Rare recording of sights and sounds of Morecambe shared publicly for first time in 44 years

Sounds of Morecambe and District was a cassette made by a small team led by Peter Mason-Milward in 1981.

As well as the sounds of Marineland, go karts at Heysham Head and the Harbour Band Arena it also featured interviews with some of the stars of the day who visited the area.

They include presenters Pete Murray and Isla St Clair along with Colin Crompton, the comic whose routine took aim at Morecambe in TV’s The Comedians.

Using recording equipment from Lancaster and Morecambe Hospital Radio where Peter was chairman, the result is an audio archive of the resort in the 1980s.

“Nobody else was doing this,” Peter told Nigel Thompson, who produces The Morecambe Bay Podcast which has featured excerpts from the cassette recording in the latest edition.

“Hospital radio opened up a lot of doors and we were able to record interviews with a wide variety of people. At Marineland they had the dolphns coming right out next to us!”

Isla St Clair had the honour of switching on Morecambe illuminations in 1980 and told Peter about her love for the town.

Meanwhile Colin Crompton said his jokes about Morecambe as ‘a cemetery with lights’ and a place where ‘they all turn out to watch the bacon slicer’ were taken too seriously by tourism staff and on the tape admits the town is ‘not bad.’

The cassette was produced as an audio postcard of the area with around 150 sold by Peter and his colleagues to tourists staying at hotels around Morecambe.

“We had a ready made market at The Elms, The Grovesnor and Midland hotels,” Peter recalls.

And while it did not pay for his retirement he says he is proud to have played a part in preserving some of the sounds of the town for posterity.

“I’ve known Pete and Kath since I was involved in hospital radio years ago and the chance to get together and hear the tape that Pete made - a kind of podcast of its day - was a treat and I’m sure it will bring back many memories to listeners today,” Nigel said.

The Morecambe Bay Podcast began during lockdown three years ago and there are now 150 episodes available on Spotify, Apple and all main podcast sites.