Deke Duncan has been broadcasting his radio station to an audience of one for 44 years. Now the DJ is finally ready to make a pitch to reach a wider listenership, after being offered the chance to join a BBC local radio station.
As a 29-year-old, Duncan began running his radio station from a garden shed in Hertfordshire in the 1970s. His set-up began broadcasting as Radio 77 and featured its own jingles. He called in friends to help maintain its dawn-to-midnight weekend programme schedule.
The only problem was that licensing restrictions meant the surprisingly professional output could reach an audience of only one: Duncan’s wife, Teresa, who listened via a speaker in their house.
Despite this, he continued with the project – a tribute to the pirate radio stations that broadcast from boats off the coast of the UK during the 60s – with the dream of one day bringing his music choices to the whole of Stevenage.
His story was covered in a lighthearted film by the TV programme Nationwide in 1974, which showed Duncan complaining that his entire audience disappeared when his wife popped to the shops after doing the housework.
#OnThisDay 1974: "The station's entire audience has decided to go down the shops" Radio 77 held the dubious distinction of broadcasting to the smallest audience in the country. pic.twitter.com/xkUZnfAPpR
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) October 9, 2018
Last month, the BBC’s Archive service rediscovered the clip and posted it on Twitter, prompting journalists at BBC Three Counties Radio to embark on a quest to find out what happened to the DJ who had a tiny audience but dreamed of reaching the wider New Town area.
They found him, living in Stockport, and still broadcasting to “the smallest audience in the country” .
Back in 1974, Deke Duncan ran a radio studio in his garden shed which broadcast to just one person - his wife. His lifelong ambition was to broadcast to the whole of Stevenage 📻
— BBC Three Counties (@BBC3CR) November 18, 2018
This morning he co-presented a show with @justindealey and there was a very special surprise... pic.twitter.com/PGVWLhuN2k
Three Counties then invited the 73-year-old on air, and the station editor, Laura Moss, offered him an hour-long special to broadcast to Stevenage – and the station’s wider Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire broadcast area – over the Christmas period.
Duncan accepted the offer, saying: “That feels really nice. For the first time in my life I’m speechless.”
