Voice of Radio Wales looks back at his time in the Vale
By MARCUS STEAD
One of Wales’s best-known media personalities from the 1980s has been reminiscing about his years living in the Vale of Glamorgan.
Mike Flynn (71) hosted a daily show on BBC Radio Wales from its launch in 1978 and stayed with the station until 1989, but he was equally well-known for his love of aviation, and his light aircraft were a familiar sight at Cardiff Airport.
Originally from Ruabon in north Wales, Mike trained as an electrician in his youth, but his passion for music saw him become a well-known DJ in night clubs in Cheshire and Merseyside, and in the mid-1970s he became the presenter of the overnight show on Radio City in Liverpool.
In November 1978, Mike was headhunted by BBC Radio Wales at the station’s launch, where he presented the mid-morning show for around five years, before moving to mid-afternoons, which he hosted until he left the station in February 1989.
For more than a decade, Mike’s daily show was a lively mix of music, interviews and interaction with listeners. When he hosted the mid-morning slot, he would often arrive in the studio with moments to spare before his show began, much to the frustration of the then-breakfast show host Chris Stuart, who would hand over to him.
Mike hasn’t broadcast to the region for more than 30 years, but his cheery, fast-talking voice is instantly recognisable, and he looks back on the era with affection. Mike said: “I used to drive Chris mad by arriving in the studio at the very last moment, then I’d do my opening link and open the huge pile of letters that I was given every morning.
“I never had a clue what I was going to say once that first record was over, I had a tremendous amount of freedom, and I knew my listeners would always give me plenty to talk about with the things they wrote about.”
Despite his popularity, Mike always felt like something of an outsider at BBC Broadcasting House in Cardiff: “I felt very much like the token north Walian when I joined the station at its launch. The station was, and in my view still is, very south Wales centric.
“I’d like to have presented my daily show from their studios in Wrexham, but management didn’t allow that, so I moved south. I initially lived in a flat on Cathedral Road in Cardiff, but when my family moved down, we settled in a house on Eagleswell Road in Boverton, where I’d walk the dog at Summerhouse Point, then two or three years later we moved to a lovely house in Flemingston, which I completely renovated,” he said.
Mike lived with his then-wife Jacquie, now deceased, a journalist and subeditor at the South Wales Echo, along with his two sons Luke and Joel. The latter now works as a reporter for Reuters news agency in Hong Kong and frequently appears on British TV via the TRT news channel, along with occasional appearances on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Mike was a regular presence at Cardiff Airport (known as Rhoose Airport until 1986) where he would make regular light aircraft flights to the Netherlands for a very specific purpose.
Until 1988, the amount of commercial music all British radio stations could play was severely restricted by an agreement with unions known as ‘needle time’.
Typically, in any hour, there would be two or three well-known tracks from popular acts such as the Beatles or Elton John, with the rest of the time taken up by orchestral cover versions and music from platforms such as the Canadian Talent Library.
Mike found a loophole whereby he could get around the restrictions by purchasing compilation albums from overseas, which didn’t count as ‘needle time’ quota provided the album wasn’t available in the UK, so flights from Rhoose to the Netherlands to pick up records for his show became a regular part of his life.
Today, Mike splits his time between Thailand, the home country of Jiraphorn, his wife-of-22-years, and rural Norfolk, where he spends much of his time on property development, a passion that began when he lived in the Vale: “I invested my money wisely and I specialised in barn conversions, which is something I’m still doing to this day.
“I’ve been away from the area for a long time, but I quite often browse the internet to see how the properties I used to own look nowadays.
“I preferred doing the mid-morning slot on the radio, because that way the rest of the day was my own, and I tended to spend the afternoons working on property projects, mainly in the Vale,” he said.
The 1980s was a decade of rapid change in Wales, with de-industrialisation and the shift to a service-based economy, but Mike’s radio show was a constant throughout the period, and he has fond memories of the era: “We had a great deal of freedom in those days in that we didn’t have to worry about political correctness or the woke agenda, which is sucking a lot of the fun out of broadcasting nowadays.
“My team and I just enjoyed ourselves. For example, one day, someone said they’d found a phone number which might belong to Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, who was on the run in Brazil at the time.
“I didn’t waste time asking permission from management, I just rang him live on air, and he gave us a good interview, which is still available on YouTube. I doubt any of the presenters there now would dare pull stunts like that.
“Very often, the team would drink together at the BBC Club in Llandaff, or go on to a nearby pub. I don’t think people working in radio today have anywhere near as much fun,” he said.
Mike has particularly fond memories of flying in his BBC Radio Wales-branded light aircraft, where on Fridays his show would be broadcast live from a different part of the country. He said: “The Friday outside broadcasts were always enjoyable. I did a lot of them with the late Alun Williams, who was a giant of Welsh broadcasting, and a good friend.
“We went to all sorts of places, including Barry, where the crowds would gather and we’d get them involved.”
Towards the end of the decade, Mike sensed it was time to move on, and in February 1989 he took the brave (or mad) decision to sell his house, quit his job and take his family travelling around the world.
In the months that followed, he spent time in the USA and China, before settling in Australia where he worked broadcast news media production roles.
During the 1990s, he returned to Britain, where he worked as a presenter and broadcast journalist on BBC local radio in England, and later on he took a role as a news editor for Reuters in London.
Mike is less complimentary about the current state of BBC Radio Wales and was especially hurt at being left out of celebrations to mark the station’s 40th anniversary in 2018: “I feel as though I’ve been airbrushed out of the station’s history.
“During my first few years there, I was the only presenter who had his name in the programme title. I must’ve broadcast more hours on the station than anybody else during its first decade.
Mike was particularly disappointed that the death of Wyn Calvin in January at the age of 96 was not properly marked by the station: “Wyn and I had some wonderful times together socially, he was a real character.
“Wyn was a very big star going back to the 1950s, and in the early years of BBC Radio Wales, he appeared on the station a lot. He was working until a few months before he died, but he’d made few if any appearances on BBC Radio Wales in many years, and they didn’t do much in the way of a tribute when he passed, which I find very sad,” he said.
With more than three decades having passed since Mike left the Vale, he still remembers his decade in the area with affection: “It was a great time for me, in terms of the property projects I worked on, to being a founder-member of the Cardiff-Wales Flying Club, to long lunches at the Blue Anchor in Rhoose.
“Life has been very good to me, and while I’m still in good health, at my age I’m very much aware of how important it is to make the most of the time I have left.
“I still enjoy travel and flying, especially in South-East Asia. I’ve spent the last two years entirely in Norfolk because of the pandemic, but my wife and I look forward to travelling a lot more as restrictions ease.
“I like to keep up-to-date with what’s going on in the Vale by reading the digital version of the Glamorgan Star, where I’m frequently reminded of how kind and decent local people are,” he said.
🌟 This article first appeared in the printed edition of the Glamorgan Star on 21.04.21
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