Radio 210’s Golden Days January 16th 1983

It’s taken me a while to get round to putting this up.

Apart from a broken cassette, it is the only record I have of part-time working at Radio 210 in Reading in the late 70s/early 80s.

I am very grateful to the folks at Radio 210 for letting me have a lot of fun and get the radio “bug” out of my system. The experience left me with a love of radio, an enhanced knowledge and appreciation of music (which I enjoy to this day) and, believe it or not, a very acute sense of timing. When hitting the news on the dot of the hour is the very highest priority, you tend to develop a skill for precise backward-calculation of timings!

This is a very good example of my programmes at 210. I loved doing “Golden Days” which was a great show for four hours on Sunday evenings, 9pm – 1pm.

I particularly loved doing competitions about music facts. There are plenty of those here. These days most of them would be impossible, because people would easily google the answers in a couple of seconds. In those days, if you didn’t know the answer, you had to schedule a visit to your local library to look it up.

I cannot believe that colour photo, which is the one I used to send out to listeners who asked for a photo of me. It displayed considerable brass neck on two fronts: a) for opening up my shirt like that and b) having my photo taken in front of that large house and grounds with the implication that it was my house, when in fact I simply rented a room in it!

Of course, in those days being a radio dee-jay was quite a physical task – I had a mini-van to carry boxes of records to and from the studio – then there was the job of sorting them out and playing them, putting themback in their sleeves etc. Then there was the task of getting out the adverts/jingles on big DAB cartridges.

Nowadays you more or less sit at a screen and click.

What was wonderful about the job then was being able to choose the records, including chopping and changing during the programme.

I did do one programme playing mostly 78 rpm records on shellac!

But at the other end of the scale, we did have the start of the digital revolution through a digital delay system which allowed phone-ins to be conducted seven seconds prior to broadcast. Then if someone swore or said something potentially defamatory, you just flicked a switch to ditch the most recent seconds of speech and go back to “live”.

I had to do this once when some silly fool swore on a phone-in. He apologised afterwards, thinking the offending word had been broadcast, but I took great pleasure in deflating his balloon by telling him that it didn’t go out on air!

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What a licensee must be…

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These words were typed on a thin sheet of paper in my grandfather’s wallet when he passed away in the late 1960s. He spent the early part of his life in a hotel, run by his family.

A licensee must be a democrat, an autocrat, acrobat, a doormat. He must be able to entertain Prime Ministers, pick-pockets, pirates, philantrophists and police – and be on both sides of the political fence – a footballer, golfer, bowler, tennis player, darts champion and pigeon fancier.

He has to settle arguments and fights, he must be a boxer, wrestler, weightlifter, sprinter and peacemaker.

He must always look immaculate when drinking with bankers, swankers, commercial travellers, and company representatives, even though he has just stopped a beer-throwing contest in the public bar.

To be successful he must keep the bars full, the house full, the tanks full, the storeroom full and not get himself full.

He must have barmen who are clean, honest, quick workers and thinkers, non-drinkers, mathematicians technicians and who are at all times on the boss’s side, the customer’s side, and stay on the bar’s inside.

To sum up – he must be outside, inside, offside, glorified, sanctified, crucified, stupefied, crosseyed, and if he’s the strong silent type – there’s always suicide.

There are various version of this on the internet. The original author is unknown.

Nice one Cyril!

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This old tune came to mind in the middle of the night. You don’t hear it much (justifiably) but the first 15 seconds of the record make it the best football song there is (narrowly pipping “Three Lions on their shirt”). After that sublime start, it reverts to the normal football song formula of choruses by people who shouldn’t have been allowed within 15 miles of a microphone plus the inevitable key change which prolongs the misery for another 30 seconds. The song is about Spurs stalwart Cyril Knowles – “one of the best left backs ever to grace the game”. There is a video of some of his greatest moments below the record. Cyril Knowles tragically died of cancer aged 47 in 1991.

Modern use of gadgets which grandad would recognise #2

I have recently started using some new “gadgets”. Normally such items are very new. But in these cases they are gadgets which my grandads would have recognised.

Shaving foam and gel is a bit of a pain because it blocks up one’s multi-blade razor. I used to spend ages flushing hot water through my razor to clear all the gunge left from shaving foam.

Solution: I now use an old-fashioned shaving brush and shaving soap in a bowl (all for a few quid at Wilkinsons).

The soap from the brush is not glutinous so does not clog up multi-blade razors.

Perfect!

Modern use of gadgets which grandad would recognise #1

I have recently started using some new “gadgets”. Normally such items are very new. But in these cases they are gadgets which my grandads would have recognised.

About six years ago I stopped wearing a wristwatch because I was fed up of the slight discomofort of doing so. In any case, I decided I could use my mobile phone (or any one of the many clocks which surround one on a daily basis).

In fact, that left me unable to see what time it was when my mobile was switched off. (And, a bit like a watched kettle never boiling – switching on one’s phone in a hurry seems to take an age).

So I hit upon a solution.

A pocket watch.

For a few quid on Amazon I picked up an excellent pocket watch, with a chain to attach it to my belt loop.

I have used it on a daily basis for the last year or so and it is a godsend.

Are “Just-in-time” supply chains evil?

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It is strange what topics come up at an annual Liberal Democrat dinner, but this topic, in the post title above, came up at one I attended last week.

It’s a big subject.

First of all, we need to be clear what “Just-in-time” actually means. It is a phrase which is bandied about so that it sometimes ceases to have any precise meaning.

In its purest,original sense, Just-in-time refers to Just-in-time manufacturing, as defined by Wikipedia:

Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing, also known as just-in-time production or the Toyota Production System (TPS), is a methodology aimed primarily at reducing flow times within production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. Its origin and development was in Japan, largely in the 1960s and 1970s and particularly at Toyota.

In praise of Parish Councils

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This is a rather unfocussed post, but I just wanted to give a shout-out for Parish Councils.

One of our number here at LDV Towers, Mark Valladares, writes a blog called Liberal Bureaucracy. One of its main subjectival strands is Mark’s role as a parish councillor. Just leafing through some of the post titles gives one an excellent flavour of parish council life: