1996 – Alan, interviewing Marty Wilde

 Alan ownes and operates the Golden Days Archive and Production facility some of which can also be found in broadcasting stations and broadcast museums in the United States and yet, as he tells us in this feature, the idea for the original “Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll” shows were only scheduled for six weeks on a local radio station. Today the programming can still be heard and it is highly likely that wherever you are listening in the UK the chances are something has come from the archive, Alan takes up the story in his own words in… HAIL! HAIL! ROCK’N’ROLL (PDF file)

Friday 29th December 2006. We linked my local radio programme directly with Carol Miller a presenter on station WAXQ-FM. I have known her for many years since we first met at station WNEW-FM in New York in 1996. She was telling us how New Yorkers were preparing for New Year. I used to link with her every Friday afternoon on the station for which I was Programme Controller, X-CEL-FM based in Cambridgeshire, between 1999 and 2001. There were three US bases who used to listen in to us. Later I managed to get her on to the BBC Eastern Counties network and currently she broadcasts a weekly newsletter on BBC South local stations on Wednesday evenings. If you can pick up Radios Kent, Surrey/Sussex, Berkshire or Oxford, she is on either the Charlie Crocker or Roger Day shows. She is married to recording engineer Paul Logus.

Pic of me during the Radio Yare link to New York. The smile belies the fact I was displaying all the symptoms of flu. But, being an old stager, I carried on. A drop of alcohol over the New Year weekend no doubt helped. The photo was taken by press officer for Radio Yare, Brian Frederick.

On a more serious note: on the afternoon of 9/11, we managed to establish a link with her – only one of two ILR stations in England – as those dreadful events unfolded. She was not aware that New York had been attacked until I told her as she was in bed nursing the flu. I still have the recordings of the programme, it doesn’t make pleasant listening. Copies of the tape we made are now archived at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York.