STICK a pin into a map of the world and wherever it lands you can hear a radio programme made in Bridlington.

From a small studio behind a town centre B&B, Rodney Collins records his weekly radio shows for a world-wide American-based internet radio network that has brought him, and Bridlington, fame across the globe.

Emails flood in from fans in Russia, Brazil, Australia, China, Sri Lanka and almost all points between, who enjoy his 50s to late 70s music shows.

Many are Bridlington ex-pats and all have requests from tracks from his floor-to-ceiling lifelong collection of vinyl records and CDs.

"I have even had an email from a woman in Poland whose son turned out to be working at Burger King in Bridlington," said Rodney.

He and his wife Jackie and their 18-year-old daughter Sarah, live at Radcliffe House guest house in Marshall Avenue.

They moved there in 2004 from the Outer Hebrides, where they also ran a small hotel and where Rodney, 58, was a regular on the local Isles FM radio station.

At one point Sarah – now at Bridlington School studying law,
history and English and hoping for a university place – joined him behind the microphone to become the youngest DJ in the UK on local radio.

Rodney used to make regular visits from Bridlington to the north to keep his programme going until his Bridlington studio was ready.

He is one of a number of radio programme makers who contribute music shows to Offshore Music Radio, a free internet-based network which also serves local radio stations across the globe.

Rodney records his one hour 20 minute request programmes on
Mini-disk and mails them every Monday from the Quay Road post office in Bridlington to the United States to be put on the network.

Not surprisingly he has had a successful professional broadcasting and media career.

It began on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 and including acting as a producer for the Jimmy Young Show between 1971 and 1974.

By the mid-70s he was a regular on Radio Luxembourg.

It was there he did the first European TV interview with the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Not wild about the European Community, there was one sticky moment when he had offered her a bottle of Perrier water to drink, only to be told she was not going to touch it as it was French.

Running local radio stations in Glasgow, London and other parts of the UK followed.

In 2002 he hit the national headlines when he played a rare 12-minute long private recording by Frank Sinatra, then in his 70s, reading the Soliloquy from the show Carousel.

"I had to get permission from the Sinatra family lawyers," said Rodney.
As well as running the guest house and his radio work, he has also been a music CD producer.

A great friend for several years was US star Gene Pitney.

Rodney produced his last three CDs before he died in 2006, and Pitney himself stayed at the Radcliffe in 2005 during a tour.

"The radio work helps publicise Bridlington as I do give it a mention and there is a link to the Radcliffe which includes descriptions of the area and we have had bookings as a result," said Rodney.

He now estimates around a third of the guests at his guest house come from the music industry.

* Full details of Rodney's
programmes can be found at www.offshoremusicradio.com.

Click the programme guide and see Rodney's home page.


Discovering a song called 'Bridlington'

ONE of Rodney Collins' many guests was Chris Wright from West Yorkshire, who gave him a copy of a 1976 record called 'Bridlington'.

He was a member of a band called Rollercoaster, who made the record sending up cheap Spanish holidays when the papers were full of holidaymakers double booked on flights, arriving to half finished hotels on the Costa and catching Spanish tummy bugs. The message was 'ditch the hassle and go to Bridlington instead'.

It did not sell too well, but was it was a typical 70s thing and
followed the big hit Going To Barbados.

Last October Rodney played it in one of his shows and got an immediate response from people who remembered it.

"It would be interesting to hear from anyone else who remembers the Bridlington record, what they were doing at the time and what they thought of it," he said.

* The Free Press has put a recording of Bridlington on its website.
Visit www.bridlingtontoday.co.uk and click on the link to hear the 70s recording.

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