Calamity James

Well, the day is looming has come – Invicta FM (by name at least) ceases to be.  I thought I would come out of hiding in my blog to share my memories of what was once Kent’s best ILR station.

Now, I’m not going to discuss the reasons why I disagree with the name change, there’s already a 64 page thread on Digital Spy that contains plenty of my opinions, I want this to be more centred on the good times I had with Invicta!

Background

I first moved to the county in 1990 with my mum and step dad. Being 4 years old I don’t actually remember much of the first few years. Although I do remember my hearing Invicta Supergold coming from my parent’s bedroom on a few occasions!

My Early Days

My first vivid memory was laying in bed listening to the launch of the Morning Zoo with Neil Francis and Simon Beale (Nealy and Bealy!). I remember Simon Beale running late for the first ever show and Neil ringing him up periodically to ask how he was getting on!

After that, I listened more and more to Invicta, and I do remember at one point when I was making my own ‘fake’ radio shows, I used to cross to Invicta the top of the hour for their news! Hence why I have these Invicta news bulletins from a while back:

School Days

Invicta also got me through my school homework, I remember listening to The Fridge with Stephen Sullivan (and Taz!)  religiously every night. The ‘Raid the Fridge’ feature comes to mind there too

Towards the end of my listening history with Invicta (people are going to see this one a bit more controversial methinks) was the networked Steve Penk show. Although it was networked, they made no effort hiding this fact, unlike most networking these days! Regardless of what people say about him, his ability to make me laugh with his windups and general on-air presence is one of the things I’m going to remember most fondly.

My friend just reminded me of an amusing thing we did in Sixth Form when we had a few free periods. We were listening to the 10am-1pm show (I think it was with Neil Faraday) and decided on a whim to drive to Radio House in Whitstable to try and get on the air. We texted him to let him know, and got a mention jokingly. Then texted him again when we were outside the studios, he spoke about us on-air again saying his stalkers were outside the building! Then said for us to come into reception. When we got in, we asked to see him, the receptionists said unfortunately we couldn’t as he didn’t have time, but they’d said we could have some goodies, so we got a few Invicta FM T shirts, a couple of Morning Zoo Kellogg’s breakfast packs (complete with Kellogg’s mug) and umpteen stickers!

Another show I enjoyed thoroughly was Jonathan Miles’ show (maybe this was just because they’d got rid of the bloody Wind-down Zone – something as a kid I never really enjoyed). He was always up for a laugh, and his ‘bitch of a day’ feature always made you realise your day probably hadn’t been as hard as you first thought!

After Penky left, I must admit I didn’t listen as often at night as I used to.

The Morning Zoo

I still listened religiously to the Morning Zoo until I moved to Surrey in 2005. I still have some old stickers on the window at my parent’s house (anyone remember the short-lived 7-day Morning Zoo?).

James Heming did a wonderful job taking the reigns for the Morning Zoo, and I think the show’s highest point was when he was at the helm. I still vividly remember the “James Heming and the Morning Zoo, Invicta FMMMMM” jingle.

My memory has a slight blank spot between Neil and Simon and James Heming so maybe someone can fill the blanks in this Morning Zoo timeline:

• Neil Francis & Simon Beale
• Neil Francis & Sam Hughes
• I can’t remember the weekend Morning Zoo presenters
• James Heming, Ant Payne, Craig (the producer?),  Andy (travel centre?),Vicky (flying eye?), Tony Shepherd (news)

If you want some Morning Zoo related nostalgia, get yourself over to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.themorningzoo.biz

…to conclude

If anyone has any jingles from my heyday of listening to Invicta (~1994-2005), I would gladly pay for a CD of as many jingles as you can fit on there! Comment to this blog post (or PM me on Digital Spy) if by some strange co-incidence someone who does finds this!

I’ll close this post, with a wonderful montage of jingles over the years of Invicta, compiled by ‘mbessex‘ on Digital Spy. I hope he doesn’t mind me posting it on here…

“Across the South East… 24 hours a day… this (was) Invicta FM”

Rest in Peace, Invicta Sound / Invicta Radio / Invicta FM. Missed, but not forgotten.

Join the Facebook group sharing Invicta memories.

Robin Blairmes’ blog post regarding ‘South East England’s Heart Attack’ with plenty more audio clips

…back again!

I finally got round to moving this site onto its brand new server (with an updated version of WordPress) so I can finally resume my ramblings!

Congratulations are due methinks to Barack Obama for becoming the next US President. I will be in Washington, DC for the inauguration in January, very much looking forward to that! 76 days and counting!

I promise I’ll keep my blog up to date this time, but then how many times have you heard that eh?

James

Not very often you are greeted with a message like this on PayPal’s website:

(Click to make bigger)

If you’re reading this message then we’re on our new server. Hooray!

I finally bit the bullet and gave in to temptation. I bought a couple more T shirts, this time from a reputable seller.

Nothing but praise for BustedTees, they replied to my enquiries very quickly and were very polite (even said to have a good weekend!)

I went and bought “SHIFT Happens!!!1” and “Blow me“.

Very impressed with the T-shirts, and ’shift happens’ particulary caused a stir at work with clients saying it was very apt.

I’d recommend them to a friend, so go forth and purchase! I think there’s some kind of sale on too!

James.

It seems someone with a slightly closer involvement with the company has finally stepped into the limelight. Here’s a copy of what “Manny” had to say on HideYourArms:

“Although I was never officially affiliated with or worked at Dirty Microbe, I’m a personal friend of the founders.

After receiving a MySpace message from someone trying to track down Christian about an order, I did a Google search and found lists of complaints on blogs and forums, including this one.

Dirty Microbe has been going though severe financial trouble for a few months and has recently gone out of business and filed for bankruptcy. The founders are scrambling to liquidate the company’s assets to repay creditors, including outstanding orders. I’d advise anyone who is missing an order to do a chargeback as soon as possible.

Dirty Microbe was a very small company and unique in that they printed all shirts in house, by hand. I mean, so small that it was rare that more than two people were working at any given time in there. You can imagine the workload. Lack of manpower was one major reason they went under and I suspect the main reason for the silence now. It’s hard to imagine how much time it takes to go through the legalese for bankruptcy plus all the other stuff that has arisen from the situation. The owners have pretty much been slammed doing that, and they were already way backed up on orders and support requests.

Tens of thousands of dollars were invested in printing equipment, web store design, signing artists, affiliates, advertising, etc… and subsequently lost. There was no scam — believe it or not, order volume was relatively low and the value of all unshipped orders tiny compared to the investment. Many recall that Dirty Microbe shipped a lot of shirts before they went down.

I feel for anyone been burned by this, I’ve been shafted by buying stuff online before and I know it sucks. I’ve tried to advise the owners to make some sort of announcement so those looking for answers have some idea what happened, but they’ve been tough to get a hold of. I’m sure they’re just trying to get past what has been the most difficult time of their lives.

I’m going to cross-post this on a few of the other blogs in hopes of getting some word out to do a chargeback ASAP, as there is a time limit on those.”

So there you have it, probably the closest we’re going to get to an official repsonse to this.

There are now posts on tcritic, HideYourArms and T-Shirts Around the Internet.

Spread the word to the blogs people! And digg the article!