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Basildon Radio

The Brook House flat was a bit of a ‘Party Palace’, and this isn’t the place to divulge what went on there, apart from “Basildon Radio”.  The town of Basildon and some surrounding areas had a cable system running to every house for T.V. & radio reception, there were no aerials. Tony had found a way to plug into this from the flat’s wiring and so was born “Basildon Radio” our own pirate radio station. At night, after the gig, we would take it in turn to DJ, broadcasting to the whole town. The papers were full of it, obviously most of our fans knew it was us but nobody knew where it was coming from. At that time, Tony was working as electrician’s assistant at the Mecca. It seemed that Tony’s boss was a bit jealous of him (and us), and dobbed him in to the council, who threw us out of the flat. They re-housed Tony at a maisonette in Vange where he started up the radio station again. The council obviously twigged it and ejected him once more. Tony then got a job as night watchman at the Mecca as well as a day job at the same venue. He was also now chief electrician as his boss had left, so he was working there day and night, actually sleeping in the control room. It took Mecca a while before realising they were employing Tony for 24 hours a day and subsequently sacked him. I remember one night in the control room, a few of us watching some 8mm porn films with Long John Baldry, but a new night watchman pretty much put an end to our frequent all night parties and general misbehaviour.

I suppose we all had our idiosyncrasies, but Mick H tended to take advantage of the fact which put him in line for a few jibes. On one occasion he was on his way to the Mecca but forgot his shoes. OK, this could happen to anybody, but to walk across the dance floor in your slippers before going home to change is not cool. Another time, he broke a string and rushed to his guitar case only to find that he had brought with him some packs of his brother’s cigarette card collection instead of strings. Yes Mick, we all remember that one!

We had a lot of regular female fans at the Locarno; we were very wicked to some of them, who remembers Fat ‘n Fatter, and Trill? (Had a conk bigger than Conk’s conk).

I also recall our DJs at the Mecca, the main two being Barry ‘The Baron’ and Danny Carter. Danny was good fun, we would bully him whenever possible and lock him in the tiny beer lift for a few hours now and then. Barry tended to follow us around, he moved with us to The Elms and later to The Talk of the South, where he stayed for some time.