A typical day on Radio 1, May 1977

• 6.00am Ray Moore (as Radio 2)
• 7.01 Noel Edmonds
• 9.00 Simon Bates featuring the Golden Hour
• 11.31 Paul Burnett incl 12.30pm Newsbeat
• 2.00pm Tony Blackburn
• 4.31 Dave Lee Travis incl 5.30 Newsbeat
• 7.02 Country Club (as Radio 2)
• 9.02 Folkweave (as Radio 2)

Radio, radio - it's a sound salvation

Up in Cumbria, where I lived as a lad, radio reception was fairly diabolical. Being sandwiched between the Pennines and the Lake District fells probably had something to do with it. Radio 1 used to broadcast on 247m medium wave (or AM) and was endlessly frustrating to listen to, all fuzz and crackle. It's no wonder we never really knew the words to songs, not that that prevented us from singing along - we just used the right vowel sounds. I'm still finding today that I can listen to Seventies music in modern digital quality and nonsense lyrics magically start to make sense. Well, more sense at least. Into The Valley is still completely impenetrable. Anyway Radio 1 was dreadful in Cumbria until it switched to 275m and 285m (Mike Read! Mike Read! 275 and 285!) and they boosted the power at the same time.

Master Bates fiddles with his knob

This man seems to know it all: http://www.radiorewind.co.uk/transmitter.htm

Luckily the Top 20 was broadcast simultaneously on Radio 2, which was a lot more reliable. Sunday afternoons would be spent with Tom Brown running down the charts, radio parked next to the built-in mic of my mono tape machine as I recorded favourite songs onto some knackered old cassette, at the same time writing down title, artist, chart position, change since last week, and weeks on the chart. For years I did that, building up an archive more valuable even than the Guinness Book of Hit Singles. Unfortunately, in a moment of madness somewhen in the Eighties, I threw the whole file out. Regretting it now.