Skip to content

First presenter scared when radio station launched

Tim Page
BBC News, West Midlands
Listen on Sounds: Diane Kemp on BBC Radio Shropshire's 40th birthday

BBC Radio Shropshire's first presenter has marked the station's 40th birthday, admitting she had "never been so scared" as when launching the station.

Diane Kemp started the first breakfast show at 06:30 BST on 23 April 1985, with the words: "Good morning, welcome along. It's the birth of Radio Shropshire, the BBC's 30th and newest local radio station."

Her first show featured the launch of an appeal to fund a new lifeboat, and interviews with cabinet minister John Gummer and Labour leader Neil Kinnock.

"The excitement of doing it, I think, raised my voice about an octave," Ms Kemp said of the launch.

Speaking to Wednesday's breakfast show about the initial set-up, she said: "We were bowled over by the reaction we got.

"As ever, it's the loyalty of local radio audiences which is always extraordinary, humbling and phenomenal."

In a faded photograph from the 1980s, a man with brown hair wearing a dark suit jacket and grey trousers stands in the open door of a white Ford Cortina with a BBC Radio Shropshire logo on the door. He is adjusting a large telescopic aerial on the roof. Behind him stands the large stately house at local Attingham Park in Shropshire and a group of people.
The station's founding editor, Lawrie Bloomfield, helps mount an opening day outside broadcast from local Attingham Park.

The news headlines on the first show included Telford Development Corporation's plan to turn the town into Britain's Silicon Valley, cuts to Shropshire health services and a campaign by Labour MP Tam Dalyell over the 1984 murder of Hilda Murrell.

The launch was marked by a balloon flight from the grounds of Attingham Park at Atcham, and the day's programming continued with Colin Young, who remained at the station until 2020.

Ms Kemp said: "We got a grounding of 'these are the principles and this is the aim of the station', very much, I suspect, how you're still operating it - it's a local station, we exist for reflecting what goes on in the area."

"We got to help fashion it along the principles of what the BBC Local values are."

The presenter later worked on Midlands Today and is now professor of journalism at Birmingham City University.

She said the same ethos of public service journalism had run through all of her jobs: "In the end, it's to make a difference, to amplify voices, to help people hear their own stories."

A man with short brown hair and a short beard in a red jacket holds a golf club on a course, preparing to take a shot. A man with short blonde hair in a black jacket crouches next to him, with a white BBC Radio Shropshire banner behind.
Another original presenter, Colin Young (right), twice broke the world record for the most holes of golf played in a week

Four decades on, the broadcaster reflected that the St. George's Day launch had been a career highlight.

"We were launching a radio station, and that felt such an extraordinary privilege.

"We all felt that on the day, and we were trying to do fun things, exciting things, give some of that energy to the programmes - but there's no escaping what an extraordinary privilege it was."

Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.

More on this story
Related internet links