JUST sneaking in under the Cream-Era radar courtesy of initial incarnation as round-the-clock provider of actual genuine ‘talk’, much of it provided by unusually ‘talk’-friendly roster that included Terry Christian, Tommy Boyd, Anna Raeburn, Dale Winton, Samantha Meah, Simon Bates (at last unencumbered by having to fit those pesky ‘records’ into his rants) and Jeremy Beadle, reviving his revered LBC days with a show that involved a demented jingle that rhymed ‘disagreeable’ with ‘Beadle’, and a phone-in quiz about falling down a hole or something. Commercial ownership meant that before long tampering was on the agenda, and it duly mutated into TalkSport, like some nightmarish radio-personification of the 1978 Scoop Sports Annual.
Talk Radio UK
1995 to date to http://www.tvcream.co.uk/?to2
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Points of View
Sunday, 15.15, BBC1A full house for your PoV bingo card last week with this series’ first suggestion of launching a BBC sport channel, yet again failing to explain why they wouldn’t then launch a BBC soap channel, comedy channel and everything else, and then just have a blank screen on BBC1 for most of the day. Now we’ve covered the bases, not sure where this run has left to go.
Also worth pointing out is that TRUK took up the old ‘meejum-wave’ freqs of Radio 1 – though I’m of the FM generation myself, much of the TVC-endorsed chicanery of the pre-1FM era dallied across 1053 and 1089…
The thing that sticks in my head about the launch of Talk Radio is the test transmissions, which featured the presenters talking about themselves (“Vanessa Feltz, Sundays 10 till one!”), which were subsequently parodied by Kevin Greening on Radio One (“The Shah Of Iran, Saturdays one till three!”) which struck me as possibly the most obscure parody of all time.
The most memorable on-air barney I ever heard was when a very well-refreshed Arthur Smith was a guest on the ‘Caesar the Geezer’ show and proceeded to wind him up something rotten. Callers joined in and it all got a bit too gruesome for comfort, with a female victim of racism bursting into tears on the phone and Smithy accusing Caesar of being “such an arsehole”. After the news break, the titular ‘Geezer’ grumbled “I am very angry…very, very angry…I am so cross, I just can’t tell you how angry I am. I had a studio guest who was drunk out of his mind…”
Steve Wright was on in it’s early days, after leaving Radio 1 because the playlists were too restrictive.
The early TV & print ads featured a talking kettle mascot, along with the slogan “Let Off Steam With Talk Radio”.
Anyone remember that surreal five minute soap that appeared twice a day, The Bradshaws, that was set in Manchester? Also in the late nineties Talk Radio was where it was at with presenters like Peter Deeley, Nick Abbott and Mike Dickin.
Now sadly turned into a laddish, football talk station that has all the appeal of a dead dog to football haters like me. Why couldn’t they have kept the original, excellent format?
The Bradshaws was a staple Picadilly Key 103 for years, I was thinking about it only the other day.