Happy 40th Birthday Radio Humberside

Cover of 10th Anniversary magazine

So Happy Birthday Radio Humberside, 40 years old today.

I have to admit that as a teenager I thought that Humberside was the station that your parents listened to. Dad would tune in to Morningtide (probably presented by Fiona Cowan) before heading off to work. At lunchtime it would be the local news and then the station would carry Radio 4’s The World at One. On a Sunday we’d hear Top Town Quiz, presented by the improbably named Eliott Oppel (I always liked that name. Apparently he was a former maths teacher turned broadcaster and sports reporter and died back in 2005). Years later I know that Mum liked to catch Soapbox.

In those days Radio Humberside was based right in the heart of Hull on the corner of Chapel Street and Jameson Street above the Post Office. As a young lad interested in radio I eventually got to see round the building with its warren of offices and studios. By a stroke of luck one of the teachers at school, Brenda Eveleigh, was an occasional presenter on the station (and can be heard presenting Contact in the audio below) and she introduced me to Tim Jibson. I helped out on the odd show logging his music tracks I recall, a manual process in those days. Eventually I got to go on air as part of the listeners’ panel on the Paull Hunsley Electric Wireless Show – a show named not after a presenter but the transmitter sites at Paull and High Hunsley.

Peter Adamson

The connections with the station continued at college where one of our lecturers was Peter Adamson, at that time presenter of Sunday Best and jazz programmes. I remember on one occasion Peter recorded a gardening spot with Dick Robinson, or it could’ve been Fred Fletcher, my memory isn’t clear on this one, in the small college studio. Here I also learnt the art of editing and splicing tape and using the large Uher tape recorders. One of my media assignments was on local radio and I interviewed the then station manager David Challis. (I still have a copy of that assignment called Broadcasting and the Local Community: A Study of Local Radio).

In the early 80s my wife Val was involved in drama productions with Vermuyden School and the Goole Youth Theatre; I’d help out with the sound. To promote the shows Val and the students would be interviewed and perform songs on the likes of Steve Massam’s show.

I’m saving the audio of the Walmsley family appearances on Humberside for future posts, maybe! In the meantime here are a selection of Radio Humberside jingles from the late 70s that I pulled together for Kate Slade, producer of the Happy Birthday Radio Humberside programme:
 

 

This audio sequence presents a selection of shows dating from the late 70s and early 80s. Incidentally the 10^th anniversary song at the end of this montage is sung by Chris Rowe, another lecturer who taught me at college.
 

Edit (4 March 2011) Peter Adamson was back on air to celebrate Radio Humberside's 40th birthday. The programme included some of the audio clips and jingles I'd provided. The jingles were also played during the day and were used in the Look North report in the evening. Plus I managed to get two mentions during the day on the radio. A good day overall.