Our President & Vice President

President: John Craven OBE

I’ve been a radio fan for as long as I can remember – I’m from the generation that was brought up listening to Children’s Hour on the Home Service with Uncle Mac and still today the radio is always on when I’m driving or working at home.

For many of us, radio is a familiar friend and that is why hospital radio plays such a significant role. When you’re away from home in unfamiliar surroundings with friends and family with you only during visiting hours, Radio Horton can be a true companion that brings you friendly voices playing familiar music and bringing you up-to-date with all the local happenings.

Radio Horton listeners are members of an exclusive club, but not quite as exclusive as my very first audience – that comprised my parents and sister! Don’t ask me why, but for some reason I wanted a microphone as my birthday present when I was in my early teens and I would sit in the kitchen reading the news from the evening paper while the family had to listen in the sitting room to their very own “newscaster.”

The radio bug had bitten me and when I joined the BBC in my twenties it was to write and read the news to a rather bigger audience. Since then most of my career has been in television but I still cherish the warmth and intimacy of the ‘wireless’ – that personal relationship that can develop between broadcaster and listener with no distractions.

Over the years Radio Horton has built up a great team of local broadcasters, dedicated to making their listeners’ stay in hospital as enjoyable as possible. 

John Craven
John Craven opening the new studios at Radio Horton
HBA OnAir Magazine issue 152
Jeremy Wilton

Vice President: Jeremy Wilton

I can remember my old man (Graham Wilton) chatting to Ted Hanson about Radio Horton – it always used to be on a Sunday morning on the telephone. They’d have a good old chinwag that would last about half an hour – sometimes the conversation would get quite heated… goodness knows what they were chatting about.

Ted and Graham had been involved with Radio Horton from the very start and I do remember Phil Claydon (who used to work at Blinkhorns in town) being part of it too. Phil was a good man – he gave me my very first Saturday job helping out in the photographic department at Blinkhorns.

On my first day there he asked to me to make the coffees and whilst at it fill a cup of lemonade. He’d substituted the lemonade powder for Enos (a sodium bicarbonate mixture) and when I added the hot water the cup fizzed up and sprayed warm Enos over everyone – that was quite funny. He was always sending me off to Dillons the newsagents to get his favourite cigarettes ‘Guards’. He’s no longer with us sadly.

I was treated at the Horton once, I was probably 14. I’d had a bad appendicitis. Whilst recovering I heard a request played on Radio Horton – it was ‘Mull of Kintyre’ by Wings… I’d have preferred Highway to Hell by AC/DC, but the sentiment stuck with me – I was happy to have been given a little succour listening to that music.

Ever since then I’ve been happy to play a little part with Radio Horton and am very honoured to have been asked to have become a Vice President – amongst exalted company!

Keep up the good work!