Radio Heroes - part 2

JK & Joel, Viking FM

I have a memory, lodged somewhere rather deeply, of being on my bike, aged around 16. It’s a sunny day at the start of summer - I think GCSEs were days away. I had a fluorescent, bright-yellow bag over my shoulder, with lots of Scunthorpe Telegraphs inside - yes, I’ve always been involved in the media in one way or another - and I was laughing so much my bike - and therefore I - toppled over.

In the late 1990s, most people still listened to the radio in the morning and driving home later, and the names were BIG. You effectively became part of a tribe; sometimes the conversations on the school bus were shouting matches about who listened to whom, and what made each great - or shit.

Despite the media desert of northern Lincolnshire, there were a few competing camps.

The dance crew had Galaxy. Broadcast from Leeds - for we rural types, an almost impossibly bright and scary sounding urban centre (but in the North!) which sounded both distant and yet close enough to touch. Galaxy was COOL. The DJs had crazy names. Bam-Bam???? Madness.

I can’t begin to describe how big Galaxy felt. It was absolutely the centre of so many 16 year old cultural worlds. Dance was where all the cool kids congregated.

Of course that wasn’t me. There were other options - Radio 1 was definitely in some people’s ears, though Chris Evans felt a bit too grown-up for my tastes, and it was also very London - a place which I think I’d been to once, and frankly scared the bejesus out of me. (I was a pretty sheltered kid). Most of its best stuff seemed to be in the evening anyway, when people were listening to Dave Pearce, Pete Tong and Westwood.

No-one listened to Lincs FM unless forced to by their parents. I remember one classmate being on Atlantic 252’s breakfast show winning a prize, but for me, there was only one station.

So then... Viking FM. 96.9, broadcasting from Hull - and the home of JK & Joel.

Full disclosure - I remember very little of the features (sorry). I do remember listening to the Lightning Seeds as part of the show, but other than that the music was pretty forgettable. What I really enjoyed was the chemistry between the two of them. They were bloody funny. There were all the usual local radio things - prank calls, etc - but as with so much of the best radio, what I remember is not the words, but the feeling I got when listening.

God I loved them. It felt a bit naughty. They sounded confident as hell. They sounded pretty bloody cool (which as already mentioned, I wasn’t)... and at that time, they were part of what sounded like a massive station.

I can still remember most of the names. They were on drive, I think - bear with me, haziness. Simon Logan was definitely doing breakfast for a bit before moving on. Scott Makin (now on Radio Newcastle) was in mid-morning. Top 10 at 10 was definitely a feature. Afternoons? I think there was an Irish guy called David Johnson. Late nights - Sara Fellows. I can’t remember if Sam Heywood was a later addition, but she was definitely around at some point. Later, the legendary Hirsty. Yes, that is all off the top of my head, because research is for fools, and because some bits of radio just stick in your head.

I loved them all. That era of Viking FM definitely fuelled a love of radio and audio for me that has never really dimmed. It felt quite exciting - hindsight might mean I am misremembering a sound that was in reality formatted to fuck - but it did feel like they could do or say whatever they wanted - and no-one encapsulated that more for me than JK & Joel, who in the middle of the afternoon just felt like an absolute blast of must-listen enjoyment.

JK & Joel ended up on Radio 1. I’m sure they were great, but nothing ever quite recaptured the magic of those teenage years for me - when life seemed full of possibilities, mostly endless, and radio seemed like a joyful playground... which was slowly starting to seem like a (silly) career option. I think that’s on me, not them.

Straight after those GCSEs, I made a move that would really kick off the radio ambitions - not quite so exciting, but I have very fond memories of Scunthorpe Hospital Radio, where I remember being greeted on my first visit by a former teacher of mine, who I didn’t know also volunteered at the station, with the words “What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

Later I would apply to be a news journalist at Viking FM as I was starting out, purely because I remembered loving the station so much as a kid. I didn’t get the job, which was almost certainly the right decision, but I did get to walk round the station, which made me plenty happy enough.

Despite that setback, I did continue to love radio. Next in the (far more occasional than I planned) Radio Heroes list, are the duo who had the greatest effect on me ever as a listener - if not a producer - of radio; and of whom I have a beautiful piece of artwork on my home studio wall. Stop....