Having found some time to think back 28 years and put fingers to keyboard, I will attempt to give you my version of what happened at the beginning of “legitimate” commercial radio in the UK.

In mid-July 73 I was working as News Producer at 4BH Brisbane, a member of the Macquarie network based at 2GB in Sydney.

I resigned so I could take to the air, BOAC in those days, and head for London to try my luck at the inception of the above.

On arrival in London I acquired some floor space to sleep on in a rented house full of mixed foreigners at Willesden Green and started looking around for work, clutching my CV and an audition tape.

My first port of call was Capital where a fellow Aussie, Greg Grainger, was News Editor. Greg, quite rightly, explained that he had enough “foreign” voices and suggested I contact LBC as they were looking for around a hundred journos.

I wrote to LBC and was invited in for an interview with John Clare who listened to my audition tape without giving too much away. This was followed by a letter on August 8, 73 from Michael Cudlipp offering me a position as a Production Assistant/Scriptwriter at a salary of 2,650 pounds a year (shift work inclusive) starting on Sept 10. I was entitled to four weeks holiday a year and on three months notice if I cocked it up, or wanted to leave.

Peter Wilson, Administration manager posted further terms of employment to me, on Sept 3. However my job description had suddenly changed to Broadcast Journalist.

On Sept 10 all staff gathered in a building on the Thames side of Fleet Street for an introduction to LBC and what was planned. First problem discussed was the fear that the studios in Communications House, Gough Square, wouldn’t be ready for the planned opening day of Oct 8. Management was desperate to beat Capital on air.

Despite this uncertainty all of us took part in “dummy runs” in part of the studios from Sept 27th as tradesmen sawed, hammered and glued around us.

Then, within 48 hours of going “on air” it was discovered that no newsreaders had been singled out and the entire newsroom staff were “auditioned” by a Canadian colleague of Bill Hutton (Jack?). Hutton, himself a Canadian, was representing Selkirk Radio Canada which had a large interest in LBC.

I was in the last half dozen staff “auditioned” and I can well remember (Jack?) jumping out of his seat in the control room shouting, “At last I’ve found myself a goddam newsreader, you’ll open the radio station!”

Quite frankly, it was the pinnacle of my career, which was to last 40 years all up. At the time, however, I was feeling a mixture of excitement, fear, a giant ego trip and intense nerves.

So on the eve of the first day I hardly slept as I had to rise at midnight; a London cab picked me up at 1am and I began my shift at 2am finishing at 10am. The oddest shift I ever worked in my entire radio and TV career.

The first announcer that morning was David Jessel (ex BBC) who, I’m told, was physically ill into the waste paper basket in his studio.Fortunately I was in the other main studio.

We went on air in the middle of the Yom Kippur war, a marvelous coincidence for us at LBC, not so great for the combatants.

I still have a tape of the first hour, complete with messages from Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. I also brought back to Brisbane press clippings of LBC’s first year with all its ups and downs. Some of the headlines were shockers for those who worked there. I also have Fleet St. cartoons lampooning my Aussie accent and original news copy which us readers were expected to read on air word perfect.

Also on hand I have internal memos and a list of the people who passed through the station in the first year. Under the heading “Lest We Forget” it lists 124 souls.

Then there were “incidents” like the time one of the female producers took umbrage at the conduct of a certain male journo and king-hit him in the main corridor leading to the studios. Laid him out for quite awhile she did.

On Oct 8, 98 my wife and I were in the UK touring and I attended LBC’s 25th Anniversary at ITN in Grays Lane for lunch and then at a great pissup in Drakes Wine Bar off Fleet St that night.

It was an exceptional day and I estimate I got to meet again 90 percent of the people I wanted to see. Keith Belcher, who wrote the first bulletin, was there as were journos I hadn’t seen for 23 years.

Names I still remember from those first days are Jon Snow, Carol Barnes, Joan Thirkettle, Howard Anderson, Graham Addicott, Vince McGarry, Jim Keltz, Mervyn Hall, Ron Onions, Tony Townsend, Mike Lewis, Di Latham, Sarah Dickinsen, Adrian Love, Paul Callan, Janet Street-Porter, George Gale, Geoffery Wansell and Malcolm Rennie (who lost his life in East Timor Nov 75)

I would very much like to keep in touch with many of them.