A tribute to Radio Veronica (Bradford)

Radio Veronica (Bradford) was first heard in early 1987 on 105.5, with a powerful signal which could be heard in Clowne on a small ghetto-blaster. Their free-form mixture of music and (uninhibited!) chat, with music ranging from the cheesy (like Bucks Fizz and Apollo 100) to heavy metal, made them immediately stand out from anything I had heard on the radio before.

Throughout spring and summer 1987, I listened eagerly each Sunday evening to their broadcasts. I also had my letters read out quite often on the station, who were very glad to get listener feedback.

In summer, they also began broadcasting on Wednesday evenings, and alternated between
105.5 and 104.9 FM. Their programmes also steadily progressed, including various spoof ads.

Unfortunately, not everyone was glad to hear them. Some Yorkshire based pirates, notably WLNG, slated Veronica for their uninhibited style. Veronica responded with a rather "blazing" spoof ad for WLNG 

In October 1987, I moved away to college in Birmingham. But I continued to listen to Veronica when back home in Clowne.

As time went on, their broadcasts became steadily more extreme, and in early 1988 they broadcast two items which some would have found offensive - a rant against Gypsies ("Smelly Gypsies") and a seemingly racist spoof with the Doctor Kildare theme tune in the background ("Curry Poisoning").

To be fair, Stephen and Christine - the station operators - were almost certainly not racist. Considering what had gone before on the station, the above mentioned items were probably intended to shock.

But whatever the intention, they seemed to have overstepped the mark - the following broadcast was abandoned, due to a near DTI raid, and Veronica never returned to the air.

Veronica Electronics continued to build transmitters for pirate stations, and later began building transmitters for RSL stations and for the export market. In 1990 Veronica Electronics suffered a DTI raid for supplying transmitters to pirate stations, and were fined heavily in 1991 for aiding and abetting pirate radio. But they are still going, under the new name of NRG Transmitters and Kits, and make some bloody good transmitters. (The one used by Starforce FM of Clowne gave reliable service from 1995 to late 1997, despite several changes of frequency ...)

Radio Veronica may now be long gone. But it will never be forgotten ...

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