Sven from Swiss Cottage

In the 1980s I used to listen to late-night radio on LBC quite a lot, partly because I couldn’t get to sleep, but often because I just couldn’t turn it off.

Dan Damon, Pete Murray, Steve Allen, Therese Birch – these names will forever evoke fond memories for thousands of nightbirds in London.

But perhaps the most synonymous name from that era would be Clive Bull. Faced with presenting the graveyard 1-4 slot (Night Extra, later Through The Night) for so long (at least 4 years), Bull would keep his club of devoted listeners by simply including many of them in the show. It was, after all, predominantly a phone-in programme.

In 1988, comedy legend Peter Cook decided to ring up, pretending to be a Norwegian fisherman called Sven. And he kept phoning.

The resulting on-air Cook and Bull stories have become golddust since Cook’s death in 1995.

This morning I received a link to these comic curiosities, which I'm including here.

After a few minutes of listening, I realised what I was doing.

Yes, I was now 34, I was on the other side of the world, it was 2 o’clock in the morning and I was still listening to Clive Bull on LBC Radio.

So much for the last 20 years.