A little part of Phoenix FM’s history – 20 years ago, the first 28-day trial broadcast of Mayflower FM took place.

The broadcast was licenced by the Radio Authority, one of several forerunners of Ofcom, on the temporary broadcast frequency of 104.9 MHz, which XFM took over when they went full time in August 1997.

Despite the name sounding like it was a Billericay station, the broadcast actually took place behind the Hermitage in Shenfield Road, in an old BBC Outside Broadcast which was rented in for £1,000 for the month including a barely-functioning studio, transmitter and aerial.

The Brentwood Gazette provided a local news bulletin and Slipped Discs in Billericay compiled a weekly singles chart (which apparently were still popular in the 90s). Presenters included Nick Gledhill, who went onto become the cricket correspondent at BBC Essex, and ex-BBC Radio 4 presenter Edward Cole, who wrote the management a letter after the broadcasting thanking the management for his airtime but telling them he could no longer broadcast from “that ghastly horsebox”!

Nine of the Mayflower FM presenters (including Paul Golder, who had been promoted to Director after the 1995 broadcast) left to form our group, originally called The Phoenix, in August 1996. Mayflower FM applied for a full-time licence in 1998, failed to get it (partly due to many of its volunteers writing to the Radio Authority to ask not to give it to them after realising that they’d been “sacked” in the application!) and disbanded soon afterwards.

Phoenix FM applied for the same licence – it was a commercial licence awarded to Chelmer FM (which became Dream FM, Chelmsford Radio and then part of Radio Essex). Phoenix regrouped and resumed temporary broadcasts in 1999 until it received news of its permanent licence in 2006.