by Mike Read
Having always been a bit of a quiz buff, I approached NffB with the idea of presenting a quiz show with local teams competing against one another on music, general knowledge, sport, history and news. To my delight he agreed enthusiastically but informed me that I’d have to not only find the teams, but engineer and edit it, write all the questions, do the scoring, organise buzzers and bells and host it. He could have made it easy for me by providing engineering back-up, a PA and a scorer, but the responsibility of doing it all myself gave me an incredible insight into the problems of organising a weekly quiz and was to prove to be an invaluable experience. By pure chance, Yorkshire TV producer Ian Bolt heard one of the quiz programmes and I got a call asking me to go to Leeds to audition for a new national pop quiz show for young people. I called back two or three times to check to see if it was really me they wanted and there hadn’t been a mix-up somewhere along the line. After a trio of confirmations I was finally convinced and was given a date to travel to the studio for my screen test.
In 1977, towards the end, although I didn’t know it then, of my time at 210 a new music swept in. Through the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones and several bands on the Stiff label I became so enamoured of it that I put together and presented Britain’s first punk top twenty. There were barely enough tracks to fill twenty spaces, but bulked out by bands like Eater and the Adverts I managed to cobble together a chart of sorts which seemed to find favour with the younger listeners, especially the university audience. The manner in which Neil ffrench Blake fell upon me like a wolf on the fold after the fourth show told me that he’d somehow missed the first three. There was no fifth punk chart. I gathered from the histrionics that there was no room, on what was ostensibly an MOR station, for frenetic, anarchic singles that seemed to flash by at 100 mph. I had to be content with playing my beloved ‘White Riot’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ at gigs and parties.
At last I was about to undertake the journey to Yorkshire TV in Leeds for my audition, but wasn’t exactly holding my breath, as I knew that several guys with previous experience were also up for the job. It seemed incredible, but I’d also been called up to the Radio Luxembourg head office in London for an interview, as they were replacing Peter Powell, who was off to Radio One. Two major auditions in one day was almost too much. It could be all or nothing, so I had to give it my best shot. Not being a fashion guru, you understand, I found it extremely difficult to decide what to wear, but in the end I decided on a nasty zip-up plastic jacket that I picked up from a cheapo shop somewhere in the vicinity of Victoria station, a crass decision that was only surpassed by foolishly going along with two suggestions from my then girlfriend Annie Evans, who decided that I was too pale and would stand a better chance if I had a suntan. I short-sightedly pointed out that October wasn’t the greatest time to lie on the beach, whereupon she produced a bottle of instant tanning lotion that smelled as foul as it looked. She decreed that a liberal application should do the trick and promptly applied. Her second wise thought was that straight hair was maybe not quite as cool as curly hair, with the result that I was dispatched to Joshua Galvin in London for a mild perm. There was nothing mild about it; the slightest movement of my head and my shock of hair shifted en masse and threw me off balance. I looked like the love-child of Kevin Keegan and Leo Sayer. An orange love-child, that is, as the vile tanning lotion had finished its work and turned my face into a ripe tangerine. Two important auditions and I was already dead in the water; a skinny white body topped by a mango with ears and finished off by what resembled a joke wig.
Despite the bizarre look, I landed both jobs. I’m sure my experience at 210 worked in my favour at the audition for Pop Quest, as I’d been so used to hosting radio quizzes that the mechanics were second nature and I was used to putting the contestants first, and acting as a conduit, pacemaker and timekeeper. The Luxembourg audition I had to do live in front of the bosses, as I’d been too busy to make a demonstration tape, so I’m sure I got the job because it was easier for them to take the guy they knew could do it live rather than trawl through hundreds of tapes. At the time they told me they had so many people to listen to that they’d let me know the outcome within a couple of weeks. The following day they tracked me down to the dentist’s chair, so they must have made up their minds pretty swiftly.
October 1977 turned out to be a major turning point in three ways: I was off to Luxembourg to broadcast to Europe; I’d landed a national TV series; and my first book, The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, was published, making it a great ending to only my second year in broadcasting.
CHAPTER 2
PASS THE DUCHY
I WAS ON MY way to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The station’s managing director, Alan Keen, wrote to me confirming the basic salary of 53,403 Luxembourg francs, which I seem to recall was about £11,200, explaining that there would be additional payments and of course gigs back in Britain.
The other new boy, Rob Jones from Radio City, and I were thrust into the limelight overnight. Radio Luxembourg was still a big deal then, so we received a lot of media attention, even appearing on the front of The Sun, by which time my Shirley Temple curls had thankfully settled into a more acceptable mini Jimi Hendrix. A flurry of telex messages between Neil ffrench Blake and Alan Keen established that I would join my new station on 4 December 1977 and that Alan agreed to buy NffB ‘several drinks’ in, for some reason best known to themselves, Jersey. Possibly because the gin was duty free. Gin was NffB’s tipple, usually out of a plastic cup. That’s style … or, more likely, polystyrene.
A theme that was to repeat itself with the run-up to the Australian adventure of 2004 began at the end of 1977. Knowing that I would have to commute to and from Luxembourg, I convinced myself that I would be able to make every journey by boat and train. Unfortunately everyone else remained unconvinced, while I continued to fool myself right up to the last minute. Rather bizarrely I even contrived to be late for the flight so that I’d have to go by boat, an off-the-wall notion that could only be conceived in the mind of someone who didn’t like flying. Somehow I hadn’t allowed myself to realise that there’d always be a ‘next plane’, however many I missed. I was aghast to learn that my winged chariot was still on the tarmac and that if I hurried I could still make it. I must confess that Olympic anti-hero Eric the Eel could have swum it faster with house bricks tied to his feet and a full suitcase in each hand, yet still I was thwarted in my attempt to miss the flight and found myself being welcomed on board by a smiling, or was it gloating, stewardess, as they were called then. As I staggered blindly towards the blunt end trying to find the back door I was hauled into a spare seat by a familiar face. Well, the face didn’t do the hauling, but you get the gist. I couldn’t say ‘familiar hands’ as I wouldn’t have known the hands from Adam’s, although on reflection Adam’s probably had a film of sandy loam under his fingernails. As a dedicated non-flyer I mused that if the flight came to grief, I could actually be enjoying a one-to-one with Adam, about the Garden of Eden fruit cages and autumnal crop, within the next couple of hours. Provided, that was, that paradise didn’t have a boring holding area like Heathrow or Gatwick, with those passing over banking up, due to an industrial crisis. The ‘hauling’ chap was actually Big Norm, a radio lover and great supporter of 210, especially Read and Wright. Norm, when not listening to the radio and passing on his well-informed and incisive thoughts, worked as an air traffic controller at Heathrow and had not only organised to be on the flight to hold my hand, but also managed to hold up the plane by devious means known only to air traffic controllers.
It proved to be not quite as bad as I’d imagined, although I avoided looking out of the window and rather pointlessly gripped the seat in front. Before long I’d be an old hand, hopping on and off planes two or three times a week, often disembarking with a goodie bag of leftover milk, sandwiches and cake, purloined for me by a stewardess. A similar theory, one imagines, as the one where folk put butter on a cat’s paws to make it feel at home.
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I was met at the Duchy’s airport by the gravel-throated former pirate radio hero ‘Baby’ Bob Stewart. Not sure whether to call him ‘Baby’, ‘Bob’, or ‘Baby Bob’, I took one look at him and decided to navigate around all of them. He looked mean, and in his deep American tones informed me that everybody got hit by a regular dose of the local disease, the ‘Luxembourg blues’, and that it was bound to happen to me. Sooner rather than later, it seemed. This wasn’t exactly the happy-go-lucky Luxy atmosphere that I’d imagined, as Bob ploughed on, asking if I swore. I bleated out something pathetic along the lines of ‘Well maybe, if I’m extremely peeved, I might say “rats” sometimes, but on the whole I keep a fairly clean sheet, except in the excusable circumstances of traffic warden confrontation.’
‘Everybody fucking swears here, sunshine, so you’d better fucking well get used to it.’
‘Sure, Bob. Well, in that case, “fuck”. Will that do?’
As he fell into what I ascertained to be a slightly aggressive silence, I changed the subject. A spot of pandering should do the trick. ‘So when did you first bring that great, rich, deep brown voice over from the States?’
‘I’ve never been to the States in my life, sunshine.’
The words ‘so how come the American accent?’ failed to materialise into actual sound, which was probably just as well. Maybe he noted my puzzled look as he took me back to his apartment, where he ‘cooked’ me a plate of hash browns that were still frozen in the middle when he served them up. I said nothing. Well, I might have said ‘Mmm’, or ‘Yummy’, but nothing derogatory, as I crunched on the unappetising centre of this haute cuisine and watched him train his binoculars on the middle distance. I would later discover that he was watching a girl with whom he was obsessed, but at that moment felt it prudent not to be too inquisitive.
The Villa Louvigny, which housed not only the English but also the French and German services, was situated in the middle of a charming park. Well, it held a certain appeal for the connoisseur of run-of-the-mill continental shrubs by day, but by night it had a distinctly different feel. To avoid marauding men (not always dressed as men) asking if I had a light for their Gauloise I strode through as fast as possible with an unconvincingly butch gait. I was no Eric the Eel in this instance, as I swerved past moderately hung exhibitionists flaunting their wedding tackle for passers-by to admire and deftly sold dummies to chaps who wanted to be my new best friend for ten minutes. I could be doing some of these blokes a disservice. Maybe they only wanted to learn about Britain’s foreign policy or slide me a request for their girl back home in Wasserbilligerbrück, but somehow I doubt it. I had my finger on the pulse all right … but only on my own pulse. I was also strongly advised not to attempt to make idle conversation with girls in the local clubs. From that, I wrongly deduced that the Luxembourgers were be a prudish nation and that a stranger may well be clapped in irons for such an outrageous offence, but it turned out to be more of a warning, as most of the girls were blokes. Yes, it was a hotbed for transsexuals and cross-dressers, a far cry from Radio 210, which was all Transit vans, transitory disc jockeys and cross bosses. The clubs played a mixture of Euro disco and the more popular face of punk, the latter regularly allowing me to pogo away the hours until I was due on air. Lest it be misconstrued and people imagine that I’m a loose-limbed one-man dance machine, I have to come clean and admit that pogoing, if that’s how you spell it, is my only dance. From a tender age I’d had lessons in tap, tango, waltz, quickstep and countless other forms of ballroom torture, but had proved a dismal failure through a lack of ability and the total absence of any enthusiasm. Pogoing (the word still looks strange written down) was undoubtedly my forte so I’ll always be grateful to whichever punk invented it, presumably one whose parents refused to buy him a pogo stick when he was a kid but he still wanted to act like his mates whose parents were pro-pogo. Anyway, this great, unnamed inventor allowed me to behave like Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout and still look cool … well, cool-ish. Maybe that should be foolish.
Former Radio One DJ Stuart Henry was also part of the team. His slow delivery led many listeners to believe that he’d been flirting with his substances of choice on a nightly basis. In fact Stuart had multiple sclerosis, but bore it stoically and with great humour. Despite his problems, he and his wife Ollie were always inviting people round and on more than one occasion I had to help Stuart up off the floor. ‘Excuse me, darling [don’t read anything into that, that was Stuart’s style], I appear to have fallen over and I can’t get up again. Not a good thing for a grown man. Can you help me?’ He asked for no special treatment, which is why I played the same tricks on him that I played on the other guys (well, apart from Bob as he was a bit scary.)
When I was on after Stuart, I’d sometimes find the studio empty and guess he’d shuffled off down the corridor to the loo, as his condition increased incontinence. He’d have to make sure there was a long song playing to give him enough time, and the studio door would be ajar. I would wait until I heard him coming back down the corridor and slowly turn the volume down as if the record was fading. I’d hear the shuffling increase in intensity and the muttering of unrepeatable oaths that could only be made by a true Scotsman as he attempted to hurry to the studio. Rounding the door breathlessly the realisation would dawn on him. ‘You bastard,’ was his usual line.
The incontinence was an unfortunate side effect of Stuart’s condition, so much so that once when we were driving down one of the main shopping streets of the Grand Duchy, he suddenly swerved over and stopped.
‘Are you allowed to stop here?’
‘Nope, but nature calls, my friend.’ He made it to the nearest shop doorway and I held his coat around him as he did what a chap in his situation had to do. After drawing many hostile looks, one passing Luxembourger looked down his nose and sneered, ‘Filthy Englishman.’
Stuart was incensed. He wheeled round, still in full flow, so I had to be nimble and fleet of foot as he yelled indignantly, ‘I’ll have you know I’m bloody well Scottish!’
After one particularly late night, I stayed over at Stuart and Ollie’s place. Following three hours’ undisturbed sleep, the man with the drill that haunts hotels started up next door. He can clearly move from country to country at will. At first I thought he was inside my head. Nothing for it but to switch on AFN and listen to some music. I was awake in an instant. What was that? A French song tore through the room at 100 mph. As soon as I’d wiped the crumbs of the breakfast croissant from my lips, I was back in town waiting for the record shop to open. I had no idea what the song was called, but a combination of actions, Franglais and desperation eventually won the day and I walked out with a gleaming copy of Plastic Bertrand’s ‘Ça plane pour moi’. Of course I played it on my show. Of course I got told off. Of course I played it again. Of course I was reprimanded.
‘We don’t play foreign songs. Nobody buys them.’
‘But it’s got “hit” written all over it.’
‘Not in Britain.’
‘Follow your instincts not the rules.’
Within a month it was in the top ten.
In the late ’70s, the telephone was our lifeblood. No mobiles, no faxes, no emails, no texts, just the office phone, but it wasn’t always easy to make calls to record companies or to anyone in the industry. When you tried to make a call, the guys on the switchboard would either cut you off or refuse to connect you. Not only was it seriously frustrating, but you were being treated as if you were a naughty schoolboy. Just as with Plastic Bertrand, I confronted the main man early on. Well, you knew I would.
‘You’re making personal calls. Not allowed.’
‘They’re to people in the industry. I’m trying to do my job here.’
‘You make private calls.’
‘It’s like working in divers’ boots.’
He looked puzzled, and although I couldn’t explain, my nose was so close to his that he got the drift. He reported me, of course. But I didn’t need reporti
ng. I needed connecting.
Mark Wesley, former pirate radio man, songwriter and good bloke, helped me to retain my sanity at ‘the Great 208’. He and his wife Pierette invited me for supper countless times and helped me to settle as best I could. The programmes and popping round to Mark’s were the highlights of the day. Heading back unusually late from one such evening I found that I wasn’t allowed into my road. Further down was a collection of fire engines and police vehicles where all hell was breaking loose. Explaining that I lived in the road, I was eventually escorted through. The fire was obviously very close to where I was living. No it wasn’t, it was where I was living. The apartment block was on fire and flames were leaping from my windows, which had been smashed, I presumed, by the boys in helmets. People were gasping, some were screaming and sirens were still emitting from newly arrived vehicles. Hoses were pouring hundreds of gallons of water onto my bed, furniture and probably my record collection. It transpired that the emergency services were too busy saving someone’s life to answer my questions. Someone from the apartments saw my predicament and grabbed me by the arm.
‘The boy on the first floor. They cannot reach him. They think he may have perished.’
‘That’s me,’ I said.
‘No, you are safe, the boy up there, he dies, I think.’
‘No, listen, I am the boy up there, only I’m down here.’ I gesticulated in what I considered to be a reasonably Gallic manner.
‘It’s me. Look.’ I thrust my face in his.
He grabbed the nearest gendarme and presumably made him understand. A shout went up, then a cheer. It turned out that I was alive. Well, hurrah, I’ll drink to that. Best news of the week. I salvaged a few of my meagre possessions (vinyl actually scrubs up quite nicely, apart from the warped ones) but it was some while before the place dried out enough for me to resume occupation. I was still finding slivers of glass months later. Usually with my feet.