In the late 1980s, when I was still in my 20s, my listening habits changed. My radio station of choice for most of my life had been BBC Radio 1. In the 1970s we switched from there to the newly created Capital Radio from time to time but Radio 1 was the default station on the radio in the kitchen, where we gathered as a family. The strongest memories I have of daytime radio from the 1970s are Tony Blackburn at breakfast (he was replaced at some point by Noel Edmonds), Jimmy Young mid-morning and Johnnie Walker at lunch-time. My brother and I shared a bedroom throughout my childhood and in the evenings we would switch our cassette-radio between Nicky Horne’s show on Capital and John Peel on Radio 1.

In a storage box somewhere in the house there is a cassette from the summer of 1976, mostly taped from those evening shows. It features clips of both Peel and Horne speaking. It became a cherished, unplanned mix tape. I haven’t listened to it for decades but can recall a few of the songs: tracks from the Cream album “Disraeli Gears” (John Peel featured it one evening), “Stargazer” (Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow), “Walk on the wild side” (Lou Reed), “Changes” (Bowie). I’m disappointed that I can’t remember more, and am tempted to leave these words for a while to try and dig it out. But my aim here was to write about Capital Gold.

By the late 1980s I was moving the dials on my radios to Radio 4, especially at weekends (“Desert Island Discs”, “Loose Ends” “Weekending”), Radio 2 on weekday evenings (John Peel’s Radio 1 show was broadcast there, in stereo) and back to Radio 1. I hadn’t listened to Capital for a while, but by then it was broadcasting different content on FM and AM: on FM (95.8) it was still current chart music most of the time and the AM frequency (1548) had been rebranded as Capital Gold.

The latter was a revelation, mainly playing songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s. In among the familiar songs of my childhood were things I couldn’t remember hearing before, like “Positively 4th Street” (Bob Dylan) and “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” (Gerry & the Pacemakers).

For the next few years Capital Gold was my music station of choice, featuring many of the voices of my childhood: Tony Blackburn again, David Hamilton and (especially welcome) Kenny Everett. And there was plenty of live sport, usually hosted by Jonathan Pearce. His enthusiasm was quite something. It has been toned down dramatically since he went to the BBC. There was regular content like “The Elvis Hour” hosted by Randall Lee Rose. What night of the week was that? Monday, I think. If it had been a Tuesday or Wednesday it might have been bumped for live sport, but back then Monday night games were rare. They arrived during the first season of the Premier League (1992-93). By then the content on Capital Gold had changed, from 50s, 60s, 70s to 60s, 70s, 80s. Less Elvis, more Phil Collins. It did not improve things for me.

I have an easily accessible box of cassettes recorded in the late 80s and early 90s. Most of them had been labelled, unhelpfully (by me), with the single word “CHECK”. During lockdown I checked most of them, and labelled them properly. There are episodes of “Desert Island Discs”, chart rundowns from Radio 1, sports reports from Radio 5 (a station that had been created in 1990) and whole hours of content from Capital Gold. For no good reason I have the chart rundowns from three consecutive weeks at the end of 1991 (“Don’t let the sun go down on me” at #1, succeeded by “Bohemian Rhapsody”). I simply never taped over them.

Fortunately there was other content that I never taped over and was glad to hear again: a couple of “Elvis Hours”, match reports throughout the 1991-92 season (when Leeds United won the League), and brief clips that have been on my mind ever since. There was an especially exuberant piece of Jonathan Pearce commentary, from a game where Crystal Palace beat Liverpool. He screams and extends the name of the goal-scorer (Andy Thorne) like a Latin American commentator: “HAAAANDY … AAAANDY … THOOOORRNE!!” There are ads for mobile phones and jingles for Tony Blackburn and Randall Lee Rose that I have sung to myself throughout the last 35 years.

I could probably have found time, during lockdown, to make digital copies of the most precious of these brief clips but have not yet done so. If I had I might be tempted to include them here. For now it’s enough to know where they are if I want to hear them again but even that won’t be necessary for a while. For the last hour the words and tune that have been running through my head are from Kenny Everett’s jingle for the host of “The Elvis Hour”. To the tune of Souza’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” (the bit that football fans chant with the words “Here we go, Here we go, Here we go …”):

“Oh tune in to Randall Lee Rose / And his fabulous radio shows / He’s big and he’s butch and he’s bold / And he’s right here on Capital Gold”

It’s been lodged in my head so much recently that it qualifies as an Earworm.