Anorak
I was an 'anorak' long before Festival Radio. I'd already discovered Caroline on my alarm clock radio by accident, gone to the library and read a couple of books about it. That turned out to be the top of a rather deep rabbit hole...
My father was an electronics engineer and there were plenty of 'the right sort of bits' lying around at home and Hove library provided the rest. Our twenty-something neighbour, Harry, had a habit of playing the Top 40 at full blast on his 'impressive' HiFi, so using a badly constructed (and piss-weak) transmitter, I interrupted and asked him to 'turn it down a bit'. I could hear myself through the ceiling, but so did my Dad, who was not at all impressed. He did struggle to conceal his amusement in the midst of bollocking me. I bumped into Harry outside the following day. He lurched and looked like he'd seen a ghost. Radio is powerful, I thought - like telepathy...and Harry moved out shortly after.
Radio in Brighton was miserable, until late 1988 and the arrival of Eugene Perera's Faze FM. It provided a magical journey of musical discovery and education. The Djs knew their stuff and would speak with enthusiasm, tell stories about the music they played - the passion was palpable. A refreshing change from the 'that wass and this is' patter of Radio 1 that my peers at school were glued to.
After about a year, Faze was dead. A relentless campaign by the Department of Trade and Industry had exhausted everyone involved in keeping the pirate on the air. Little did I know that it was a taste of things to come. Meanwhile, Caroline had also been quite literally smashed up in a raid and their extensive record library stolen. Radio was lifeless again, but now I knew about the possibilities and I was determined to help make something happen, somehow.
School tried to send me to a civil engineering firm for work experience and there were tears galore and I flatly refused to go. I managed to find my own placement with Brighton's 'Wireless Workshop' and I had no idea how much I had lucked out - these people seriously knew radio! I met the venerable Norman McLeod for the first time and later Mike Craig (Watts) who was an instant hero, as a Caroline engineer. These subversives were more than happy to impart their knowledge and provide plenty of (mischievous) encouragement. I realised something was going down - they were helping to build something that was to be called Festival Radio.
My task was to construct parts of the transmission system (while listening to France Inter Paris) for the 1990 Festival Radio and in spite of the Home Office only giving them an eighth of the power that your mobile phone emits, I could still receive a bearable signal in Hove. It was a real buzz to hear these amazing programmes passing through equipment that I had helped to construct. At one point, the signal somehow became much stronger. Someone said 'Lawrie dropped a screw in the transmitter'. Unfortunately the screw made it work a little bit too well and the power was returned to (the stingy) 250 milliwatts after just a couple of days. It was as if the authorities didn't want it to be heard - people might find out what they were missing!
I had no idea there was a way to broadcast legally before Festival Radio and it inspired me to convince my friends to 'go legit' and we set up Freedom FM, another (legal) 28 day station broadcasting club and specialist music to Brighton in 1993, but that is another story.
The 1991 Festival Radio launch party at The Zap also provided me with my first ever nightclub experience - Carl Cox was Djing, so quite a baptism of fire. The station guided me well through my formative years and helped me to carve out a career in radio spanning a quarter of a century, so I'm incredibly grateful for the rich inspiration it provided me with.
It was ever thus - great radio doesn't come from corporate stations. It comes from passion. Festival Radio was a superb example of just that. It has yet to be equalled, let alone surpassed.