Читать книгу It’s Not What You Think and Memoirs of a Fruitcake 2-in-1 Collection - Chris Evans - Страница 33

10 Radio Forth (22 May 1975)

9 Radio City (21 October 1974)

8 Radio Hallam (Sheffield) (1 October 1974)

7 Swansea Sound (30 September 1974)

6 Metro (15 July 1974)

5 Piccadilly (2 April 1974)

4 BRMB (19 December 1974)

3 Clyde (31 December 1973)

2 Capital (16 October 1973)

1 LBC (London Broadcasting Company) (8 October 1973)

Where we lived commercial radio took on the form of the magnificent Piccadilly Radio, broadcast live from Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester. ‘Piccadilly 261…on the medium wave,’ sang the jingle. It was funky, it was new, it had adverts and a jazzy coloured logo, which you could send off for in carsticker form—something we all did even though most of us didn’t have a car and ended up sticking them on our bedroom windows.

This was a radio station where everything was groovier than anything that had been groovy before. It was our Sixties, it was all about the music and the people who played it. There were lots more records per hour, the voices weren’t as posh and plummy as on the BBC and there was more laughing. There were phone-ins where more people from around our area were able to get on the air. A girl from my class called Julia got to be on for a whole hour once, choosing her favourite records. I asked her to go out with me off the back of her appearance.

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!