I have thought for years that oral history interviews with archive creators (or at least their family or friends) should be part of our standard accession procedure for all archives. But there never seems to be the time to do it. So I was really excited to get the chance to do a bit of it as part of the Piccadilly Radio project.
My first interviewee was former Religious Editor Mike Hopwood, who deposited some of his Piccadilly tapes a couple of years ago. Mike got the radio bug very early when his mum took him to the BBC’s Manchester radio station. After this, Mike got his own reel-to-reel recorder and got stuck in at home.
Mike story as a radio presenter started very early when he was on holiday with relatives in America in the early 1960s. Somehow Mike became the English pop correspondent for WJAB in Portland, Maine at the age of fifteen! Mike started off by sending over tapes and later talked to his American listeners by phone…
‘Calling Portland’ by Mike Hopwood, 1967 (ref HOPWOOD/17)
Mike went on to serve his journalistic apprenticeship with local newspapers in Denton where he grew up. Later he spent some time on Jersey at Channel TV and in London. He moved back up north when he got one of the news reporter jobs at Manchester’s new independent station – Piccadilly Radio. Here Mike explains how he came to become the station’s Religious Editor and who he chose as his religious advisers.
At Piccadilly Radio, Mike was inevitably (although inaccurately) nicknamed ‘The Reverend Hopwood’ and was unfortunate enough to be ‘toilet-bombed’ by local punk group Slaughter and the Dogs (who were probably in to record this session for Mark Radcliffe.
Mike remembers trying to read the news while on the end of Ken Dodd’s tickle stick, and meeting comatose comedian Hilda Baker on the morning after Piccadilly’s first birthday party.
In the evenings sometimes the news staff were the only people around to answer the door. Mike remembers shutting the door on Orinoco the Womble at the height of the IRA’s bomb campaign, and getting to know two of The Three Degrees (Sheila was upstairs parking the car you see).
Mike describes a typical long shift as a Piccadilly newsreader in the bunker-like newsroom with no windows (thanks to the DJ’s famous posters covering them up).
One of Mike’s scoops was to interview the former Prime Minister Ted Heath in 1977 when he was in opposition – on Heath’s unmade bed in the Midland Hotel!
The Heath interview was recorded using a Uher portable tape recorder – a device that helped to transformed radio and oral history recording. Mike explains what would happen to the tape next once the interview was recorded to make it ready for broadcast.
Mike went on from Piccadilly Radio to have a very successful career as a newsreader, chat show host and producer at various TV stations around the UK. Like many other Piccadilly alumni, Mike considers his experience at Piccadilly Radio as being a springboard to the rest of his career.
As an archivist I think that oral history like this provides really useful context to the radio station’s output. It can help us understand how the shows were made, what it meant to those lucky enough to be broadcasting and listening back in the day. Stay tuned to 261 AM and 103 FM for more Piccadilly Radio oral history snippets thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund!
You can listen to Mike’s full oral history (ref PICCOH/1) alongside the Piccadilly Radio archives at Manchester Central Library.