Former DJ looking back as Radio 1 celebrates 50 years of broadcasting

Mark Page will be joining in the Radio 1 fiftieth birthday celebrations and will join a party in London with former radio colleagues this weekend.

Page says he joined Radio 1 having made a success of the Radio Tees breakfast show for five years, producing record audience figures in the first decade of commercial radio.

Across four years in the 80s, he primarily hosted the national station’s Friday afternoon and weekend breakfast shows.

He also presented a host of other programmes like Saturday Live, the Radio 1 Celebrity Pop Quiz, his own music documentary series City to City and filled in on the Radio 1 breakfast show and for Steve Wright and Gary Davies.

During his time at Radio 1 he says he was also able to influence station chiefs into bringing the popular Radio 1 Roadshow to Seaton Carew to broadcast.

Page, who has also stepped in to be stadium announcer at Hartlepool United, and owner of Pool FM, which staged several trial broadcasts in town, says it was a privilege working on a national stage for four years.

He said: “It was great to be broadcasting on Radio 1 when it was really so popular. I not only broadcast from London but my work took me all over the country doing live radio shows and roadshows.

“Radio aside, I was also able to exert a bit of influence and get the Radio 1 roadshow to appear locally, with a hugely successful turnout at Seaton Carew. This then became a fixture on the annual roadshow tour dates.”

While Middlesbrough-born Page is the only local DJ on Radio 1, Sedgefield-born Peter Bowes, is the only newsreader. Peter hosted Newsbeat in the early nineties and was newsreader and posse member on the Steve Wright Show. He is now a BBC North America correspondent based in Los Angeles.