Terry Gate 1976 - 1982
How I joined
I joined the station in 1976 while still in the RAF at West Drayton and started producing music for the Chris Highton show. Eventually we got together for the "FIASCO" show on a Saturday Night and before it broke up we had done 396 weekly shows. I also did two other shows Country and Just Jazz & Swing on a Tuesday. While all of this was going on I lost my first wife to cancer. Then later on I met Edna and got married in 1982.Where Am I now?
I left the station after about six years basically because I went on shift work and was responsible for the Installation of all those overhead signs on the motorway around Heathrow. I got a few promotions along the way and when a job came along to be General Manager of a service division with the company (formally RCA then to become Serco.) I moved a few miles away, well Scotland.I creered around this fair land for a few more years and then took early retirement at 57yrs. They asked me if I wanted to go back to London, not likely I said. I spent 50 yrs trying to get away from it, so now I spend my leisure years doing what !, you've guessed Hospital Radio.
For the last 6 yrs I've been with Hospital Radio West Fife broadcasting to the patients of Queen Margaret Hospital in Dunfermline. I live in a small village of Crossford 2 miles west of Dunfermline. I'm on the committee only because I got roped in as the Station Engineer. We obviously don't make up so much gear nowadays it's mostly modules bought in.
The hospital didn't have a space for us when it was built back in 1993 so they put us down the road in another hospital (patients with special needs) and we have to keep a permanent land line open for our transmissions, which sets us back about 800 pounds a year to BT.
We broadcast all day, seven days a week, and use a mutli CD to fill in the gaps. There was one jingle I had to remake, based on one Dave Brown did:-
"This is RADIO WEST FIFE reaching out...........touching you"
to the music of Also Zach Therspucia (something like that anyway).
Terry