Steve Maskrey was always going to be radio engineer. When young Steve, aged around 11, was asked what he was interested in by his mother’s midwife, his answer was: ‘Radio and electronics’. By chance, the midwife’s son was also a fan of radio…
Just as the young radio ham was getting ready to leave school, and wondering what would come next, Piccadilly Radio hit the airwaves. Steve called in to the station from Humphrey Park library to try to win a new turntable. Steve listened to the children’s show ‘Tripe and Onions’ and Andy Peebles’s ‘Soul Train’. Although Steve was just too old to appear on ‘Tripe and Onions’, presenter Judith Weymont invited him to see the studio. He was hooked and spent a summer doing odd jobs around the station.
After the summer, appointed as a proper Piccadilly Radio apprentice, Steve had ‘day release’ to go to college – but he couldn’t help nipping in to the station in Piccadilly on his way home. As so many community radio people continue to say to me today, the station had become a home from home…
The Piccadilly alumni keep referring casually to mysterious things like ‘the lines room’, ‘radio carts’ and the ‘snoop loop’. One of the great things about oral history is that it’s OK to ask really basic questions. Getting explanations for things is the whole point, after all. So Steve’s interview was my big chance to ask some daft questions.
Steve’s description of the lines room and of the structure of Piccadilly’s wires travelling around Greater Manchester’s town halls and sports stadiums was one of the lightbulb moments for me in his interview. Of course there had to be all that stuff – radio doesn’t happen by magic. But if you’re not in the industry, it’s tricky to get a handle on the sheer scale and complexity of the amazing operation behind the scenes.
I had seen pictures of DJs picking out carts in the studio and putting them in machines but I had no idea what they did or how they worked. Turns out these big chunky quarter-inch cassettes allowed the DJs to line up their jingles, idents and adverts in between the microphones going live.
I’d heard of logging tapes – the temporary copies made by the station of what was transmitted just in case of any legal bother. But the snoop loop was a new one on me. This was a sneaky device wired up by the engineers behind the scenes to record to cassette while the DJ’s mic was hot, but to stop when the music played. All this so that the next day the Managing Director could listen back at his leisure and keep tabs on how the Nightbeat DJs were performing!
Here’s a clip from one of only two snoop loop tapes in the collection. You can hear the music clicking out every time the hesitant Nightbeat presenter James Whiteley presses play, and you can also hear him getting his turntables mixed up…
As an engineer, Steve was very familiar with all the problems that Gates and EMT station’s turntables could cause. When the brilliant but fragile Technics SP10s arrived, Steve’s engineering brain couldn’t help making an improvement to shield the tone arm…
Steve remembers engineering for Richard Sinton, watching in awe while Sinton chain-smoked his way through the station’s weekend classical music show, scribbling his next perfect link while the last record played.
This clip of Sinton introducing recordings of Bach through the ages and apologising for the hiss on a 1920s shellac underlines what an engaging and eccentric broadcaster he was.
When Piccadilly Radio recorded the Hallé orchestra performing the Last Night of the Proms, Steve was in his element learning how best to mic up the Free Trade Hall and even filming the show so that the crew could follow the orchestral action more closely.
The pope’s visit to Heaton Park in 1982 was real team effort, but it was actually Steve’s second outside papal broadcast. Turns out that doing an OB from the city’s biggest park involving talkbacks for presenters is an engineering challenge…
One of the station’s regular major outside broadcasts was the city’s marathon, another huge logistical task…
It’s interesting to reflect on what doesn’t survive in the archives. We have no episodes at all of Tripe and Onions, a programme that a generation of Manchester kids grew up with. All I’ve found is this advert. Maybe somebody will have taped something at home and bring it in one day. Let’s hope so.
Of course, at the time, everybody’s attention was on making great radio – not keeping it for posterity. But as a sound archivist the story the ‘bulk eraser’ is a trauma I won’t get over in a hurry!
Steve went on to have a varied and fascinating career in broadcasting, working for the BBC, Sky and for his own companies. Along the way he has been involved in setting up and running other local stations including Fortune Radio and Silk FM.
Steve has made many lifelong friendships at the station and regularly gets together with the other Piccadilly Radio alumni. I can see why these lovely people still meet up to hang out with each other fifty years after the station started and I’m very grateful to them for taking the time to tell their stories. And a special thanks goes to Steve for volunteering to help me fix some of the library’s reel-to-reel machines!
You can listen to Steve’s oral history and the Piccadilly Radio Archive at Manchester Central Library thanks to National Lottery players.