A week on from Radio 1 Vintage – the BBC’s joyous three-day celebration of 50 years of Radio 1 – my brain is still buzzing. Much like 2011’s Radio 1’s Longest Show Ever, or 2014’s Phillip’s Live 24 Hour TV Marathon, I felt like this was something which was made just for me.1 My diseased brain often ponders the production values of old episodes of the The Radio 1 Chart Show: here was Radio 1 Vintage doing the same thing. My little obsessions were acknowledged… if only for a little while.
The sheer amount of stuff the station pumped out over those three days – 54 hours, across 53 separate programmes – is a treasure trove of material which deserves time to sit, ponder and reflect on. Though one thing is for sure: as delightful as Radio 1 Vintage was, it’s almost more delightful to see how happy it made people – people way beyond the usual radio anorak crowd. I love imagining brain synapses firing off across the UK, when a jingle someone hasn’t heard for 30 years comes blaring out the radio.
Ah yes, those jingles. Sure, they were far from the only great thing about Radio 1 Vintage, but they were a huge part of the fun. And if you loved those jingles, you might love this. Back in 2015, I linked to “The Jingles I Grew Up With” by my great mate Duncan Newmarch, celebrating his radio experiences across the years. For 2017, and in celebration of Radio 1’s 50th anniversary, he’s re-edited it to include loads of Radio 1 and Radio 2 stuff he missed the first time round.
So if you’re suffering from Radio 1 Vintage withdrawal symptoms, this might be just what you’re looking for. (If you get to the end of it, you might hear something fun to do with Dirty Feed too. But the real meat is those glorious Radio 1 and Radio 2 jingles.)
Duncan was also the fellow behind the immaculately put-together Adrian Juste show on Radio 1 Vintage. There were a few edits made to it before transmission, but his original version is also available on Soundcloud. (A gold star to the person who goes through both versions and lists the differences.)
Finally, there’s a beautifully made hour of Adrian Juste talking about his career and how he put his Radio 1 shows together, entirely different to anything which aired on Radio 1 Vintage:
If you missed all of Radio 1 Vintage, you can catch up on it all for the next three weeks – and don’t forget all the extended interview podcasts too, none of which aired in full on the station. And when you’ve finished all that, it’ll be 2050 and I’ll have just got round to restarting my podcast again.
OK, maybe that’s a bit optimistic.
Hopefully in 2020, I’ll get Chris Moyles dangling his bollocks in my mouth while singing a selection of Swansea Sound jingles. ↩