The first jingle package for Radio Mercury was by David Arnold with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. These were recorded in two three hour sessions at CTS studios in Wembley. A lot more time was then spent on the mixing of the various cuts. The main theme is pretty good and the other cuts for this package are even better. Tagged on the end of the short jingles is a bit of the original travel bed which was never used on air. A less spooky one was generated from the main theme and used on air instead.

The theme is now on production music CDs so you may hear it again in the background of commercials on TV and radio stations.

There were three additional pieces of music used to fill the gaps at the end of commercial breaks while programme sharing with Southern Sound. Click here to listen to those tunes.

Some of Timbo's jingles were by a group called the Backroom Boys. One night they were invited in to perform live on air. Audio files of this can be found towards the top of the page. Their songs have been edited down to speed up the download time.

Radio Mercury organised a few concerts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon. The audio files we have are of one of the concerts performed on the 28th February 1986 (broadcast on the 30th March)

On April the 1st 1989 Mercury staged an April Fool by telling their listeners that the small hamlet of Mickleham had declared independence. This fooled quite a few listeners at first and became more and more ridiculous throughout the morning.

On the 20th October 2002 Mercury FM celebrated their 18th birthday live on air. Most of the programme was presented by Chris Oxlade, Simon Osborne, Paul Lovett and Emma Graham. It was a 4 hour show from mid day until 4pm and tons of ex-presenters turned up to re-live their experiences of the launch of the station. It was great fun with food and drink in the reception for all the guests. The photo below shows some of the original staff from 1984 including Tony Myatt, Andrew Marshall, John Wellington, Peter Young, Linda Bond, Ed Stewart, Timbo, Martyn Blunt and Geoff Aspel.

The next photo shows Chris Oxlade in the studio while presenting the on air party.

Also at the party here's Simon Osbourne, Geoff Aspel, Steve Hyland and Chris.