It was only just daylight when I suddenly realised that the phone was ringing. It seemed to take me ages to drag my weary body out of bed, as the phone continued to ring long and hard. Who on earth would want to phone me at this early hour on a Saturday morning? I toyed with the notion that it might be my former girlfriend, who seemed determined to inflict as much hurt on me as possible, despite our relationship having ended abruptly through her own infidelity and lies.
But it was not her. It was [‘KISS FM’ managing director] Gordon McNamee, calling me from his mobile phone. He said he was standing in the middle of his local park, walking his dog, accompanied by his mother. I could hear in the background that it was pouring with rain. McNamee asked if I had the home phone number of any of the Independent Broadcasting Authority [media regulator IBA] staff so that he could find out whether KISS FM had won the licence. I asked him why he was so anxious to find out at such an early hour in the morning. McNamee told me that ‘Music Week’ magazine’s radio correspondent, Bob Tyler, had rung him at home at around eight o’clock that morning to find out if he knew who had won the licences. McNamee admitted that he had heard nothing, despite knowing that the decisions had been made by the IBA at its Thursday meeting and should be announced imminently. McNamee told me that he had stayed at the KISS FM office [in Finsbury Park] all day Friday, but there had still been no phone call from the IBA, so he assumed that KISS FM had lost the licence for the second time, and had returned home.
Bob Tyler had phoned McNamee a second time at around nine o’clock that morning to say that he had just heard a rumour that KISS FM had won a licence, though there was still no means of official confirmation. McNamee, feeling agitated and frustrated, had decided to get out of bed and take his dog for a walk in the local park. Halfway across the park, it had started to pour with rain. Then, just as he, his mother and his dog had run for shelter, McNamee’s mobile phone had rung again. This time it was Richard Brooks, media editor of ‘The Observer’ newspaper, offering his congratulations to McNamee on KISS FM’s win of one of the two licences, and asking for a comment to include in the next day’s issue. McNamee thanked Brooks for his call, but emphasised that he himself had not been told the news and so would have to obtain official confirmation from the IBA before he could say anything publicly. Brooks assured him that he had seen a letter sent to one of the losing applicants which definitely stated that KISS FM and easy listening applicant ‘Melody Radio’ were the two winners. McNamee promised to ring him back as soon as possible.
There was jubilation in the park, despite the torrential rain. McNamee and his mother leapt up and down with excitement, watched by an astonished old man who was also sheltering from the storm. The old man asked them what all the fuss was about and, when McNamee told him he had just won a hotly contested radio licence, the old man offered him a celebration roll-your-own cigarette and apologised for not having a cigar. Now, McNamee needed to find out from the IBA if the news was true, and why it had been broken to him by a journalist, rather than in an official IBA communication. That was when he had rung me. I told McNamee that I probably had the home phone number of one of the IBA officers, if the paperwork had not disappeared from my flat, so I would find it and try to obtain official confirmation. I quickly found the home phone number of the IBA press officer, Stuart Patterson, on the top of an old press release he had sent me. I called him and, although he himself refused to confirm or deny whether KISS FM had won, he promised to arrange for someone from the IBA radio division to call me as soon as possible.
It was only a few minutes later that David Vick, the IBA’s principal radio development officer, called me. At first, he was pre-occupied with explaining to me the protocol of the IBA announcement, and did not tell me outright that KISS FM had won:
“Hi, it’s David Vick from the IBA. I gather you’re the only people who haven’t got the news officially yet ... I’ve just had a quick word with Stuart, obviously ... We’ve told the winners that they might expect calls from journalists. What we’re anxious not to happen, and maybe it’s a false hope now, is for journalists to ring losers before they’ve got their letters. But clearly, the Christmas post is so unpredictable that our best laid plans have fallen apart this morning.”
“I didn’t ring Stuart as a journalist,” I interrupted. “It was the KISS FM side ... Did we get it or didn’t we?”
“Yes, of course you did,” answered Vick.
“Oh, brilliant,” I screamed. I was elated. Until now, I and the rest of the KISS FM team could only have dreamed of this moment when the IBA would ring us to say that we had won a radio licence. Now, it had really happened. I was very tired. I was still shattered from the long journey home [from a holiday in The Gambia the previous evening]. I had only just woken up, but I was also incredibly happy that my hard work on the licence application had won out in the end.
“Congratulations,” said Vick, while I gasped with joy at the other end of the call. He remained far more composed than I was right now, and he continued to explain the detail of the announcement: “I don’t know how The Observer got hold of it. Clearly, one of the losers has talked to The Observer fairly early on this morning, because they’ve been hot on the trail from quite early on. So congratulations on that.”
I was still laughing and whooping at my end of the conversation, as Vick continued: “We normally do ring winners on Saturday morning but, this time, we’ve been playing it so laid back and ultra cool that I hadn’t actually planned to do that. All the letters seem to have got through, but clearly some of the most serious applicants have given business addresses, and they’re the ones who haven’t actually got the letters. You’re not unique. We’ve had a vexed Lord Hanson [of Melody Radio, the other licence winner] ring us this morning, asking what’s going on and why is he being rung by journalists.”
Vick continued: “You and Lord Hanson have been in the identical situation this morning of being rung by The Observer and others at the crack of dawn, and not known what was going on ... What we didn’t want was for losers who haven’t got their letters this morning to find out from the newspapers either on Sunday or ideally on Monday ... We had a terrible botch-up with the Post Office on one of the previous months. And, this time, I rang the district postmaster yesterday afternoon and said ‘look, we’ve got another run of letters going through.’ And he said he’d do his best to catch them the moment they arrived at the sorting office and hustle them straight through for us. And he’s clearly done the job with unfailing skill and everything’s arrived this morning. But the ones going to business addresses, yours and Hanson’s and some of the other quite serious applicants, have ended up hearing about it through the grapevine as a result.”
“Oh, this is brilliant,” I gasped. I was still far from composed and I was barely taking in Vick’s pre-occupation with the minor points of the procedure. We had won! That was all that was important to me right there and then. We had won! Vick continued regardless: “We told everybody our press release would be [published] Tuesday morning. But I’ve spoken to Peter Baldwin [IBA director of radio] and Stuart [Patterson], and that’s clearly crazy now, so we’re going to issue the press release early Monday morning. So, if you could bear to at least smile inwardly and say as little as you can to the press until then ...”
I was muttering words of agreement without really taking in all the detail that Vick was relating. He could tell my excitement was getting the better of me, so he suddenly changed gear: “Well done. We’ll obviously have a lot to do with each other in the months ahead. One of the things we’ve said in the letter is that, if you could come in [to the IBA office] and meet us all in the next couple of weeks, that would be super.”
“We would love to,” I replied, still giggling uncontrollably. Once more, Vick was keen to discuss the nitty gritty, right here and now on a Saturday morning: “Very well done. It was an excellent application. The trouble is that you’re going to get a lot of griping comment now from people saying that they [the IBA] only did it to keep the pirate lobby happy. The fact was that it was a bloody good application that got it on merit, because we certainly wouldn’t have given it to you if the application hadn’t been deserving of it.”
It was incredibly pleasing to hear Vick credit the KISS FM application after all the hard work I had put into it. I felt that, finally, I had been vindicated for my insistence to McNamee that the whole licence application had to be as perfectly presented as possible on this occasion. I thanked Vick for his kind comments, and he continued: “I think, to be honest, that the extra six months actually did you a lot of good. Not that the first application was bad or anything but, in this one, you had clearly learnt so much over the last six months, and you had strengthened it in so many ways. And, fortunately, by majoring on the new release aspect of the daytime [music] playlist, you’ve given us a very solid peg to hang the ‘diversity’ point on. Because, when ‘Capital [Radio]’ and others predictably start complaining, we can actually point to the fact that you are going to be playing the music before it gets in the charts, and they will play it after it gets in the charts, which gives greater diversity.”
Since its launch in 1973, Capital Radio had been London’s one and only commercial pop music station, and it was still eager to defend what it considered to be its own rightful territory – a monopoly over playing pop music in the capital. The IBA was charged with widening the choice of radio stations available to listeners, whilst not duplicating the existing output of Capital Radio. The emphasis I had placed in the KISS FM application on the station’s championing of new music had proven to be precisely the argument the IBA could use to defend a decision to award KISS FM the licence. Admittedly, Capital Radio did play dance music within its programmes, but it only played songs that were already in the ‘Top Forty’ singles chart. KISS FM would be playing mostly new releases, before they gained widespread popularity. My strategy for the KISS FM application had worked exactly as I had intended, which Vick confirmed as he continued to relate the detail: “The press release actually says that KISS FM has been chosen as a station that will be in the forefront of music tastes and that’s your market position, as we define it.”
McNamee must have returned home by now, so I gave his home telephone number to Vick and thanked him for calling me so promptly. It was absolutely brilliant news and I was still utterly ecstatic. I tried to phone McNamee straight away, but Vick must have managed to get through to him first. I continued re-dialling for several minutes, until the phone eventually rang. McNamee was shouting down the phone to me over the top of a loud conversation I could hear in the background:
“Grant, you c*nt,” he greeted me, in his typically perverse way. “We’ve got it! I can’t believe it! David Vick just phoned me and we went through the whole lot. I can’t fucking believe it.”
There was loud laughter in the background and McNamee already sounded drunk on the news, in spirit, if not in reality: “You’ve got a job! Your gamble worked out. We’ve all got a job. Fucking wonderful! It’s wonderful! It’s just unbelievable. I’m going to be down at Dingwalls [nightclub in Camden] tonight and the whole world will be, I should think. I’m going to phone everyone today. I’ll talk to you later on. I’ve got to phone all the bosses, and I’ll talk to you later.”
McNamee was right. My gamble had paid off. I had believed that KISS FM could win the licence, if only someone was prepared to work hard on the application this time around. Then, when McNamee had failed to take up the challenge, I had decided to take on the task myself. While McNamee had been pre-occupied with his initial failure, I had been determined to turn KISS FM’s second application into a winner. Asked subsequently what had persuaded the IBA to award KISS FM a radio licence, David Vick answered: “A well-researched application and musical knowledge.”
It was pleasing to know that my strategies had been proven correct. It was my detailed research and my belief in KISS FM’s musical expertise that had swung the licence bid. Now, here I was, having learnt the good news only hours after arriving back in the country. If KISS FM had lost its licence bid this second time around, I would have had no job to return to. Plus, my flat had been deliberately and spitefully emptied [by my former girlfriend whilst I had been away]. But these things did not matter to me anymore. The dream I had cherished for so many years of a legal black music radio station in London was about to become a reality at last. I had played my part in turning that dream into reality. I was absolutely thrilled. For me, it was literally a dream come true.
[Excerpt from ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story Of A London Pirate Radio Station’s Path To Success’ by Grant Goddard, Radio Books, 2011, 528 pages]
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