Chris Evans, Saddleworth Moor And Good Vibrations

Andrew Liddle remembers Piccadilly Radio, ‘the sound of Manchester’, in the 1980s

Anyone who has driven across Saddleworth Moor will have seen it from the summit of the M62, the highest motorway point in England. Standing around 300 feet tall on the border of Rochdale and Oldham, the radio mast has been part of the landscape since the late 1950s.

Actually, it can be seen from miles away, but its gaunt frame is particularly eerie when looming like a silvery spectre out of the mists, not uncommon up here. The bleak, windswept moorland, became infamous, of course, during the mid-1960s because of its association with the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. This is unfortunate because on clear dry days it’s a wonderful place for a hike with magnificent views stretching to the distant hills of Derbyshire, Cheshire and North Wales. Beneath it lies Uppermill and – to coin a collective noun – an alliteration of delightful Pennine villages, Dobcross, Diggle, Delph and Denshaw.

What’s this got to do with Chris Evans? I hear you asking. Well, the career of the famous radio and television presenter was actually launched about 15 miles away in Piccadilly, Manchester. Bear with me.

On leaving school he embarked on a number of dead-end jobs in his native Warrington, including bizarrely snooping for a private detective agency and appearing in a scanty loincloth as a Tarzanogram! It was only when he joined Piccadilly Radio, in 1983, that he found a place for his zany creativity and things started happening for him.

Chris delights in telling the story of how he blagged his way to a part-time job as assistant to popular DJ, Timmy Mallet, telling him totally untruthfully he was a fellow record-spinner called Pete James, the star of Warrington Hospital Radio. One of his first jobs with Timmy was to play a dim-witted stooge called Nobby Nolevel. His popularity with listeners soon got him a full-time position and an innovative new role, which involved driving around the Manchester area turning up unexpectedly at listeners' houses.

Quite soon he had gone on to BBC Greater London Radio, a stepping stone to Radio One and national fame. The rest as they say is history.

It’s truly remarkable how many of pop radio's most outstanding talents cut their teeth with Piccadilly Radio, which began broadcasting at 5am, on Tuesday, April 2, 1974, on 261 m (1152 kHz) and 97.0 MHz FM. The very first record played, an inspired choice with an eye on what was to come, was the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations.

The first commercial radio station in the city, it was ground-breaking in a number of key ways and quickly became part of the life of the city. No one could miss it in Piccadilly Plaza, emblazoning itself on the heart of the city in large lettering accompanied by giant images of the increasingly famous DJs. Locally, almost all became household names, their catchphrases and catchy jingles on everyone’s lips, their personalities and lifestyles endlessly speculated on. Many like Gary Davies, Andy Peebles, Mike Sweeney, Pete Mitchell, James Stannage, Steve Penk and James H Reeve, as well as Chris and Timmy, went on to a stellar career far beyond Manchester.

This has to be more than coincidence and the station provided an excellent grounding for them with production standards very high. Although for the most part their fare was an eclectic mix of easy listening music, interspersed with news and sport, everything sounding refreshingly bright and spontaneous, programming was meticulously researched and dovetailed to perfection. DJs were instructed not talk over the records and the jingles were witty rather than repetitively annoying.

It has an honourable place in the fascinating history of independent radio which effectively began in this country with pirate radio, principally Radio Caroline, founded in 1964, broadcasting from a ship moored off the Suffolk coast. Steve England joined Piccadilly as a DJ after working for Caroline, and brought with him a funky style of jingles that set the tone for the future.

If you were around at the time, the uptempo 'Piccadilly Hit Music' theme tune, written by John Cameron and the legendary record producer Mickie Most, played and nicely harmonised by their band of session musicians, CCS, will be indelibly printed on your brain. It was everywhere, blasting out of shops and hotels, part of the sound track of any visit to the barber’s or taxi ride. In central Manchester, it was difficult to cross the street without hearing it somewhere, filtering through the sound of traffic.

The late-night American-influenced phone-in with the feisty James Stannage (finally sacked in 2005 for repeatedly insulting callers) had for a time the largest talk show audience outside London, whilst the Dave Ward and Umberto Breakfast Show helped the station to become one of the biggest attractions on AM.

Like most long-running radio stations, Piccadilly underwent various re-brandings and band changes over the years. The first major one was when splitting into two services in 1988, with Key 103 broadcasting on 96.2 FM, while Piccadilly Gold went to 1152 on AM. In the mid-1990s the latter became Piccadilly 1152 and the playlist became more contemporary, less dominated by golden oldies.

At the dawn of the new Millennium the station was rebranded as Magic 1152, consistent with the other 9 Magic Radio stations the new owners, Bauer, were operating across London and the north of England. Happily at Easter 2004, the station once again won back its Manchester recognition, rebranded as Piccadilly Magic 1152 in honour of its 30-year history, even though the studios had relocated to the Castlefield area in 1996.

The sad truth is that in the 1990s with the proliferation of other stations in Manchester and the surrounding areas, Piccadilly lost its huge audience and its local celebrity DJs. But it is remembered with affection by all those for whom it was the voice of Manchester, the “Pride of the North”, their source of news and views, music and chat.

There’s an interesting quirk that will not be known to the younger generation of listeners to Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, as it became in 2019. Back in the day, whichever station the car radio was set to, it would almost always automatically jump to the bright sunny Eighties’ sound of Piccadilly Radio, as you were driving on the M62, breasting the hill, passing the big transmitter. Not that surprising really, bearing in mind this is where it was being relayed from!

It was a clarion call, the clearest possible signal that Manchester’s Good Vibrations were close at hand.