DAVE GAMBLEN

It was a summer evening in 1956. My parents had retired to
the front room after listening to Dick Barton - Special Agent on
the wireless. I, like many other teenagers at the time amused
myself by fiddling with the wireless tuning knob to find Radio
Luxemburg on 208 metres, when all of a sudden a new sound
burst from the wireless speaker ....... "Well since my baby left
me, I found a new place to dwell, down at the end of Lonely
Street" ........... WOW!!! This didn't sound like Perry Como,
Ronnie Hilton or Pat Boone. Then came the voice of one of
the 208 disc jockeys who said "That was a new single by a
hillbilly kid named Elvis Presley singing 'Heartbreak Hotel''
What a sound!! What a name!! I was hooked. For me, that was the birth of Rock'n'Roll.
About a year later the Stockheath Youth Club was formed in the village of Leigh Park
(now a huge housing estate). I was asked to bring my small collection of records, mainly Rock'n'Roll, and my Alba record player and spin them at the record club. Members were asked to pay me 6d a week to buy the latest releases and I soon built up a good supply of records, which have been very useful in later years.
In 1976 I joined Radio Victory one of the
UKs first independent radio stations.
After a while I was asked to present a
Rock'n'Roll show called 'Pompey Rock'.
Then, using the alias Tyrone Sleek, I
presented the popular Tyrone Sleek's
Rock'n'Roll Show. Through the success
of that programme I became a mobile DJ
and now 30 years on I am still spinning
the wax on Angel Radio's 'Cruising' which
can be heard every sunday at 5.30pm
with an old show from the Angel Archives
at 5pm on Thursdays.