Radio Luxembourg, the great 208

Radio Luxembourg – the great 208 – was hugely important in the late 50s and early sixties as it offered a great selection to its pop music starved teenage audience. Groups of teenagers used to gather round on summer evenings to listen to the portable radio of the one lucky enough to own one. Records (maybe tunes to you) were remarkably short – seldom more than two minutes – and yet 208 would often play only a part of them, perhaps for royalty reasons.  It was a commercial radio station and I can remember Horace Batchelor offering his famous infra-draw football pools results prediction service where the town address was always read out as Keynsham, that’s K E Y N S H A M. Pretty certain that Pete Murray was one of the DJs – maybe David Jacobs too. Radio Luxembourg shift from long wave to medium wave in the late fifties was, I think, important in gaining additional listeners. The signal used to fade in and out but we all carried on listening to hear those early pop and rock songs. Great!