BBC Radio Cambridgeshire marks 40 years of broadcasting

Some presenters, journalists and managers from the 1980s

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

The station officially took to the airwaves for the first time on 1 May 1982 for just six hours a day.

Journalist Eva Simmons said it actually broadcast a one-off programme a few days earlier, to cover a dumped anthrax story found in council minutes.

"I don't know if anyone was listening, but news editor David Campbell decided we had to get the story out there before the competition," she said.

Eva Simmons had worked as a journalist in New York and Israel before taking up a job at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

Ms Simmons, 81, from Cambridge, was also part of the first official broadcast, reporting from a studio in the Fenland District Council offices in March.

"My first guest hadn't turned up so I rang him in a panic to find out he'd had to take his wife to the hospital," she said.

The station had its own logo, inspired by Cambridge technology company Pye's 1930s sunburst radio

She persuaded him to drive to the office to do the interview - after convincing him it would not matter for radio that he was "only in his old clothes".

"I was terrified but also conscious of being part of something new and exciting," she said.

What else happened in 1982?

• Margaret Thatcher was the UK's prime minister

• Cambridgeshire MP Francis Pym was the foreign secretary

• Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, was born

• The Falklands War began

A 1980s outside broadcast - today's journalists broadcast from around the county using smartphones

Historian Mike Petty, 75, said: "The first station manager Hal Bethell believed it could only be local radio if it was talking to you.

"TV stares at you, while local radio talks to you in a personal one-to-one conversation."

The station's launch party was interrupted by news of the bombing of Stanley airport

Mr Petty, from Stretham, was at the launch at the station's Cambridge headquarters on Hills Road as part of its radio council.

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As librarian of the Cambridgeshire Collection, he went on to do many programmes with the station and is still a contributor.

Today, the station broadcasts from 06:00 to 22:00 from its office in the Cambridge Business Park.