Well, the day 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:

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/toth-news.mp3

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/paul-deacon-6-jun-99.mp3

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.

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/penky.mp3

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!

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/jonathon-miles.mp3

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…

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/GoodbyeInvicta.mp3

“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.

In my day, Invicta FM was a local radio station – A Facebook group sharing Invicta memories.

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

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

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.

Yes, no-one cares.

Yes, I’m going to start blogging again. Starting when something interesting happens. I’ll post tomorrow about my experiences with Forza Motorsport 2, as it’s an awesome game!

James.

Weiran says:
lol i confuse myself

Sums it up really. Haha

NB: This is quite long, and it took me ages to write, so go on, read it as I put a lot of effort in!

Thursday, 11th January 2007

The day started relatively normally, with work until 5.30.

On the way to my mums, I had to use all the backroads I knew to avoid [W:Operation Stack] on the [W:M20 motorway] which was causing, to quote the Orange travel line: “15 miles of stationery traffic. Severe delays. Avoid.” and also causing knock-on effects to the A249 and pretty much any major road around. To my joy, it only took me an hour to get back, which is about on-par with a journey in normal traffic on the main roads.

I went up to Layzells at about 8.45pm with my brother to meet a bunch of mates, Weiran and Andy, Ollie, Cod to name a few. It was karaoke night. As the night progressed and the drinks began to flow, I got more confident, and FINALLY (after months of them not having it) I got to sing White and Nerdy by Weird Al Yankovic! Needless to say, I nailed it!

And what is a trip to Layzells karaoke without bustin’ out Nelly’s Grillz with Waz and Andy?

Friday, 12th January 2007

Happy birthday to meeee! Funny how 21 feels the same as 20, except if I was in America I could now legally get drunk! I WILL take advantage of this fact at some point .

I got all the presents on my previous post, along with a lovely silver bracelet thing from my brother, some lovely cufflinks from my gran and a bunch of cheques totalling £156 (I never realised how generous all my family were, time for thank you cards!). Chris and Jon at work also got me a card, which I wasn’t actually expecting, didn’t know you guys cared if you’re reading this!

Another surprise was the helium balloon (complete with ’21′ shaped confetti) that arrived in a box in the latter half of the day, thanks mum!!

Then it was off to Gatwick to pick up Phil from the Micra Sports Club and his friend ready for tomorrow’s antics. I should explain at this point it was Phil’s 20th on the Saturday too, so it was like an uber-joint-party!

After this we spent the rest of the night playing Pro Evo Soccer 6 on my 360, and I found out Phil has some mad skills at that game. The challenge to beat him was on! More on that later, but for now we move on to…

Saturday, 13th January 2007

Happy birthday to Phiiiil! Hehe. I remember being 20, it felt so grown up to be leaving those teenage years behind, they’ve stuck with you since year 8 at school so it seems very much like the end of an era when within a minute they’re all gone.

Woke up at about midday after a late night Pro Evo session, had a shower, then played a load more Pro Evo. I was originally supposed to go to the Co-Operative bank in Croydon to deposit my cheques into my Smile.co.uk account but they’d closed by the time I was human! Damn. I still haven’t put them in!

More Pro Evo…. Until about 4pm when Andy and Weiran arrive… Then more Pro Evo! Oh, and more drinks (for them anyway, I’m driving us to Upper Warlingham train station!).

We set off for the train station at about 7.45pm 7.52pm, and miss the 8.00pm train we were supposed to catch to London, so we hang around until 8.30pm for the next one. Thanks for writing ‘cock’ in the steam in my car windows guys!

Arrive at Farringdon for about 9.30pm and bang straight into the Wetherspoons nearby for a quick half hour drinking session to prep us for the night (because drinks in Turnmills are criminally expensive – £4.80 for a Wkd!) 2 pitchers of vodka+Red Bull and 2 shots of Sambuca and we’re ready for Turnmills!

Now, what’s the best way to explain the next 8 hours of dancing, and the pinnacle of the whole weekend…

F * * K I N G A W E S O M E ! !

Right, moving on… No, not really! Although I won’t discuss the specifics of boogying for 8 hours (yes I said boogying Stevie B!) let’s just say the music was absolutely awesome, hats off to all the DJs!

An interesting thing I discovered while there too is that you can get Nitrous Oxide in balloon form, and it is quite interesting, basically you laugh at everything and your body goes all tingly for about a minute. Best £2 I ever spent. It’s legal by the way, it’s just dentists laughing gas!

Here’s the obligatory drunk, hazy photos that you expect from a club that provides a smoke machine in the main room…

All in all, an awesome night, and I want to go again very soon! Smartie Partie throw one hell of a Turnmills event!

Sunday, 14th January 2007

Set off from Turnmills at about 6am, only to learn that the tube station doesn’t open until 8am… Of course! It’s a Sunday! ****!

Luckily Weiran knew of a 24 hour diner, called Tinseltown that’s only about a 10 min walk from Farringdon Tube Station, I’d recommend checking it out, the food there is amazing! Huge portions too!

We then returned to the tube station, paid for our tickets, then wandered onto the platform, only to glance up at the monitor and discover that there would be “…no trains operating across London until 8.15am” and even then all trains would terminate and begin at London Blackfriars!!
So that prompted a 30 min walk to Blackfriars and then a 30 min wait for a train! Finally got on the train and got to East Croydon station only to discover the train to Upper Warlingham wouldn’t be arriving for another 40 minutes! So that prompted another wait in a freezing cold waiting room which for the latter half of we shared with some drunk guy whose first words upon spotting us was “You lot have been out on the piss then”. Charming! He then proceed to say all sorts of random, hilarious, racist things, such as asking Weiran for a number 51! And to top it all off, when Phil spoke (he’s from near Manchester) this guy went “Way aii man! You from Newcastle”. What a legend.

We finally got home at about 11am, slept for about 3 hours, played a bunch more Pro Evo, Weiran and Andy left, I took Phil and his mate to Gatwick and went to sleep.

There we go. If you’ve got this far down, then I’m very impressed, you must be a true friend, and I thank you for reading! If you want more like this, then come out on the 12th January 2008 for my 22nd!!

James

By the way, I did beat Phil at Pro Evo in the end, 2-0! Woohoo!!

So hopefully I should be getting some of the following for my birthday:

So, in order, that’s an Accurist Skeleton watch, a Buffalo 500GB external hard drive, The Gospel According to Chris Moyles and a 1GB stick of RAM.

I also treated myself to this today:

(That last one should with me by this coming Monday or Tuesday!)

I might post before my birthday, but I doubt it lol

James

Christmas was pretty good to me! I got a few Xbox 360 games, some DVDs, and with a voucher I went out and bought an HP Photosmart M627 7MP camera! The result of which is a slight addiction to photos, hence my Flickr account going Pro and the size of it exploding!

New Year’s (and the run up to) was amazing! I went out on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday! Party animal!!

Anyway, We’re into 2007 now so I will wish you all the best for the new year and here’s to another year of Calamity James!

James

Yes, that’s right, in typical man style I haven’t got all my presents yet for Christmas so I’m taking half of Friday off to head off into the urban wilderness that is London with my cousin.

“You must be mad!” – I hear you exclaim! Not as mad as you’d think actually, London actually isn’t that bad for shopping last minute, I did it last year on the 23rd with said cousin and we got so much done that day you would not believe! I think it’s down to the sheer volume of shops concentrated in Central London, no matter how many people there are, there’s never enough to fill them up to an unpleasant level!

Aside from Friday’s shop-o-rama, there is a Christmas party at Layzells this Saturday that is gonna rock the big one I think! Ladies, I’m available as a dance partner – no squabbling, there’s plenty to go around!

After an unusually long post from me, I’m off to finish the last 15 minutes of my second-to-last day at work this year!

Bye for now!
James