Day in this case.
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I was still using reel to reel in the 80s and made several recordings – for example radio Caroline sinking (the first hour is nothing special but it gets exciting). A couple of years ago I bought a reel to reel from ebay, copied the stuff and re sold the recorder. Aside from the period the recorder was on site it even ended OK domestically. So it's an option.
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I remember the final words as “Big L time is 3 o'clock and Radio London is now closing down” – and my brother and I cried. Was a while ago, though…
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Thanks for the comments, Nick, and Marysas's will probably cause Christopher England to be seen running around Liverpool waving his arms in the air and wishing we didn't go on so about these things. But we do and that's life. I have since bought several CDs of Radio London broadcasts and slowly getting through them. Despite the quality they're a great alternative to the annoying Steve Wright at 2pm most days. Hearing possibly the first radio play of Michelle was quite a moment and Kenny's remarks on some ads are almost as hilarious as the ads themselves. How tame and 'correct' most broadcasts seem now in comparison.
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