The former MD writes…..
Fond memories?
Incidentally, it wasn’t the fact you could sit in the Pav gardens next door in the sunshine.
It wasn’t that you could sit in the Pav Tav down the road when it was raining.
It wasn’t the club nights we organised, promoted, advertised, attended, broadcast from and profited from.
It wasn’t the frequent influx of cool free stuff arriving at our North Street studios.
It wasn’t the endless Red Bull we received.
It wasn’t the beautiful open office area which was an old gymnasium.
It wasn’t the handy city centre location of the studios.
It wasn’t going out and shouting “got your number” with the 118 118 guys.
It wasn’t producing the Rocky theme to sing “107… point twoooo” for Dougie’s Breakfast Show.
It wasn’t the dodgy technology we used.
It wasn’t Pete Bristow’s weekend accommodation on one of the sofas in the main reception area.
It wasn’t the community events we cared about and promoted so much while Southern FM mistakenly avoided them.
It wasn’t James’ bloody insistence on that left-hand drive Smart Car.
It wasn’t the two 4×4’s we ‘adopted’ from Jay and Nick.
It wasn’t the sales cars we had. It wasn’t unpacking the OB truck at 6am for the Kronenbourg Cup.
It wasn’t playing footy for 5 minutes with Eric Cantona before passing out.
It wasn’t the 7pm ritual of calling all the extensions in the building and shouting “Ale” to get everyone across the road to the Market Inn.
It wasn’t 72-year old ‘Pete the Beat’ who used to turn up to our club events in a Juice t-shirt, black cap and white gloves.
It wasn’t our ability to keep both Creation and the Event happy even though we were promoting each club in the same week!
It wasn’t 80 semi-naked girls on roundabouts all over the TSA.
It wasn’t getting the front page of the Argus.
It wasn’t 40 listeners living it up in Ibiza.
It wasn’t Dougie’s 5-day bender.
It certainly wasn’t the absynthe breakfast Dougie threw down my throat.
It wasn’t going “out the back” for a cigarette one morning at 7am and having a pigeon shit in my coffee before I had taken my first sip.
It wasn’t being “not Dixie”, it wasn’t being “better than Danny and Nicky”.
It wasn’t getting the station’s highest reach.
It wasn’t getting the station’s highest average hours.
It wasn’t having the transmitter stolen at 4am one weekday and then having the station, with RDS and digital compression on-air again by 9.30am.
It wasn’t turning it to our advantage and getting the station in the national press the following day.
It wasn’t HM the Queen Mother dying on a beautiful April’s day when I had a BBQ planned for the afternoon.
It wasn’t Thursday nights at Creation.
It wasn’t broadcasting our Hallowe’en special which lead to genuine calls from freaks who thought it was real.
It wasn’t Brooksy winning scariest fancy dress – when he didn’t even dress up.
It wasn’t presenting the Design for Life final wearing the “FCUK OFF SOUTHREN FM” T-shirt.
It wasn’t the announcement of Dixie and Lynn’s “Baa Baa” and “Boo Boo” nicknames.
It wasn’t the Friday afternoon promotions meetings in Ha! Ha! with skinny fries and mustard mayo.
It wasn’t Nicola getting stressed at Matt because he didn’t seem to take it seriously.
It wasn’t the dannyandnicky.co.uk website that we – honestly – had nothing to do with. Much.
It wasn’t getting Impact magazine to re-brand themselves as “Juice”.
It wasn’t the volume of parking tickets that Jay got. And then got let off.
It wasn’t Matt’s “sales by stealth” strategy.
It wasn’t Graham’s stomach turning whenever he had to say “Brighton and Hove Albion”.
It wasn’t my insistence on having those three pips at the top of the hour.
It wasn’t that clever little SMS ‘Juice Select’ programme.
It wasn’t Pete’s stunning power intros.
It wasn’t Simon’s Clubber’s Breakfast.
It wasn’t Dixie’s acute and popular northern attitude.
It wasn’t even Sarah’s sexiness.
It wasn’t Dougie’s ability to hit the third pip at the top of the hour.
It wasn’t Jay’s ability to hit the third pip at about 4 minutes past the hour.
It wasn’t Stewart’s Rugmaster and Skerritts commercials.
It wasn’t the Bob Hoad sketch that went to the Chairman of Capital – then to the Radio Authority – then to the MD of Forever before I got told to take it off air.
It wasn’t even the Top 100 Worst Songs of All Time (sponsored by Southern Sound’s music).
It wasn’t the sales team complaining we didn’t have a good website, then creating that really clever little site “nonstopjuice.com” and then having no-one ever sell space on it.
It wasn’t Harry’s “SYATT”.
It wasn’t the “Manage the Gap” presentations.
It wasn’t avoiding New Revenue Solutions.
It wasn’t saying “no” to Eric Lawrence and then having to explain myself to John Josephs.
It wasn’t getting Council Leader Bodfish to take the lead in our April Fools day joke about replacing the pebbles with sand.
It wasn’t the live read folder that was never really up-to-date.
It wasn’t the air conditioning that simply never worked.
It wasn’t the Fatboy Slim programme we put together before and after the 250,000 person beach gig and hearing the traffic jams playing us loud.
It wasn’t Adam H blowing the studio speakers.
It wasn’t Stewsta blowing the studio amp.
It wasn’t Bristow being late for almost every programme.
It wasn’t the mess left behind over the weekend.
It wasn’t the characters created like Travel Nick, Gucci Tom and little TJ.
It wasn’t the pleasure in seeing “bright young things” like David Tanner and Sarah-Jayne Griffiths go on to be professionals in their area.
It was meeting that voiceover bloke Hirsty absolutely rat-arsed in the middle of North Street one evening while singing the Jam song at full volume.
It wasn’t accepting that Chris could update Chilled Juice on average once every 200 days.
It wasn’t the logo or image, the feel, the introduction of the friendly ‘heart’ in our logo, it wasn’t the strapline (the city’s non-stop hit music station), it certainly wasn’t the version introduced by Steve King (the new name for surf, the new mix for brighton and hove (whatever that meant)).
It wasn’t JP working out the Morse code message on my leaving jingle.
It wasn’t reducing operating losses from £78,00 a month to monthly profit in 18 months.
And for the record, it certainly wasn’t allowing Forever to roll Liverpool’s losses into Brighton so they could increase the sale value of the Merseyside station and therefore allow Brighton to be sold for a derisory amount.
It was the people that made Juice the fabulous experience it was.
And thank you for making Juice an amazing station and one of the happy happiest times of my life.
David Harber
Wednesday 19 August 2009 at 10:02:54
Nick.
Amazing. Just re-read some of the lovely things you’ve written here (and my ‘memories’). You’re right – it was a bloody good time – certainly my fondest of memories were in the non-stop juice period.
Thank you for putting this on your site.
D