ACE breathily passionate female sung “1! 9! 4! Radio Ciiiiiii-tteeeee!” heralded those Hatton’n’Dalglish-centric news bulletins for donkey’s years. Lion’s share of the actual content, though massively popular, has whizzed into cultural history in a blur of enthusing over China Crisis. Nonetheless, listeners all over the globe hungrily hunt down shows from the time when Pete Waterman hosted late eighties Saturday morning caffeine-pop showcase (heavy on the Kylie and Sinitta, unsurprisingly), whence came The Reynolds Girls and Sonia, and other ace shows included Tony Snell’s evening indie sequence, which once featured NME football favourite Pat Nevin on holiday deputisation stint: “mumble mumble…this is The Sugarcubes”. Relevance to city’s cultural firmament long since eroded but still pulls in the punters, now broadcast from the top of Tripods-esque defunct revolving nightmare the erstwhile ‘Tower Restaurant’.
