At the end of this month Radio 1 will be 40 years old, which means it will be far too old to listen to itself. On Sunday OMM celebrates this milestone with a photo session almost as significant as the one in front of All Souls Church in 1967, when Pete Murray, Jimmy Young, Ed Stewart and Terry Wogan showed us what it was like to be young, free and play singles. But instead of one photograph there are many, as Harry Borden has snapped 40 (count 'em!) DJs old and new, from Moyles to Mayo, Westwood to Whiley, Savile to Travis and Blackburn to Lowe. Who has the best posture? Who has the best face for radio? Only you can decide.
I was there when several of them arrived at the photo studio in Kentish Town, and I was happy to see some familiar faces. Almost ten years ago I spent a lot of time with Radio 1 people for my book The Nation's Favourite, and I liked almost all of them. They were funny, friendly, forthcoming. They didn't mind when I sat in on management meetings. John Peel had some great stories about Radio 1 Fundays, and Chris Moyles, the new boy on the graveyard shift, spoke about how he was the saviour of the station long before he was. The book examined how Matthew Bannister attempted to reposition Radio 1 for the modern age, and how hard it is to keep your nerve when hundreds of thousands of listeners are deserting you every month. In the book I tried to explain just how complex it was to do a seemingly easy thing - to keep a country entertained with pop music.
For various reasons I didn't track down everyone I had wanted to speak at the time, but now, as they zoomed in and out of Harry's lens, was my second chance. Mike Read and Tony Blackburn disproved our parents' conviction that too much music will rot your brain - their recall was tremendous. It was a pleasure talking to Sara Cox for the first time, and Mary Anne Hobb's recollections of her last night with Peel left me misty-eyed.
As we chatted, I remembered my own Radio 1 highlights: Ed Stewpot playing Nellie The Elephant; John Peel playing - in its entirety - Rod Stewart's Smiler album; my son appearing, for one incongruous moment, on Westwood's rap show. But above all I remembered standing in the playground listening to the midweek chart. Slade straight in at Number One!
So what are your memories of the station? Did you ever play snooker on the radio or win a competition? Did you do your homework to the sound of Annie Nightingale? And who was the DJ who saved your life?
