Radio Clatterbridge
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Radio Clatterbridge is one of North West England's oldest Hospital Radio stations. Broadcasting since 1951, the station is free and available twenty-four hours a day to patients and staff at Clatterbridge Hospital, near Bebington, Wirral. It is staffed by a team of about forty volunteers who donate their time to help the charity.
Radio Clatterbridge began its life as a group of boys from a local youth group. They set about visiting patients at Clatterbridge General Hospital and playing them songs from a portable record player. So popular was this idea that it soon became possible to buy permanent gramophones and "broadcast" the songs back to the patients, via a simple land-line system.
By the early 1960s, the new radio station was broadcasting a number of programmes every week. One of those, Sunday Spin, became a milestone in musical history. The presenter, Monty Lister, recorded the first broadcast interview with a new up-and-coming band, The Beatles.
As technology advanced, Radio Clatterbridge moved into Larch House during the 1970s. The station remained in these studios for nearly two decades. Digital technology was first introduced during the late 1980s, as the station (now equipped with two studios) took delivery of its first compact disc player. In 1993, Radio Clatterbridge moved to a temporary home near to St John's Hospice. The temporary move lasted for nearly a decade. Radio Clatterbridge made its permanent move into the old boiler house, renamed Larch House, over the winter of 2000/2001. The station's new home had to be developed from scratch. Successful applications for a number of grants enabled Radio Clatterbridge to fit a new studio for the new millennium. In 2003, new computer equipment enabled the station to do something it had never been able to do before: Radio Clatterbridge now provides a 24-hour service for the hospital site.
