1096: Len Groat - Radio Trent 1985 interview

In assembling an indulgent ‘documentary’ on the first ten years of Nottingham’s Radio Trent in 1985, I naturally interviewed some of the people involved. Clips appear in the finished programme (to be found elsewhere on this channel).

Here, though, savour my appalling interview technique at the time as I sought to persuade the then Deputy Programme Controller, Len Groat to afford me some appropriate sound bites. It’s very much a conversation of a time and a place. Days when holiday rotas were printed on bits of paper; and the highlight of the week for a head of music was ‘opening the records’ that arrived in the post that day.

Len was very much one of the characters of the first age of commercial radio, hopping across Metro and Piccadilly to Trent. Known for his love of jingles and his pretty firm views on most things, Len was a key architect in the building of the ‘Trent sound’ which served the station well for its generation.