Late O’clock Again
Despite being only a South Coast day tripper, I had the good fortune of meeting Eugene Perera, one half of the foundership of Festival Radio, at a strange little party, in a fantastic example of a Victorian gothic house on The Drive. Incredibly, we are still close friends to this day… The party was put on by a guy called Alan? Dave? A friend of a friend.
Our host had gone all out, with what constituted a mini outdoor rave in my mind’s eye; 200 loved up people dancing in the garden on a lovely warm summer’s night and me – I’d gone to the party with a girlfriend and 3 guys named Steve, one of them being my boyfriend at the time. When I disclosed that I was of a Sri Lankan extraction to somebody I met there, he eagerly introduced me to his housemate. This guy (who was also of a Sri Lankan persuasion) turned out to be Eugene.
I was in-between jobs at this time so open to any interesting work offers. We gelled and so a few days later we all went out for a drink at one of Brighton’s notorious old boozers at the back of the train station and then suddenly I was being offered the prime job of air-time radio sales person for Festival Radio. It sounded like a laugh, so for the first time ever, I left town and decamped to the South Coast for one glorious summer.
Right at the end of Brighton, I lived with Eugene and his landlord Bill Smith, in a quirky run down Edwardian end of terrace from Monday –Friday and sometimes staying over at weekends, when I didn’t feel like going home. Brighton was more intimate and old school in those days, less of a city vibe and more of a town, with dilapidated old pubs and bars, tea shops, greasy spoon cafes and in the days before ebay, bargain basement charity shops. The role was fun, in proclaiming the delights of reaching a ‘cool audience’ I enjoyed discovering the more remote outposts of the Brighton area and drawing in obscure family businesses who relied on local paper advertising with a ‘broader reach or catchment’. Eugene marvelled at me bringing back business from fish and chip shops to hairdressers and taxi firms in Worthing and Eastbourne – he still talks about it to this day.
Festival Radio sported an electric line up of breaking talent in those early days, including Jon Ronson, Annie Nightingale, Graham Duff and Lance Dann. I loved the weird and wonderful yet extremely high quality production and content of all these and other shows (anyone remember Aussie DJ Barry Unlikely?).
After a couple of weeks of flogging air-time and managing to meet my targets, I co-erced my sales manager into letting me have a very late night DJ slot. I didn’t have a clue how to change the tape and get the idents going but had the help of two very kind late night engineers…now what were their names?
In my 2hr show I was able to indulge myself and played anything from Mark Stewart, Holger Czukay, The Monkees and Fad Gadget at the bizarre time of 2am on a Monday morning. I still have a cassette tape knocking around on which I’d managed to record one of my crazy shows.
It was strange; having been up for around 24hrs, I’d come out of the studio dazed and mildly tripped out on sleep deprivation, into a bright sunny morning, surrounded by opportunistic seagulls trying relieve me of my crisps. Sometimes I’d wander nearby to the legendary 24hr greasy spoon, The Market Diner and fill my boots with stodgy carb, then wend my way past shabby squats near The Old Steine back to my quarters. Festival Radio was a wonderful project to be involved with – I still have a (grubby) white Festival Radio t shirt to prove I was really part of this.