It wasn’t long after radiohibs.net came into being that Stuart & his missus decided to move house … back to Stuart’s Pilton roots. This of course meant a relocation of the studio. Question was would the new gaff have enough spare rooms?

As it happened however the move to Pilton, instead of seeing us warmly ensconced indoors actually saw us ensconced outdoors in all types of weather in what became the legendary “shack” or garden shed to give it its proper name!

The “shack” however wasn’t just any old common and garden garden shed.
(Common and garden garden shed … did I really just type that!?)
It was in fact a fully kitted out radiophonic broadcasting unit. It was a bit like a broadcasting equivalent of Dr Who’s tardis really. (OK, it wasn’t anything like Dr Who’s tardis but it makes it sound good!)

When I say fully kitted out, it had three chairs, a computer screen and base unit, a mixer desk and a heater. (More on that in a further episode!) Fully kitted out enough for our needs!

From there was broadcast the equally legendary “Saturday Live” show every Saturday (funnily enough) between 10am and 12pm featuring Hibs chat, player interviews and the said player’s top 5 musical interludes.

I can say quite openly that the only reasons we decided to go with music at the time were a) we were allowed to via the licence belonging to the broadcaster we used and b) it allowed us time to wolf in to the plateful of bacon and/or sausage rolls provided by Mrs C. which were suitably washed down with hot mugs of tea. Aye those were the days. At least back then we got paid in scran. Now we don’t even get that!!

It was around this time that we thought there could be more to this radio lark than just a Saturday morning fitba’ show and after much discussion (or a five minute chat over a beer) it was decided that we should branch out from football.

Other Hibs.netters were offered the chance to do their own show and John Campbell and Diane Laird were first up with the imaginatively titled “Kack in the Shack.”  Kack was an entertaining mix of chat, good tunes and overall nonsense. It’s fair to say that it soon achieved cult status (that’s cult!) and the show attracted a very healthy midweek audience.

Also around this time evolved “Trev’s party hour” where the enigmatic DJ Trev (Mr Hannant as he’s known to his betters) plumbed the darkest depths of popular music to bring you every criminal record known to man or woman in a one hour long torture of the ears fest!!!  “Don’t it make ya feel good” by Stefan Dennis anyone!?

Then of course we had the immortal whispering tones of the “Whispering Dick”. Yes radiohibs.net’s very own Soul Man Richard Pitts came to the airwaves with a show where you had to turn your speakers up full blast just to hear him!! And then turn them straight back down again when he spun a tune!  I’m still not sure to this day if Richard was a genuinely quiet spoken chap or if he just didn’t fancy sitting too close to the mic in case he caught something!!

One of my personal faves of the time though was the Indieman, aka Ian Connolly. Ian took me back to my musical youth with a terrific mix of punk and new wave classics along with some of the best of what were then current indie tracks. For some reason though he had something against Oasis so he was just never quite as good as he really could have been!!

So that gives you a wee flavour of where radiohibs.net got to in the “shack” before we moved on to better (some might say … a wee Oasis pun for Ian there) things.

There were however the wasps and a few celebs who would sign in to the “shack” before one cold, frosty, November Saturday morning the “Whispering Dick” took it upon himself to decide that the “shack” should go out with a bang!! (Well not quite a bang … more of a flash really!)

I’ll tell you more in Chapter 4!  (I’m a poet and I didn’t know it!)