The FOC thread.

Radio Luxembourg was my preferred source of music 'under the bedsheets' when I first got my hands on a transistor radio. Radio Caroline was really patchy.

On the subject of 'the Emperor', I met Rosko briefly at a party somewhere in North London in about 1972. Seemed a nice bloke. He arrived with two very young girls, chatted with a few of us for a while, before he and his young friends 'retired' to a bedroom, never to be seen by us again... I wonder if they're still in there?
I tried listening to that back in the day, with my tranny perched on the radiator next to my bed, but I got so pissed off with the way it faded in and out, I'm still happy to grumble about it today.

Radio Luxembourg was shit.

10 seconds of music followed by 30 seconds of listening to background radio waves from the big bang.
 
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Radio Luxembourg was my preferred source of music 'under the bedsheets' when I first got my hands on a transistor radio. Radio Caroline was really patchy.

On the subject of 'the Emperor', I met Rosko briefly at a party somewhere in North London in about 1972. Seemed a nice bloke. He arrived with two very young girls, chatted with a few of us for a while, before he and his young friends 'retired' to a bedroom, never to be seen by us again... I wonder if they're still in there?
I bought a Japanese transistor radio from a small ad in NME by a tiny new company called Sony. Paid for it with Postal Orders.
It was very small and the model is now in a Japanese museum as an early example of miniturisation.
Radio Luxembourg through an earpiece while ‘sleeping’: Teen and Twenty Disc club (host Saville, liked a teen so they said), D-E-C-C-A, Stayblonde and Brunatex, ‘Bidex because’….
 
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I wonder what some of our younger brethren make of this thread.
-What’s Button B?
-Were you all criminals then?
-What’s a Postal Order?
-You mean you had to go down the street for a crap?
-Were City in the league then?
-What was a communal bath house and why pine needles?
-Was @Mad Eyed Screamer on What’s My Line or Does the Team Think?
Young guys, it’s all a long time ago in a different world.
 
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I wonder what some of our younger brethren make of this thread.
-What’s Button B?
-Were you all criminals then?
-What’s a Postal Order?
-You mean you had to go down the street for a crap?
-Were City in the league then?
-What was a communal bath house and why pine needles?
-Was @Mad Eyed Screamer on What’s My Line or Does the Team Think?
Young guys, it’s all a long time ago in a different world.
Re #4 I needed an urgent number 2 in O'Connell Street, Dublin and the public convenience consisted of a long plank with holes every two feet on top of each was a large Irishman with his pants round his ankles. My dad came and persuaded somebody reading his paper to let me on. Anybody else visit those facilities in the 50s?
 
The memory is fading now but I seem to remember going on holiday to
Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katsanellabogen-by-the-sea.
That young man who kissed a girl ‘unexpectedly’ would be charged with sexual assault these days.
 
I tried listening to that back in the day, with my tranny perched on the radiator next to my bed, but I got so pissed off with the way it faded in and out, I'm still happy to grumble about it today.

Radio Luxembourg was shit.

10 seconds of music followed by 30 seconds of listening to background radio waves from the big bang.

Well I don't know, yes, it was frustrating — but that was all part of the mystery of it. Mary Wells and “My Guy” fading in and out over the airwaves. It was as if it was being beamed from another planet, the Planet of Pop Music.

Remember that the BBC was resolutely hostile initially to all pop and rock. We had the fucking BBC Light Service, Bud Flanagan and Ray Conniff to chew on! It was the pirate radios that forced them to wake up to the fact that people were no longer speaking like Winston Churchill (if they ever did) and wearing morning dress and toppers…
 
I blame the Americans.
Until they started sending us proper comedy we had the likes of Harry Worth.
Oh how we laughed when he used his reflection to make it look like he was raising 2 feet in the air.

6pm Sunday evening.
Sat around the coal fire, ice on the windows, eating tinned peaches listening to Songs of Praise from a church we'd never heard of and were never likely to see.

And they say things have got worse !

 

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