On 25th July 2024 Tony Blackburn celebrated 60 years of radio broadcasting.
Here's a very young pre-Radio 1 Tony Blackburn on Radio Caroline together with Mike Allen, plus a number of well known Radio Caroline jingles.
Tony Blackburn's first disc-jockeying job was in 1964 on 199 Radio Caroline broadcasting off the English coast from Frinton-on-Sea Essex.
In 1964 the 21 year old Blackburn, who was a singer at the time, was excited by the prospect of an offshore pop music station starting up. He wrote a speculative letter to Radio Caroline and was offered an interview at the imposing Caroline House, 6 Chesterfield Gardens, Mayfair. On attending the interview he was amazed to be offered the job of DJ - along with his dog Arnold of course.
From Radio Caroline he went to Big L Radio London - another hugely popular pirate station - and thence to BBC Radio 1 when it began in 1967.
The Radio Caroline jingles often featured American-born singer Madeline Bell who had arrived in Britain in 1962 and later became well-known as the female lead singer of Blue Mink. (It was Big-L however, not Radio Caroline, that brought the famous American PAMS jingles to British audiences for the first time.)
199 refers to the wavelength of the station (Caroline broadcast on 199 metres). Most popular music stations in Britain were known by their wavelengths - eg 'Fabulous 208' (Radio Luxembourg) and 247 'Wonderful Radio One' - until around the late seventies when the prevalence of imported radio sets that marked their tuning dials in frequencies rather than wavelengths brought the practice to a close.
Негізгі бет Ойын-сауық Tony Blackburn on Radio Caroline 1964 - Complete with Famous Caroline Jingles
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