Radio Heroes - part 1

Peter Adamson, BBC Radio Humberside

In an effort to do some long-form writing practice, over the next few posts I’m going to write a bit about my radio heroes - at least the ones I haven’t worked directly with.

The obvious place to start? Yep. Hull.

Peter Adamson, BBC Radio Humberside

My love affair with radio started - as I suppose most lifelong passions do - at a young age. One of my first memories is of being in the kitchen in our little house in northern Lincolnshire. My mum is there - she wasn’t at work, which makes me think it must have been in the mid-80s, and my little sister was either arriving or just arrived - and the radio was on. (Have now checked Andy Walmsley’s excellent Radio Jottings website - and I’m completely wrong, it is at the earliest 1990 when Peter’s show appears, at midday. Ah, the joys of memory... https://andywalmsley.blogspot.com/2021/02/radio-humberside-year-by-year.html )

We lived in Scotter, a small village about seven miles south of Scunthorpe, in a little grey bricked house in a small, six-house cul-de-sac. A quick trip to Google maps shows it still has the paved, sloping drive next to the kitchen door, down which I used to bowl. However, on this day it was raining... so no cricket. Instead, my mum was cooking lunch.

Now, a peculiar quirk of local geography. Scotter is the first village in Lincolnshire as you approach from the north, but people from that area largely looked towards Scunthorpe - in the separate authority of then Humberside, now North Lincolnshire for facilities - shops, colleges and so on.

In 1971, the BBC opened Radio Humberside - which covered the City of Kingston-upon-Hull, on the north bank of the Humber, and the south bank towns of Grimsby and Scunthorpe. In other words, the county of Humberside - and they managed that three years before the county itself existed. Radio Lincolnshire (the station at which I later worked) didn’t start broadcasting until 1980, and covered places like Boston and Spalding, which was a long way away and in the wrong direction. So although we were officially in Lincolnshire, Radio Humberside always felt like the natural local option (despite the news about Hull, which frankly felt like a different land... and some would say still does...)

I don’t remember a huge amount about those early 90s programmes of Radio Humberside, except for Peter Adamson’s Soapbox - the daily phone in. I do remember it sounding very grown-up; people moaning about politics, or the day’s news... or more likely, the bin collections on the Bransholme estate - but all of it helmed by a man who sounded like he owned the whole area - despite a soft north-eastern accent. He sounded like a proper local radio presenter - everyone knew him, and he knew everyone, and if for some reason he didn’t know you when you rang in, very soon it would become apparent that you might as well have been friends - if bickering ones, for decades.

All of this obviously had a major effect on me, as at the age of 10 or 11, I ended up doing a school project in which we could choose a topic to cover. I chose radio, and wrote a letter to Radio Humberside asking for anything they could send me. I think I was hoping for a badge... because as a nerdy kid, I collected them. I think the shoebox full of them is still in my parents’ loft, somewhere.

Instead I got a letter back inviting me to the station, which as you can imagine to a radio-obsessed kid, was like Christmas coming early.

So one weekday my mum & I (and I think another school friend) went over the Humber Bridge, and I entered the BBC for the first time, in the old studios in Chapel Street in Hull. We were greeted by Steve - either Massam or Redgrave, but I am pretty sure the latter - and given a tour of the studio. It must have been lunchtime, because I remember seeing Peter Adamson through the glass doing his programme. He was busy - so we didn’t speak directly - but I had seen my first radio hero doing his thing... and I was hooked on radio.

Many years later, one of my first proper jobs in radio was as a phone answerer and Broadcast Assistant at BBC Radio York, where I was at university. It was a Sunday morning, the excellent Jonathan Cowap was presenting his phone-in programme, and I remember turning to my still-friend Claire, my fellow BA, and asking if she could smell tomato soup.

She looked baffled. There was no tomato soup. The sound of a local radio phone-in had transported me back to the late 80s/early 90s, and I was back with my mum in the kitchen, listening to Peter Adamson, and she was cooking Campbell’s Tomato Soup.

For years after, whenever I was presenting or producing a phone in, I’d get that smell of tomato soup. I’d remember Peter Adamson, and then I’d try to be as good as him. I never really managed it.

Next time, a very definite change in radio style... but not location....

A couple of additional notes: When standing in for Rod Whiting on Radio Lincolnshire’s Breakfast Show in the mid-2000s, I had to do a handover with Steve Redgrave - who had been presenting the early show from Hull. I related this tale of him showing me around the studios aged 10. I don’t think he was impressed!

Also those classic Radio Humberside schedules have a few names on them who have had a big impression on me during my radio career - mostly a good one! I’ve already mentioned Jonathan Cowap, the best pretender to the Adamson crown I ever met; Mike Hurley moved from Radio Humberside to Radio York at one point, and I ended up being his BA. He was the definition of a character - he’d voiced over the Hovis adverts, had a love of vintage buses, was creative and presented a Saturday mid-morning programme called Hurley Burley - along with Sally Fairfax, who’s still at Radio Humbs - which had a very dedicated audience. Also at Radio York later was Jules Bellerby, who presented a mid-morning programme with his wife Julia Booth; his was the first programme I drove the desk for on an OB; the marvellous Andy Comfort, who now spends all his time on the trains, which is probably a better use of it than the two of us sitting in London pubs on ‘union duty’; and Charlie Partridge. Charlie was my boss at Radio Lincolnshire, gave me my first full-time job in radio, encouraged me to present and to eventually progress my career elsewhere. We lost him earlier this year. He was a good man, and I was hugely sorry to hear of his loss.