Piccadilly Radio 261:
A Manchester Icon

In the fizz of Manchester’s airwaves in 1974, a small but steadfast signal found its voice

Piccadilly Radio 261, a pioneering independent station born into a landscape of only eight such stations across the country.

It wasn’t just a frequency; it was a community calling card, a sonic heartbeat for a city eager to hear itself spoken aloud on the radio.

From those earliest days, the station was a workshop of dreams and discoveries – where presenters, producers and listeners learned together how radio could be intimate, adventurous and full of character.

The earliest line-up, the very voices that would set the tone, included Roger Twiggy Day, Pete Reeves, and Jim Hancock.

They were there at the very start in 1974, and their warmth, wit and willingness to experiment helped shape Piccadilly’s personality.

Twiggy’s warmth, Reeves’s crisp clarity and Jim Hancock’s steady presence became more than a sound; they became a welcome, almost living room in the afternoon for listeners who found in Piccadilly a friend, a reflection and a spark of Manchester’s own resilience.

As the years rolled on, the station grew into a tapestry of personalities.

Dan Walker, Paul Smith, Jo Eye in the Sky Blakeway, Tony Ingham, John Pickford, Susie Matthis, James Stannage, Phil Wood, Dave Ward, Umberto and Mike Sweeney – along with many others – carved space for a listener-centric culture.  You can hear many of these colleagues featured in our special programme.

Each voice carried a memory: a particular show sting that felt like a cup of tea on a late shift, a joke that sparked a shared smile, or a news bulletin that anchored the day in a way only radio can manage.

In their hands, the station wasn’t merely broadcasting; it was listening back to the city’s pulse, and inviting listeners to lend theirs in return.

Manchester’s Central Library offered a grand, fitting homage to that shared history late in 2025.

The exhibition celebrated the station and the broader arc of independent radio in Manchester, tracing Piccadilly’s birth in 1974 through the mid-1990s flourishing of Key 103.

Audio, photography and ephemera stitched together the stories of DJs, programme makers and listeners – while the Archives+ team safeguarded and digitised the rich archive for future generations.

The Sound + Vision pods opened a portal: more than 750 Piccadilly Radio shows to press close to the ear, to revisit, to rediscover, to wonder at what radio once sounded like when it still felt like a living conversation.

This feature for MIX56 slips into that same heart

We begin with a memory of that modest signal turning into a shared conversation – and we move through the voices that carried it forward.

Roger Day’s pathways through early evenings, Pete Reeves’s crisp tempo on the midday stride, Jim Hancock’s anchoring voice – these are the threads that the programme pulls on as it threads together new memories with old.

Then we hear from Dan Walker, Paul Smith, Jo Blakeway, Tony Ingham, John Pickford, James Stannage, Dave Shearer and Phil Wood.

Each contributor carries a fragment of the mosaic: the sign-off that felt like a personal invitation, the backstage anecdote about a studio door left ajar, the moment a listener phoned in with a story that altered the course of a show’s direction.

Our special feature programme is a celebration of more than nostalgia; it is a record of how a city’s radio culture bonded people across differences.

The original Piccadilly Radio, which first broadcast in 1974, later split in 1988 to become Key 103 on FM and Piccadilly Gold on AM.

Over the years there have been a few name changes and rebrands, but the spirit of that original station still shines through.

Though the Piccadilly name now lives on mainly in memory, its legacy continues in today’s Hits Radio and Greatest Hits Radio Manchester.

Listen again to our feature programme right here

The 2025 Central Library Exhibition and the MIX56 programme together offer a respectful and warm tribute.

The sound of Piccadilly 261 will forever echo in the listening rooms of those who were there – and in the stories of those who wish they had been.