Last updated: August 2026
Roger Day opened Piccadilly Radio at 5am on 2 April 1974. Over the next three decades the station became one of the most productive training grounds in British broadcasting — Chris Evans, Mark Radcliffe, Gary Davies, Andy Peebles, Timmy Mallett, Steve Penk and Karl Pilkington all passed through it.
The first voices, 1974
The launch line-up put Roger “Twiggy” Day on air first — an ex-pirate radio presenter, which tells you something about the kind of station Piccadilly intended to be. Alongside him in the earliest days were Pete Reeves and Jim Hancock.
James Stannage was there in 1974 too, on the overnight grave shift, some years before he became the most argued-about voice in Manchester.
The ones who became household names
This is the part that surprises people. A single commercial station in Manchester produced an extraordinary number of broadcasters who went national:
- Chris Evans
- Mark Radcliffe
- Gary Davies
- Andy Peebles
- Timmy Mallett
- Steve Penk
- Geoff Lloyd
- Pete Mitchell
- Karl Pilkington
Local radio was where you learned the job in those days. You did overnights, you did the shifts nobody wanted, and you found out whether you could hold an audience without a producer whispering in your ear. Piccadilly turned out to be unusually good at spotting people who could.
The Manchester voices
Just as important are the ones who stayed, and who for many listeners were the station:
- Mike Sweeney
- James Stannage — late-night phone-ins, and a category of his own
- Umberto (Umberto Saoncella) — breakfast
- Dave Ward — a hairdresser from Urmston before he joined in 1979, which is where the nickname “Curly Shirley” came from
- Chris Tetley
- Tim Grundy
- James H Reeve
- Jeff Cooper
- Colin Cook, Vicki Archer, Anna Foster, Tony Emmerson
Why one station produced so many
Piccadilly launched in 1974 as the fifth Independent Local Radio station in the country and the first in the north of England. That timing mattered. Commercial radio was brand new, nobody was quite sure what it should sound like, and a station in a city the size of Manchester could take risks that a national network never would.
It also ran a proper full-service schedule — news, sport, speech, specialist music, phone-ins — so a young presenter could actually learn several different jobs in one building. That is largely gone now, which is part of why the list above is unlikely ever to be repeated.
Who have we missed?
Almost certainly somebody you remember. This list is assembled from public records, and public records are thin on the people who did the unglamorous shifts — which is most of the people who actually kept a radio station on air.
If you presented on Piccadilly, worked behind the scenes, or simply remember a name that belongs here, tell us and we will add it. We would rather this page grew from memory than from search results.
You can also read what happened to Piccadilly Radio, what Key 103 is called now, or listen to our live channels.
Sources
Names on this page are drawn from publicly documented radio history, including the Independent Local Radio archive, Manchester radio histories and contemporary reporting. Piccadilly Radio 261 is an independent heritage project with no connection to the presenters listed or to Bauer Media. If a name is wrong, missing, or listed here against someone's wishes, please contact us and we will act on it.