The Launch of the Radio London Club

Soon after Radio London hit the airwaves, the Curzon Street offices began to be overwhelmed by thousands of letters from listeners. On February 4th, Radlon MD Philip Birch sent a memo out to the Galaxy.

"Commencing immediately, it is important that we do not solicit any more fan mail on the air (even obliquely).

As you know, we are currently organising a fan club and we will channel all of our fan mail into the club by using the commercial that has already been made by Dave Cash. We will fairly shortly give you the OK to continue using this commercial once for every DJ show.

However, do not use the commercial till we give you the OK, since we want to be properly organised to handle the mail when it floods in."

The Radio London Fan Club was also advertised in the edition of 'Reveille' magazine dated 18th February, with membership priced at 5/- (25p).

A Fan Club Secretary had been appointed, but it soon became apparent that things had gone wrong, when people who had sent money to join the club started enquiring why they had not received their membership cards. It was subsequently discovered that a quantity of uncashed cheques and postal orders had been secreted in a drawer.

To sort out the mess, Robyn Rogers, a woman in her mid-twenties, was appointed Club Secretary with immediate effect. Robyn's first job was to despatch a three-page welcome newsletter to all new members, containing information about the ship, her crew, the DJs and various onshore events.

Members were told to make sure they tuned in to the the Fab Forty show to find out if they were a winner of the Radio London Club Disc of the Week.

Robyn apparently stuck with the job and acquired two assistants, as this feature from Disc Weekly, dated November 13 1965 shows. However, it's a pity the writer failed to spell Robyn's name correctly.

Mary

(With many thanks to Mike Barraclough for the clipping)

Kenny Everett's 1966 Easter Marathon

Mike Barraclough kindly provided the Tiles Easter Marathon advert from Melody Maker, which Hans Knot had originally posted on Facebook. It prompted Mike to conduct further research into the Tiles gigs of 1966. Additional research from me led to this new site feature.

Many thanks to Mike and Hans.

Mary Payne

The clipping, below left, from Melody Maker, April 9, 1966, is the Easter Marathon programme for Tiles Nightclub, which had opened only five weeks earlier (28th February). There were other branches of Tiles, but this was in London's Oxford Street, opposite the 100 Club.

At the club's opening gig (advert left) Kenny Everett was billed as 'Tiles' Own Deejay', which implies that he was under some sort of contract with the club, as were The Next Move band.

Pathé News clip of the Tiles opening night

One of Tiles' regular DJs, Jeff Dexter, interviewed in 1998 by Bill Brewster, said, "It was an incredible place, Tiles. It was the only place that had its own real PA system. One of the backers of the club was a guy called Jim Marshall, who owned Marshall PA, and there were something like 40 columns of speakers that ran all along the dancefloor. And they had a proper soundsystem and proper amplifiers."

The Easter event, which ran virtually non-stop from Good Friday April 8th, to Easter Monday, April 11th, is centred around Radio Luxembourg rather than Big L. However, Kenny does host what is listed as a 'Fabulous Forty Show' lasting five hours (!) on the Sunday afternoon (April 10th) , which would have coincided with Radio London's own Fab Forty broadcast. The station is not named in the advert, presumably because the Tiles Easter Marathon was not a Radlon-organised event and Kenny was not currently working for Big L. He had been sacked from Radio London on November 2 1965 for sending up evangelist Garner Ted Armstong and 'The World Tomorrow', a programme that brought in considerable revenue for the station. Kenny was eventually reprieved, but he did not return to the Galaxy until June 6 1966 and during the intervening months he had been obliged to find work elsewhere.

A Youtube clip of people dancing at Tiles, is undated and has no sound, but might possibly have been shot during the Easter event. There are Radio Luxembourg posters at the back of the stage and the band performing is 'The Next Move', who are on the weekend schedule for the evening of Easter Sunday.

The band's drummer, Clive Davies, commented on the Youtube clip, "This footage was shot in 1966. The band playing on stage was 'The Next Move' who were under contract to Tiles at that time. I know this because I'm playing drums."

(Below) Other live bands were on the bill, but the only other DJs besides Kenny Everett who are named as appearing during the Tiles Easter Marathon, are Clem Dalton and Lee Mason. We have been unable to establish anything about the the 'Discolite Sect', who hosted 'The best of the American Top 100'.

John Peel was another ex-Big L jock who attempted a gig at Tiles, but his underground music did not suit a dance club and went down badly with the audience. Mike Quinn, who worked onshore for Radio London, also did DJ gigs at Tiles. The club closed in September 1967.

Kenny's voice had been heard again on Radio London a month before his official return, when he presented the pre-recorded Top Deck Time, a 15 minute programme sponsored by Top Deck Shandy. Brian Long's book The London Sound says this was first heard on Radio London on May 1, '66. The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame has a complete episode on its '...and now a word from our sponsor' page, which includes a competition for listeners to name the singer of Shotgun Wedding.

During 1966, Kenny had been recording The Kenny Everett Audio Show for Radio Luxembourg. The 15-minute programmes might as well have been called The Kenny Everett Decca Show as they were devoted to releases on that label. The major record companies all sponsored shows on 208, which usually consisted of extracts from their new releases, faded out by the DJ just as they were getting interesting. The idea was to entice listeners to purchase the single in order to enjoy the whole thing. (The Record companies became concerned when the offshore stations appeared and played the records in full, believing that sales would drop.) The average length of a record being only three minutes, several extracts could be crammed into a 15-minute Luxembourg show, but this allowed little time for Kenny to express his creativity, which he must have found frustrating.

Mike says, "The Tiles Melody Maker advert for the week after the Easter Marathon (April 16th) doesn't include the Fabulous Forty show, but Kenny co-hosts Radio Luxembourg's Ready Steady Radio show as 'Everett of England', with Dodie West. Described as 'The UK's biggest live radio show' it's scheduled for Tuesday evening between 7.30 and 11.30. Tiles also staged daily lunchtime Radio Luxembourg disc parties."

Mike continues, "The June 4 edition of Melody Maker, which ran the Tiles advert, also has a news item about Radio London announcing the return of Kenny Everett 'after a spell at Radio Luxembourg,' as well as Tony Blackburn joining Big L from Radio Caroline. There's no mention of Kenny on the Tiles advert for that week, the Ready Steady Radio show being presented by 'Top DJs'.

World Radio History has issues of Melody Maker for April 9, April 16, April 30, May 21 and June 4. The Tiles adverts placed in the April 30 and May 21 editions show Kenny doing the same show as on April 16."

Ready Steady Radio was 208's attempt at recreating Rediffusion TV's immensely popular Friday evening live show, 'Ready Steady Go!' Tiles continued to host Ready Steady Radio long after Kenny had returned to Radio London.

In the Jeff Dexter Interview, Jeff talks about his DJ career, working at various well-known London clubs. The interview includes references to Ronan O'Rahilly and to John Peel's hatred of ska and bluebeat.