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Stoke
Mandeville Hospital Radio was 'born' at 7.30 pm on Monday
December the 4th 1978 after more than a year of planning and
fundraising by a team of dedicated people who thought that
Stoke Mandeville Hospital should have it's very own radio
station.
The first voice
to be heard was presenter Geoff Tyrell who started the station
off with an old TV jingle called 'Let us be the one you turn
to' which was followed by the Les Reed instrumental "Man of
Mystery". The very first request to be played was for 'Colin'
on the burns ward who asked us to play 'Sir Duke' by Stevie
Wonder. The request show was presented by the programme controller
at the time Dave Ralph.
Later in the
evening Alan Brunham presented the very first Chart Show on
the station. The Number One at the time was Rod Stewart's
'Do you think I'm sexy'. The rest of the team included Peter
Royal - chaiman, Jenny Royal - secretary, Chris Payne - chief
engineer, Mary Payne - fundraiser, and our President was (and
still is) Freda Roberts. One of the first fundraising events
was a 100 hour sponsored drumming marathon and there were
donations from the likes of Aylesbury round table, The Harding
trust, Carreras Rothmans Ltd and pupils from Aylesbury high
school.
At this time we were only broadcasting
for three evenings a week. During the next few years our hours
of broadcasting (and our record library) increased as we continued
entertaining the patients and raising more funds. Other big
fund raising events at the time included a 50 hour sponsored
programme in 1980 by Martin Kinch and Shane Carlson with special
guests including Labi Siffre, Roy Wood, Tim Rice and D.L.T
who also compared a fashion show at The Civic Centre for us.
Other celebrities
who have helped us over the years include Noel Edmunds, Colin
Baker, John Craven, Bev Bevan, Norman Wisdom, David Icke,
Carl Wayne, Vince Hill, Anne Robinson, Geoffrey Palmer, Blue
Weaver, Isla St Clair, Kenneth Cope, Annie Haslam, Terry Wogan,
Ken Bruce and Jimmy Savile to name just a few.
IIn 1997 Stoke Mandeville Hospital
Radio was one of two Hospital Radio stations to be awarded
a temporary experimental AM licence by Ofcom (The other station
was Hospital Radio Tyneside in Newcastle) and as a result
of the success of that experiment we and many other Hospital
radio stations are now able to broadcast permanently on AM
(or as some people still like to call it, Medium Wave).
At 2pm on Monday 26th January 1998
DJ Simon Bates came to the station to help us launch our new
AM service on 1575 kHz with an opening speech and a visit
to some of the wards. He told TV and newspaper reporters "The
radio station is part of the community and this is long overdue".
On the same day we also started broadcasting 24 hours a day
with a mixture of live programmes and an automated sustaining
service using the Myriad PC playout software.
In 2002 we
celebrated 50 years of number ones by playing every number
one hit; a lot of those records were sponsored either by patients
and staff of the hospital, local companies or members of the
station and their family and friends. We also held a phone
in auction for celebrity memorabilia which included a gold
disc of The Pet Shop Boys album 'Please', a silver disc of
the 'Saturday Night Fever' soundtrack and signed photos from
the likes of Kylie Minogue, Tom Jones and Chris Eubank. Many
local companies also gave us items to auction off.
With the help
of our local Internet service provider Nildram, January 2004
saw the launch of our this website where you will find lots
of information about the station and our programme schedule.
If you would like a request played for a patient or a member
of staff you can now do so "on line" by going to the contact
page.
In 2006 the Hospital trust told
us that we would soon have to move out of the building that
our studio was based in, this was due to the re development
of the hospital which meant that our studios (along with other
buildings in the old part of the Hospital) would have to be
demolished.
We managed to continue broadcasting
until March 2007 with Alex Trick and Tom Clare presenting
the last live programme from the old studios on Sunday the
18th March. As we started to dismantle the studios, and with
the bulldozers getting nearer every day, our computer carried
on broadcasting non stop music until we had to pull the plug
at 10pm on Thursday the 22nd of March 2007.
After just over 28 years of broadcasting
from that building it was time to move on.
Our members then had the mammoth task
of moving equipment, records and CDs to another part of the hospital
where Paul our engineer had the task of building us a new studio,
Aerials and transmitters had to be erected and the miles of cables
had to be re laid.
On Tuesday the 12th June the computers
were started back up and the sound of Stoke Mandeville Hospital
Radio was once again broadcasting to the hospital complex.
With a few more days spent getting the studio ready for live
broadcasting it was at 6pm on Monday the 18th June that Martin
Kinch presented Solid Gold, the first live programme from
the new studio, this was followed by the first request show
at 8pm presented by Matthew Nash and Alex Trick.
We are now into our 28th year of
broadcasting to patients and staff at Stoke Mandeville Hospital
and we look forward to the next 28 years and more!
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