Do we tend to look back at the radio industry in years gone by with rose-tinted spectacles? Let’s be honest – in many ways, the answer to that question is probably yes.
Independent local radio began in Britain in the autumn of 1973 and during the next two years, a total of 19 stations launched.
The Labour administration that came to power in 1974 was not keen on expanding the network of stations any further, and there was a hiatus until 1980 when, under the Thatcher government a raft of new stations launched in areas of the country not previously served by independent local radio.
The stations themselves were of varying quality. People will rightly look back on Capital Radio, BRMB, Radio City, Piccadilly Radio and a few others with great fondness.
Broadly speaking, most of the really successful stations were in the big cities. In the towns and provinces, stations were very often financially unstable and, with some notable exceptions, sounded like poor-quality versions of Radio 1.
The media and advertising landscape was very different in those days, and local radio was one of very few ways in which local businesses could advertise. Today, the business model of those local radio stations would be totally unsustainable (in many cases it didn’t actually work that well at the time).
We have the recently-deceased Tony Butler to thank for bringing American-style phone-in radio to Britain.
Butler has previously worked on BBC national and regional radio where his strong Birmingham accent caused problems, and the BBC provided elocution lessons to give him a more neutral voice.
In 1974, Butler was appointed sports editor at BRMB prior to its launch. BRMB wanted to offer something different to the established BBC stations, and he was encouraged to act naturally on air, emphasising rather than hiding his accent.
Prior to the station’s launch, Butler went on a tour of radio stations in Canada and the USA, where he observed the success of forthright phone-in hosts who offered controversial opinions and argued with callers. When BRMB launched, he developed a similar aggressive manner on air and created the UK’s first football phone-in, where he became known for his trademark “on yer bike” catchphrase when cutting off callers.
Tony Butler in the early days of BRMB
The 1980s saw a raft of late-night phone-ins launch on independent local radio stations around the UK.
Most of the early successes came in the north. The guvnor in those early years was Allan Beswick on Red Rose Radio in Lancashire, who, while not overly-shouty, was a straight-talker who didn’t suffer fools and used his considerable intellect to argue his case stubbornly. Callers would be introduced by his ‘how do’ catchphrase which he continues to use to this day.
Beswick pretended to dislike Scousers on his show and would often give them short shrift before cutting them off with an insult. It was very obviously an act and years later he admitted he had no problem with people from Merseyside.
Allan Beswick on Red Rose Radio in the 1980s
However, in reality there was another reason for Beswick’s attacks on Scousers. The signal from Red Rose Radio was strong and drifted into Merseyside with ease, particularly at night time. Radio City, which was the commercial station for Liverpool, complained to the Independent Broadcasting Authority about the signal’s strength, which resulted in Red Rose taking measures to discourage Liverpudlians from listening, and specifically from phoning Beswick’s programme. As a means of discouraging calls from Liverpool, Beswick was rude to Scousers, but it had the opposite effect, and instead he became hugely popular there.
The North West was at the forefront of late-night phone-ins during the 1980s. In Manchester, Piccadilly Radio (which eventually became Key 103) had James Stannage and James H Reeve, while in Liverpool Pete Price had a long-running phone-in on Radio City and its oldies sister station in its various guises (Magic 1548 being the most prominent).
James Whale began his career on late-night radio at Metro in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he was the original presenter of the Nightowls programme, where he was briefly succeeded by Allan Beswick before Alan Robson began his long run.
After leaving Metro, Whale worked for BBC Radio Derby in a mid-morning slot before returning to late-night radio on Radio Aire in Leeds from 1982. Towards the end of the 1980s, the show was simulcast on ITV as, one by one, the regions started broadcasting 24 hours a day and needed new content for very late at night. It effectively became a hybrid of a TV and radio show – it was also broadcast on Red Rose Radio by this point, with Allan Beswick having left for a daytime show on BBC Radio Manchester.
The James Whale Radio Show was simulcast on ITV from the late 1980s
In Cardiff, fledgling commercial station CBC hired a local bookmaker called Peter Harris to give daily racing tips during the breakfast show. Because of the obvious conflict of interest in a bookie giving racing tips, he insisted on using a pseudonym on air, so he became known as The Major and his segment was introduced by “The Galloping Major” music hall song.
Harris was, and indeed still is, a worldly man with a range of interests. On top of his encyclopaedic knowledge of horse racing, he has a deep appreciation of music, having befriended Bruce Springsteen in his youth, and he continues to count Andy Fairweather Low as a friend. He is an avid fan of many sports and follows politics discerningly.
CBC eventually gave Harris his own phone-in on weekends and he developed a strong following in the Cardiff area. However, he continued to live a rather eccentric lifestyle, working as a cab driver on days he wasn’t on the radio.
Harris also had a habit of spending spare time in betting shops in Cardiff city centre, where, on winning days, he would collect his cash, go to the nearest Post Office, stuff an envelope full of his winnings and post it to himself on recorded delivery before heading to the pub – this method gave him a reason to get up the following morning regardless of how hungover he was.
Peter Harris on Red Dragon Radio
Harris has long since moved to Cornwall and he has been teetotal for several years. Until relatively recently, he appeared as a pundit on Racing UK for meetings in the area, particularly Wincanton, where he had the habit of driving along the motorway wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He would then stop at a Morrisons near the track and change into a suit ready to appear on TV.
Harris and Racing UK parted company a few years ago, with his outspoken comments being a point of tension between them.
CBC got off to a bad start in 1980 and although its schedule improved in the years that followed, its financial position was precarious, and it was saved by Owen Oyston, the maverick northern entrepreneur whose Trans World Communications company already owned Red Rose Radio in Lancashire and Radio Aire in Leeds. Oyston relaunched CBC as Red Dragon Radio in 1985.
This meant Beswick, Whale and Harris were all working for the same company. Somebody high up, possibly even Oyston himself, suggested rotating the three phone-in hosts between the stations on a monthly basis.
Harris was dead against the idea. This was partly because he had an intense dislike of Whale (Harris’s politics are very left-wing), but it was partly because Harris’s act was very ‘Kaarrrrddifff’ and he didn’t think it would ‘travel well’.
Whale’s act has ‘travelled well’ and for most of the last 30 years he has worked in national radio. Beswick’s work has primarily been in the North West, though he did present the late night show on BBC Radio 5 Live sporadically during the 2000s.
In London, Robbie Vincent was king with his long-running late-night phone-in on LBC, while in Kent and Essex, Caesar the Boogieman (later to become Caesar the Geezer) was drew huge audiences initially on Invicta, and later on Essex Radio.
Other names worthy of mentions include Alan Ross (Touch Radio in South Wales and TFM in Teeside), Adrian Allen (who at various times hosted late-night phone-ins in Nottingham, the North West and South Wales), Dave Brookes (Touch Radio and Real Radio, both in South Wales) and Dave Barrett (who worked on national radio but was especially well-known in the Westcountry and Wiltshire).
Colin Lamont, a former newsreader and continuity announcer on TV in Scotland developed his Scottie McClue character as a phone-in host on Red Rose in Lancashire during the early 1990s, and in the decade that followed he took his act to stations in northern England and Scotland at various times. By his own admission, the nature of his act meant he had to find a new market every two to three years.
Colin Lamont ‘in character’ as Scottie McClue
So what went wrong? The consolidation of local radio during the 1990s and 2000s effectively resulted in all the major stations in the big markets being owned by either Global or Bauer.
Regulation, or more specifically lack of regulation allowed this to happen, and effectively these once-local stations are now national brands with local news bulletins and adverts slotted in. Where necessary, they retain a four-hour local show each day to keep regulator Ofcom happy.
Bauer, in its previous guise of EMAP, had a renewed enthusiasm for local phone-ins on its northern Magic network from 2003, with Pete Price being given a Monday-Thursday slot on Magic 1548 (Liverpool) in addition to his existing Sunday night show on Radio City – effectively reviving the schedule he had from the late 1980s until well into the 1990s. For the first few months of 2003, it was also simulcast on Magic 999, the former frequency of Red Rose Radio, but by the spring of that year they had their own phone-in with Mark Keen. In Manchester, James Stannage’s phone-in on Key 103 was simulcast on Magic 1152.
This was very much the exception to the rule, as networking and consolidation was already well underway in the industry.
James Stannage was dismissed by Key 103 in June 2005, and James H Reeve returned to the late-night phone-in for a while afterwards before the format was dropped.
In Liverpool, Pete Price continued to broadcast five nights per week until 2014, when he was restricted to Sundays only, but this, too came to an end in May 2020. Up at Metro, Night Owls was reduced to Sunday nights only in 2019 before ending completely in April 2022. Other parts of the country, such as South Wales, lost their late-night phone-ins many years previously.
It’s easy to see how things got to this state. With radio now so tightly consolidated and much less risk-averse than it once was, it’s far easier to have some ‘late night love songs’ format or similar, with one show, networked across many stations, appealing broadly to a female demographic.
It’s far riskier, and indeed more expensive, to have an edgy phone-in host causing outrage. In this era of the permanently-offended and permanently-outraged on social media, a single complaint from a disgruntled listener can quickly build into a pile-on.
In no time, Ofcom, and indeed the radio station itself is bombarded with ‘how dare you allow this person on air’ type complaints whenever they express a strong opinion on, say, the migrant crisis or not liking Pride flags everywhere. The conglomerates that own local radio stations don’t seem to have much stomach for such a fight.
LBC is now a national brand that is in good health under the ownership of Global, though it is pretty much a 24/7 diet of hard news talk and there would be no place for a Robbie Vincent in its current guise.
Talk Radio and Talk TV provide strong programming from the likes of Mike Graham and Ian Collins (who himself hosted late-night phone-ins at various stations earlier in his career).
James Whale has revived and updated the format of his old Radio Aire show that was simulcast on late-night ITV with a weekly Saturday night programme on Talk TV.
But of the ‘old style’ late-night phone-ins, Allan Beswick is the last man standing. After moving to BBC Radio Manchester in the late 1980s, Beswick hosted a long-running lunchtime show, before moving to mid-mornings and then breakfast from 2009.
In 2015, Beswick made a welcome return to late-night radio with a phone-in on BBC Radio Manchester and Lancashire. He was obviously older than in his Red Rose days and was somewhat constrained by the impartiality rules of the BBC so was less ‘free’ than before, but nevertheless he was still a superb listen.
On the night of 22 May 2017, Beswick’s show was just beginning when news of an Islamic terrorist suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena broke. Beswick extended his show throughout the night and through to breakfast time and I listened on as the true horror of the events unfolded.
I developed an elevated level of respect for Beswick’s abilities as a broadcaster that night. He was able to be sensitive and adapt to an ever-changing situation. If an example was needed as to the value of local radio in the modern era, this was it.
In May 2021, it was announced that Beswick would be moving to weekends only, effectively going into semi-retirement, but there was a twist – in addition to BBC Radio Manchester and Lancashire, the new Saturday and Sunday night show would be heard on BBC Radio Merseyside, the very patch Beswick had so much fun winding up on Red Rose Radio in the 1980s.
At some point, Beswick started hosting the phone-in from his home in North Wales. We’re not sure quite when this began, but the pandemic made it a necessity, and the arrangement has continued ever since, with only occasional problems with the line failing.
Allan Beswick hosting his phone-in from his home in North Wales
In July, it was announced that from week commencing 8 October, all BBC local radio stations in England will be taking a networked late-night show hosted by Becky Want from Sunday to Thursday and Jo Good on Fridays and Saturdays.
I have nothing at all against either of these ladies as broadcasters, but this will mean the end of Beswick’s late night phone-in on Saturdays and Sundays, which is a rare gem in the BBC local radio schedules nowadays.
BBC local radio comes into its own when there are serious local emergencies, such as the horrific Manchester Arena terror attack, extreme weather and so on. On the whole, BBC local radio covers sport well, and there are some decent Sunday political programmes on various stations.
But very often, BBC local radio is twee, precious, slow and outdated. Daytime shows are full of phone-ins with questions like ‘how bad is the dog poo in your area’, followed in the next hour by Granny Adams popping into the studio to tell us about her prize-winning parsnips. They might open the phone lines again in the hour after that to ask a riveting question like ‘What’s your favourite chocolate in a box of Quality Street?’
Beswick appears to be taking redundancy in his stride. He has been semi-retired for several years, works from home, and, if he hosts his last show on Sunday 7 October, the last hour will roll into 8 October, which is his 75th birthday.
I’d like to think Beswick will reappear somewhere, though options are limited, with few, if any opportunities existing on independent local radio, and the BBC increasingly resorting to networking. I can imagine Beswick being a successful podcaster – he could have a lot of fun with that.
I also hope that a role can be found for Beswick’s regular cover presenter Connor Phillips, who is from a younger generation and has become a decent late-night phone-in host in his own right.
When Beswick leaves his current slot, an era will be coming to an end. He pioneered the local late-night phone-in in this country, and it also looks as though he will be man who ends it.
Yes, there is too much nostalgia around when people reminisce about poor-quality independent local radio on provincial stations, but with the demise of the late-night phone-in, we have lost something special and important.
Marcus Stead
A sad farewell to the late-night phone-in on local radio
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By MARCUS STEAD
Do we tend to look back at the radio industry in years gone by with rose-tinted spectacles? Let’s be honest – in many ways, the answer to that question is probably yes.
Independent local radio began in Britain in the autumn of 1973 and during the next two years, a total of 19 stations launched.
The Labour administration that came to power in 1974 was not keen on expanding the network of stations any further, and there was a hiatus until 1980 when, under the Thatcher government a raft of new stations launched in areas of the country not previously served by independent local radio.
The stations themselves were of varying quality. People will rightly look back on Capital Radio, BRMB, Radio City, Piccadilly Radio and a few others with great fondness.
Broadly speaking, most of the really successful stations were in the big cities. In the towns and provinces, stations were very often financially unstable and, with some notable exceptions, sounded like poor-quality versions of Radio 1.
The media and advertising landscape was very different in those days, and local radio was one of very few ways in which local businesses could advertise. Today, the business model of those local radio stations would be totally unsustainable (in many cases it didn’t actually work that well at the time).
We have the recently-deceased Tony Butler to thank for bringing American-style phone-in radio to Britain.
Butler has previously worked on BBC national and regional radio where his strong Birmingham accent caused problems, and the BBC provided elocution lessons to give him a more neutral voice.
In 1974, Butler was appointed sports editor at BRMB prior to its launch. BRMB wanted to offer something different to the established BBC stations, and he was encouraged to act naturally on air, emphasising rather than hiding his accent.
Prior to the station’s launch, Butler went on a tour of radio stations in Canada and the USA, where he observed the success of forthright phone-in hosts who offered controversial opinions and argued with callers. When BRMB launched, he developed a similar aggressive manner on air and created the UK’s first football phone-in, where he became known for his trademark “on yer bike” catchphrase when cutting off callers.
The 1980s saw a raft of late-night phone-ins launch on independent local radio stations around the UK.
Most of the early successes came in the north. The guvnor in those early years was Allan Beswick on Red Rose Radio in Lancashire, who, while not overly-shouty, was a straight-talker who didn’t suffer fools and used his considerable intellect to argue his case stubbornly. Callers would be introduced by his ‘how do’ catchphrase which he continues to use to this day.
Beswick pretended to dislike Scousers on his show and would often give them short shrift before cutting them off with an insult. It was very obviously an act and years later he admitted he had no problem with people from Merseyside.
However, in reality there was another reason for Beswick’s attacks on Scousers. The signal from Red Rose Radio was strong and drifted into Merseyside with ease, particularly at night time. Radio City, which was the commercial station for Liverpool, complained to the Independent Broadcasting Authority about the signal’s strength, which resulted in Red Rose taking measures to discourage Liverpudlians from listening, and specifically from phoning Beswick’s programme. As a means of discouraging calls from Liverpool, Beswick was rude to Scousers, but it had the opposite effect, and instead he became hugely popular there.
The North West was at the forefront of late-night phone-ins during the 1980s. In Manchester, Piccadilly Radio (which eventually became Key 103) had James Stannage and James H Reeve, while in Liverpool Pete Price had a long-running phone-in on Radio City and its oldies sister station in its various guises (Magic 1548 being the most prominent).
James Whale began his career on late-night radio at Metro in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he was the original presenter of the Nightowls programme, where he was briefly succeeded by Allan Beswick before Alan Robson began his long run.
After leaving Metro, Whale worked for BBC Radio Derby in a mid-morning slot before returning to late-night radio on Radio Aire in Leeds from 1982. Towards the end of the 1980s, the show was simulcast on ITV as, one by one, the regions started broadcasting 24 hours a day and needed new content for very late at night. It effectively became a hybrid of a TV and radio show – it was also broadcast on Red Rose Radio by this point, with Allan Beswick having left for a daytime show on BBC Radio Manchester.
In Cardiff, fledgling commercial station CBC hired a local bookmaker called Peter Harris to give daily racing tips during the breakfast show. Because of the obvious conflict of interest in a bookie giving racing tips, he insisted on using a pseudonym on air, so he became known as The Major and his segment was introduced by “The Galloping Major” music hall song.
Harris was, and indeed still is, a worldly man with a range of interests. On top of his encyclopaedic knowledge of horse racing, he has a deep appreciation of music, having befriended Bruce Springsteen in his youth, and he continues to count Andy Fairweather Low as a friend. He is an avid fan of many sports and follows politics discerningly.
CBC eventually gave Harris his own phone-in on weekends and he developed a strong following in the Cardiff area. However, he continued to live a rather eccentric lifestyle, working as a cab driver on days he wasn’t on the radio.
Harris also had a habit of spending spare time in betting shops in Cardiff city centre, where, on winning days, he would collect his cash, go to the nearest Post Office, stuff an envelope full of his winnings and post it to himself on recorded delivery before heading to the pub – this method gave him a reason to get up the following morning regardless of how hungover he was.
Harris has long since moved to Cornwall and he has been teetotal for several years. Until relatively recently, he appeared as a pundit on Racing UK for meetings in the area, particularly Wincanton, where he had the habit of driving along the motorway wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He would then stop at a Morrisons near the track and change into a suit ready to appear on TV.
Harris and Racing UK parted company a few years ago, with his outspoken comments being a point of tension between them.
CBC got off to a bad start in 1980 and although its schedule improved in the years that followed, its financial position was precarious, and it was saved by Owen Oyston, the maverick northern entrepreneur whose Trans World Communications company already owned Red Rose Radio in Lancashire and Radio Aire in Leeds. Oyston relaunched CBC as Red Dragon Radio in 1985.
This meant Beswick, Whale and Harris were all working for the same company. Somebody high up, possibly even Oyston himself, suggested rotating the three phone-in hosts between the stations on a monthly basis.
Harris was dead against the idea. This was partly because he had an intense dislike of Whale (Harris’s politics are very left-wing), but it was partly because Harris’s act was very ‘Kaarrrrddifff’ and he didn’t think it would ‘travel well’.
Whale’s act has ‘travelled well’ and for most of the last 30 years he has worked in national radio. Beswick’s work has primarily been in the North West, though he did present the late night show on BBC Radio 5 Live sporadically during the 2000s.
In London, Robbie Vincent was king with his long-running late-night phone-in on LBC, while in Kent and Essex, Caesar the Boogieman (later to become Caesar the Geezer) was drew huge audiences initially on Invicta, and later on Essex Radio.
Other names worthy of mentions include Alan Ross (Touch Radio in South Wales and TFM in Teeside), Adrian Allen (who at various times hosted late-night phone-ins in Nottingham, the North West and South Wales), Dave Brookes (Touch Radio and Real Radio, both in South Wales) and Dave Barrett (who worked on national radio but was especially well-known in the Westcountry and Wiltshire).
Colin Lamont, a former newsreader and continuity announcer on TV in Scotland developed his Scottie McClue character as a phone-in host on Red Rose in Lancashire during the early 1990s, and in the decade that followed he took his act to stations in northern England and Scotland at various times. By his own admission, the nature of his act meant he had to find a new market every two to three years.
So what went wrong? The consolidation of local radio during the 1990s and 2000s effectively resulted in all the major stations in the big markets being owned by either Global or Bauer.
Regulation, or more specifically lack of regulation allowed this to happen, and effectively these once-local stations are now national brands with local news bulletins and adverts slotted in. Where necessary, they retain a four-hour local show each day to keep regulator Ofcom happy.
Bauer, in its previous guise of EMAP, had a renewed enthusiasm for local phone-ins on its northern Magic network from 2003, with Pete Price being given a Monday-Thursday slot on Magic 1548 (Liverpool) in addition to his existing Sunday night show on Radio City – effectively reviving the schedule he had from the late 1980s until well into the 1990s. For the first few months of 2003, it was also simulcast on Magic 999, the former frequency of Red Rose Radio, but by the spring of that year they had their own phone-in with Mark Keen. In Manchester, James Stannage’s phone-in on Key 103 was simulcast on Magic 1152.
This was very much the exception to the rule, as networking and consolidation was already well underway in the industry.
James Stannage was dismissed by Key 103 in June 2005, and James H Reeve returned to the late-night phone-in for a while afterwards before the format was dropped.
In Liverpool, Pete Price continued to broadcast five nights per week until 2014, when he was restricted to Sundays only, but this, too came to an end in May 2020. Up at Metro, Night Owls was reduced to Sunday nights only in 2019 before ending completely in April 2022. Other parts of the country, such as South Wales, lost their late-night phone-ins many years previously.
It’s easy to see how things got to this state. With radio now so tightly consolidated and much less risk-averse than it once was, it’s far easier to have some ‘late night love songs’ format or similar, with one show, networked across many stations, appealing broadly to a female demographic.
It’s far riskier, and indeed more expensive, to have an edgy phone-in host causing outrage. In this era of the permanently-offended and permanently-outraged on social media, a single complaint from a disgruntled listener can quickly build into a pile-on.
In no time, Ofcom, and indeed the radio station itself is bombarded with ‘how dare you allow this person on air’ type complaints whenever they express a strong opinion on, say, the migrant crisis or not liking Pride flags everywhere. The conglomerates that own local radio stations don’t seem to have much stomach for such a fight.
LBC is now a national brand that is in good health under the ownership of Global, though it is pretty much a 24/7 diet of hard news talk and there would be no place for a Robbie Vincent in its current guise.
Talk Radio and Talk TV provide strong programming from the likes of Mike Graham and Ian Collins (who himself hosted late-night phone-ins at various stations earlier in his career).
James Whale has revived and updated the format of his old Radio Aire show that was simulcast on late-night ITV with a weekly Saturday night programme on Talk TV.
But of the ‘old style’ late-night phone-ins, Allan Beswick is the last man standing. After moving to BBC Radio Manchester in the late 1980s, Beswick hosted a long-running lunchtime show, before moving to mid-mornings and then breakfast from 2009.
In 2015, Beswick made a welcome return to late-night radio with a phone-in on BBC Radio Manchester and Lancashire. He was obviously older than in his Red Rose days and was somewhat constrained by the impartiality rules of the BBC so was less ‘free’ than before, but nevertheless he was still a superb listen.
On the night of 22 May 2017, Beswick’s show was just beginning when news of an Islamic terrorist suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena broke. Beswick extended his show throughout the night and through to breakfast time and I listened on as the true horror of the events unfolded.
I developed an elevated level of respect for Beswick’s abilities as a broadcaster that night. He was able to be sensitive and adapt to an ever-changing situation. If an example was needed as to the value of local radio in the modern era, this was it.
In May 2021, it was announced that Beswick would be moving to weekends only, effectively going into semi-retirement, but there was a twist – in addition to BBC Radio Manchester and Lancashire, the new Saturday and Sunday night show would be heard on BBC Radio Merseyside, the very patch Beswick had so much fun winding up on Red Rose Radio in the 1980s.
At some point, Beswick started hosting the phone-in from his home in North Wales. We’re not sure quite when this began, but the pandemic made it a necessity, and the arrangement has continued ever since, with only occasional problems with the line failing.
In July, it was announced that from week commencing 8 October, all BBC local radio stations in England will be taking a networked late-night show hosted by Becky Want from Sunday to Thursday and Jo Good on Fridays and Saturdays.
I have nothing at all against either of these ladies as broadcasters, but this will mean the end of Beswick’s late night phone-in on Saturdays and Sundays, which is a rare gem in the BBC local radio schedules nowadays.
BBC local radio comes into its own when there are serious local emergencies, such as the horrific Manchester Arena terror attack, extreme weather and so on. On the whole, BBC local radio covers sport well, and there are some decent Sunday political programmes on various stations.
But very often, BBC local radio is twee, precious, slow and outdated. Daytime shows are full of phone-ins with questions like ‘how bad is the dog poo in your area’, followed in the next hour by Granny Adams popping into the studio to tell us about her prize-winning parsnips. They might open the phone lines again in the hour after that to ask a riveting question like ‘What’s your favourite chocolate in a box of Quality Street?’
Beswick appears to be taking redundancy in his stride. He has been semi-retired for several years, works from home, and, if he hosts his last show on Sunday 7 October, the last hour will roll into 8 October, which is his 75th birthday.
I’d like to think Beswick will reappear somewhere, though options are limited, with few, if any opportunities existing on independent local radio, and the BBC increasingly resorting to networking. I can imagine Beswick being a successful podcaster – he could have a lot of fun with that.
I also hope that a role can be found for Beswick’s regular cover presenter Connor Phillips, who is from a younger generation and has become a decent late-night phone-in host in his own right.
When Beswick leaves his current slot, an era will be coming to an end. He pioneered the local late-night phone-in in this country, and it also looks as though he will be man who ends it.
Yes, there is too much nostalgia around when people reminisce about poor-quality independent local radio on provincial stations, but with the demise of the late-night phone-in, we have lost something special and important.
Written by Marcus Stead
August 20, 2023 at 4:36 am
Posted in Comment, Opinion, Review