THE (RADIO) ONE AND ONLY ROADSHOW
THE sun’s shining, everyone’s in shorts, and Chesney Hawkes is rolling up to Markeaton Park. It can only be May 1991, when the Radio 1 Roadshow came to rock Derby in a massive open-air gig.
The ancestor of the BBC’s Big Weekend, the roadshow was a longrunning segment on Radio 1. From 1973, it took the party from their London studios to places all over the UK.
Often it would be seaside towns, but for the roadshow in the spring of 1991, they chose Derby. The first roadshows of the 70s were little more than a modified caravan with a drop-down stage area, but this would be something else entirely.
In came the trucks to Markeaton Park with their proper big stages, and following them were thousands upon thousands of fans, eager to see what the BBC had cooked up for them. It was a bank holiday Monday, so the crowd didn’t even have to take a day off – win-win.
It must have seemed like every blade of grass was covered up with an all-singing, all-dancing crowd that day. In came the man of the hour-and-a-half, Gary Davies, to host the festivities.
Gary was a regular BBC fixture, also a familiar face from his time on Top Of The Pops. But along with him were a bunch of very special guests at the time.
Neighbours heart-throb-turnedsinger Jason Donovan was unveiled to screams from the young ladies of Derby and beyond. They weren’t done screaming, as “The One And
Only” Chesney Hawkes was there too.
Then came the dance anthem of the year, as house duo Nomad rolled out Devotion for the bouncing crowds. As Monday lunchtimes go, it’s got to rank right up there.
You can’t forget the usual fun and games, though. “Smiley Miley”, the
veteran of the roadshows, will have had a few of you on stage guessing how far the trucks had come from their home base.
The roadshow kicked off a week of BBC Radio events in the city. The Assembly Rooms were their home that week, and you could have seen anything from The Railway Children and Julian Cope, to the Philharmonic Orchestra, to the cast of The Archers in a stage production.
In 1993 the roadshow would return, even bigger this time. Lulu, Luke Goss of Bros, Adam Ant, Bad Boys Inc. – and even Gary Numan doing a flypast in a propeller plane.
By 1999 the event was killed off in favour of the One Big Sundays and then the Big Weekends we know today. But for that crowd of thousands that day, they couldn’t imagine it any other way.