National Fresh

National Fresh

National Fresh was the first Hip Hop show to be broadcast right across the UK, although it was not on a national station, it was broadcast on a number of local radio stations across the country on a weekly basis. In 1986 TDK approached Mike to host the show and were the sponsers of the show, this was possibly a reaction to the fact they were aware that thousands of their cassettes were being used to record the Capital shows. The show was recorded on a Monday at Radio Luxemburg studios in Hertford Street, London.

The format of the show was very similar to the Saturday night show on Capital, in that it included a Frontline Chart that the listeners voted for and also Chuck Chill's Juice Report. The main difference was that this was all squeezed into a one hour weekly slot. The following excerpt is taken from the Wotupski rap page from Blues & Soul magazine, dated November 1987, it claims National Fresh was gaining an audience of 4 to 5 million, this seems an incredibly high estimate?

The show started in late 1986, possibly in October which is the date of the article below, my first recording is from November 1986. It ran in tandem with the Capital show up until the summer of 1987 when the Capital show ended, after this National Fresh continued until early 1988 when the financial crash meant that TDK no longer had the funds to sponsor the show, so that too came to an end.

This is a list of the National Fresh recordings I have:

Unknown Date in November 1986

Unknown Date 2 in november 1986

Unknown Date in January 1987

Unknown Date early 1987

Unknown Date 2 early 1987

20/06/1987

27/06/1987

Unknown Date July 1987

27/07/1987

03/08/1987

10/08/1987

29/10/1987

Unknown Date December 1987

14/12/1987

21/12/1987

Unknown Date January 1988

Unknown Date 2 January 1988

01/01/1988

22/01/1988