Aircheck Tracker

Profile: Peter Tait: Peter came from the Surrey town of Croydon, born as Peter Clark.  Upon leaving school his first job was processing motor insurance claims, but, out in the North Sea, the offshore stations were gathering and the sheer amount of entertainment flowing from those waters, 24 hours a day gave Peter the DJ-ing bug.  So, he attended club DJ auditions in London and he was lucky enough to be selected from 11 other wannabes, a 30-minute warm up spot being his prize, lining up before the main DJ started.  

Radio 1 was a major choice of listening for Peter back then, and it was listening to Jimmy Savile one day that he heard an interview with a man who was on the look out for DJs.  And so the 'audition' circle began again, and again, he was successful, beginning part time DJ work but now working the entire evening.  However, late nights and the clash with the day job didn't go down very well with the insurance company bosses - so Peter went professional as a DJ, holding residencies in Leicester, Southend-On-Sea, Richmond, Brighton, East Grinstead and finally after a long wait, his home town of Croydon.   

The first radio work came in 1977, working for the United Biscuits Network (UBN) entertaining a national factory workforce of many hundreds of thousands, but for a very low wage.  But the training and experience was priceless with UBN going on to create the careers of almost 50 DJs for local and national independent and BBC stations.    Eighteen months later, Nottingham's Radio Trent received Peter's application to work as a DJ, and, he was successful here too, being offered the weekday afternoon show which he presented for almost five years. 

The offshore bug was still in Peter's system and in 1983 Peter caught wind of the fact that Radio Caroline was returning to the North Sea.   He was too young to present in the heady days of the 1960s, but this wasn't the case anymore, so off went an audition tape - once again, continuing the success pattern previously enjoyed.  And so, reversing a trend for offshore jocks to move ashore, Peter went out to sea to present the Radio Caroline breakfast show, serving over 3 million people.  

New offshore broadcasting laws meant there were no commercials aired on Caroline, therefore very little money, and after three months, Peter moved back on to dry land and West Yorkshire's Radio Aire in Leeds became his home on 2nd January 1984 on the station's breakfast show.

Five years later and he was offered a slot on a new AM sister station, MAGIC 828, a gold station covering the music of the 50's, 60's and 70's.  (Nowadays, MAGIC forms part of a network of same name stations but offering a more modern easy listening format).   Peter spent almost a decade on the breakfast show helping the Magic 828 station to achieve the status of Number 1 AM station in the country as market share listening figures have shown.  

Over this time, Peter fondly recalled his club DJ beginnings, teaming up with local businessman Tony Sykes to run over 25s party nights across West Yorkshire.  

After what is believed to be a period of illness, Peter died in the Autumn (September/October 2002)

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