In 1957 I moved to 2LF Young NSW as breakfast announcer.
During this time I programmed the “Top 40” and was responsible for purchasing records for the station’s library.
I uncovered some audio on reel to reel a few years ago, which given it is now well over 60+ years old is amazing that it still sounds as good as it does!
In 1961 I decided like most Australians to go overseas – to see the world! Subsequently I travelled all over Europe, Canada and parts of the States.
When I first arrived in the UK, I met up with my former boss Alan Crawford (Southern Music Publishing) in London. At the time he was trying to get another old mate Frank Ifield played on the radio. I actually used to meet Frank on the train going into the centre of Sydney every day back in the mid 50s while working for Alan. I didn’t think the songs he had recorded were quite it, but they played an acetate of I Remember You and I said that was a great song. Little did I know heh? It was a hit a year later, of course.
Anyway nothing doing radio wise in the UK (just the BBC and its couple of hours of “pop” a week), so I was determined to travel to the continent after meeting my sister Ruth in Scotland, who was over as an exchange school teacher. She had a car and we were going to travel around for a bit.
Alan asked me if I was in Sweden to visit Radio Nord as he was having issues getting his material played on not only the BBC, but Radio Luxembourg too and he was thinking about setting up his own thing on a similar basis. So when I was in Stockholm, I visited Reklam Productions and get some info, rate cards and details for Alan. They also invited me to visit the ship the Bon Jour/Magda Maria which I did on a day trip. Pretty much everything was recorded on land on tape apart from the news etc.. Funnily enough I went on board the Mi Amigo again when it was Caroline South in 1967, but that is another story…
Of course I had to visit Radio Luxembourg to see if there were any opportunities when passing through. At the time chief DJ Barry Alldis (who I knew from my very early days in radio in Australia) was on holiday so they couldn’t offer anything. Years later I mentioned this to Barry and he said “why didn’t you write to me before you came to the grand duchy? I would have had you on like a shot!”. That’s the way life goes sometimes.
My sister went back to Australia later in the summer so I then hitch-hiked all around Europe, including walking though the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin the week before the wall went up, then Austria and even all the way down behind the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and a bit of Yogoslavia on my way to Italy. Thinking about it now I don’t know how I managed that!
Anyway, I came back to London thinking I would head back to Australia via Canada and the US. So after seeing Alan again and giving the info from Radio Nord, I got myself on the Empress of Canada from Southampton to continue my round the world trip.
I tried to get into CHUM and other stations while in Toronto, but they said I sounded too English – how dare they!
I met my wife Janice in the city in 1962 while staying at the YMCA, it had good and inexpensive meals and we kind of formed a ‘gang’ with some other friends. We toured around Canada to Montreal and into the US to New York. Later, we both worked at the Bigwig Inn the next summer and eventually we returned to England to get married in December 1963.
I met up with Alan Crawford again, he came to our wedding, who by that time was all guns blazing with his Radio Atlanta project and wanted me to be a part of it. Silly really in hindsight, but something didn’t feel right and as I’d just got married, I didn’t really want to risk my UK residence or be away from Janice. Meanwhile I’d also auditioned for BFBS (British Forces Broadcast Service) and actually was the first ever non-British announcer to pass the audition. They offered me an instant post as a Warrant Officer in… Aden…
To be frank, both Janice and I didn’t fancy traveling to Aden either with all the troubles, so I turned to commerce working for Bowater Scott and Philip Morris (selling cigarettes, well that’s when they were healthy…) while “keeping my hand in” by broadcasting on hospital radio in Bishops Stortford, where we lived. Funnily enough a young Andy Peebles was my panel operator.
But the next chapter is what really got me back into broadcasting, at least for the majority of the rest of my working life.