I read today that Alan Fawkes, one of the co-founders of Alfasound Tapetrix jingle company in the late 1970s, has died.

I guess I can partly credit my interest in radio and then later in radio production to the jingles I used to hear coming out of my cheap AM radio as a 10 year old in Chichester for Radio Victory. (Tracked down via jinglemad.com)

Produced by Alfasound, these were no modern day classics – even with the soft filter of nostalgia. But at the time, these guys were pretty cutting-edge, producing the radio jingles for huge heritage commercial and BBC local stations across the UK. Hell, they even produced the jingles for my hospital radio station. Indeed, at the time, I probably spent way too many hours listening to their jingle demos – and the latter ones from JAM productions – wondering if one day I’d ever get to work on one of those stations. Little did I know that many years later, I’d be comissioning the jingle packages for Capital FM and the Capital FM network from companies such as Groove Addicts or Wise Buddah. I guess these guys helped inspire me in some way…

I once met Alan Fawkes and his colleague Steve England.  I drove up to Manchester with a friend for the day to visit the studios, have an look around, and sit in on a recording session From memory it was a package for BBC Radio Bristol – I remember Alan playing his tambourine. It seemed very British – certainly of a time. But these guys created the sound of much of British radio for over a decade.

And so another  page of UK radio history  turns and another figure sails away.