Alan Bailey was born in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire on the 7th of January 1938 and lived at The Sun Inn in the old High Street.
In his very young schooldays he spent a lot of time in the school air raid shelter when the sirens' announced a potential Luftwaffe bombardment.
Later years saw him at Crabtree Lane secondary modern school where he was an avid member of the school camera club.
With a great interest in broadcasting and film making, his first job on leaving school was as a cinema projectionist at the local Luxor Cinema (now demolished), part of the Southan Morris chain of cinemas', later to be taken over by Essoldo.
Using his acquired skills with a tape recorder, he played tapes to audiences during the intervals. Realising the demise of the cinema by the new bingo craze, he joined an electrical contractor to gain new skills. This lasted until 1956 when Her Majesty's Government called him up for National Service in the Royal Corps of Signals.
His service was spent in Germany in which time he spent most of his evenings listening to Radio Luxembourg.
He was so enthused that on demob in 1958, he applied to that radio station for a position in their studios.
Working there as engineer and producer, he received three gold discs for recording three Monty Python Albums which went high into the charts, and recorded the auditions of Jimmy Savile and Noel Edmonds who both started on 208.
He left in 1975 to help set up a commercial radio station in Nottingham.
Because of his production and engineering abilities, he picked up several major awards. He decided to retire early in 1999 and to that end, the industry made a presentation to celebrate 40 years in the radio industry with contributions from amongst others, Noel Edmonds, Sir Jimmy Savile OBE, Michael Palin and Alan 'Fluff' Freeman.
The radio station renamed one of the studios as ‘The Alan Bailey Studio' to commemorate his retirement.
His new book is called '208 It was Great' and is the story of his time at Radio Luxembourg from 1958 until 1975. It is only available on the internet Click here to go to the website for the book
