One of the founding members of Radio Clatterbridge at a hospital on the Wirral has found himself listening to the station 56 years later – as a patient. Don Farmer has been remembering his early days setting up the station.
Linda Bonner, a volunteer and ward visitor at the station today, sparked a few memories when she showed him a scrap-book of the Port Sunlight Boys' Club. Don and the other boys would visit patients asking them which tunes they would like to hear.
He says the club had no music of its own, so the boys would take the requests and then go home to see who had what. They would then return, clutching a handful of vinyl discs and a portable record player, and play the patients their requests at their bedside.
The service eventually became Radio Clatterbridge. Playing patients' requests remains a priority – albeit now by more conventional methods!
Don was the nearest member of the club to live by the hospital, so would inevitably get to play a lot of his own records. His favourite, incidentally, was Al Jolson's "Climb Up On My Knee Sonny Boy". It would be interesting to find out what Robbie Williams, currently Radio Clatterbridge's most requested singer, would think of that.