The date was January 7, 2011. The first song, was Alive and Kicking by Simple Minds and the time was 6pm.

David Cameron was less than a year into his coalition with the Liberal Democrats, having come to power after everyone agreed with Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown insulted a voter.

A price of a freddo had just increased to 20p, causing howls of outrage and on the local FM radio dial, Cornwall had Pirate FM, Atlantic FM and BBC Radio Cornwall all banging the drum in a vibrant local radio atmosphere.

In the world of music, Matt Cardle, he of the X Factor fame was number one with ‘When We Collide’, his winners single, a cover of ‘Many of Horror’ by Biffy Clyro and it was also the date where NCB Radio launched in a tiny concrete garden shed.

The technology was primitive in comparison to now – for at the time, 3G internet had only fairly recently launched, AI was something you only saw in a dystopian film and ‘the cloud’ was something more associated with the sky rather than something you’d store files in and run radio stations from.

Indeed, our first studio computer was a second hand machine that had the following revolutionary specifications. It ran Windows XP, had a 160GB hard drive, had 768 megabytes of RAM and a AMD Athlon XP processor, while the monitor was a massive CRT monster which was so heavy we had to reinforce the part of the home-made desk we’d built to work from.

It’s safe to say that a lot has changed in those 15 years, including who we are and what we do – for these days, we emphasise the aspect of our operation where the commitment to loving and offering a variety of music is key to all we do.

We’ve gone from that garden shed to a living room, two community centres, a living room next to a pub and eventually to working from home way before the coronavirus pandemic made it fashionable.

Along the way, a fair few faces have played a part in our team and we’d like to firstly give a mention to anyone who has ever been part of the last 15 years for your part in our ongoing story.

Several, however have stayed. For this year will see Vincent Vega complete 15 years of continuous broadcasting having joined us in mid-2011, Dan Sproull and Jonathan ‘Sprigg’ Parry reach the 14-year milestone.

Rather than be tired and out of ideas as one might expect after 15 years of broadcasting, the opposite is true. NCB Radio has a lot of life still in it and the best is yet to come. We are still ‘alive and kicking’.

Let’s end this reflection with two mentions. Congratulations to Vincent Vega for achieving his post-graduate in Music Business at the tender age of 107 and we’d also like to celebrate our Sprigg who has just turned 50.

His promised bribe to claim he was actually 50 hasn’t arrived in time.