Remembering Queen Elizabeth: the day she opened Radio Clyde

As the country continues to mourn the loss of Queen Elizabeth II, former Radio Clyde staff are remembering the day she officially opened our current studios.

Her Majesty declared us 'on-air' when was shown around the new building in Clydebank ifollowing the station's recent move from our original broadcast centre at Anderston Cross.

Former presenter and producer Bill Padley was stationed in the control room for the twin music recording studios.

"Then came a very funny moment"

He recalls trying to explain to her how the station conducted outside broadcasts and making her laugh.

He said: “My conversation with Her Majesty, I, of course, had been planning for weeks and weeks because, quite rightly, how do I explain how a complicated recording studio works to somebody who I'm sure has been in one, but never operated one.

“So I come up with a brilliant analogy – or so I thought - that what we did was rather like making a cake and you put various ingredients together and depending on which ingredients you used, and what order you put them in, that gave you different results all the time. So that was my piece of genius or so I thought.

“And so when her Majesty came into the room, I was introduced to her by our chairman, James Gordon. And he said, ‘This is Bill Padley, your Majesty, I've told your majesty that what we do in here is rather like flying an aeroplane’. I was a little bit taken aback by that, because I wasn't prepared for it, and I said ‘Oh, no, no, no, Your Majesty, I think it's much more like making a cake.'

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"It's like making a cake, ma'am"

“And she said ‘Oh, tell me why’ and I said, ‘Well, you put all the layers together in different orders and different ingredients. And then you get a different result, depending on what you do’.

“And then came a very funny moment, because I prepared for this and kind of set up a kind of mini session. So I had a friend in through the glass, who was a keyboard player, and he's one of those brilliant keyboard players who never looked down at the keyboard when he was playing. So I said to Her Majesty ‘If you look through the glass, you will see grant, and he will play the keyboards and he's adding another layer. And if I press this button, you'll hear what he's playing’.

"And she looked through, and he played this brilliant keyboard part without looking down at all. And Her Majesty said to me ‘Oh, he doesn't appear to be listening or paying attention’.

“I said ‘the reason he's not paying attention is because he's not being paid for the session, Your Majesty’, and everybody burst out laughing, including, thankfully, Her Majesty and there was a brilliant picture taken of that moment where they're all laughing in the room, which had just a wonderful picture. And so yes, my attempt at humour seemed to not fall on deaf ears that day. Thankfully, I didn't end up in the tower."

The Queen in Scotland

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