Factoids, frolics and free cider for everyone - when Steve Wright got the Deerpark bouncing

REMEMBER the 80s?

The calendar tells us it was over 40 years ago the first time former BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Wright visited Antrim. But we, quite frankly, refuse to believe this and know that it was in fact, just last week.

The host, who also presented Top of the Pops and in recent years was shuffled off his ever-popular Steve Wright in the Afternoon slot on Radio 2 to make way for a new young hipster, died suddenly last week, leaving pop-pickers of a certain vintage in mourning.

In his heyday, with the ‘zoo’ format - being joined by mates in the studio to laugh at all his wacky catchphrases and impressions and chip in with ‘factoids’ and the like - good old Wrighty was untouchable.

How everyone chortled along with characters like ‘Sid the manager’, uncomfortably camp hairdresser ‘Gervaise’ and social worker ‘Damien’.

But musos will know that The Smiths certainly had a good go - legend has it that their hit Panic - with the catchy refrain ‘hang the DJ’ - was written in his honour after he blithely played Wham’s uptempo bop ‘I’m Your Man’, just seconds after the news of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster was broadcast.

But we digress - where did all the great and the good of Antrim head to on their jollies? To Misty’s nightclub in the Deerpark Hotel, of course.

Like the erstwhile DJ, no longer with us. Gone before its time. RIP.

One of those who was in the audience during his visit in 1983 was nurse Mairead Burke, who now lives in Randalstown, calling the public appearance - entry just a snip at £3 - ‘Antrim’s claim to fame!’

Steady on now, Mairead.

Heralding his arrival, a local organ trilled: “Steve’s very popular ‘Afternoon Show’ catchphrases are household words, and his jingle featuring a Belfast lady saying a high-pitched ‘Hello’ has won him popularity in the province.

“Meanwhile on Tuesday evening, the Deerpark is the venue for a stage show by Roly Daniels and his band, Green Country.”

Thilling stuff!

Back in October 1983, guys and gals from the locality, bedecked in the latest flammable threads in the brightest nylon and polyster, fresh from Swamp or Vivienne’s, piled into the ‘best out of town discotek...where dreams come true’.

The air hung thick with the stench of Regal and Number 6, Blue Stratos and Hai Karate, Silvikrin and Charlie. The floor was sticky with Malibu, McEwans Export and Bulmers - because an advert for the event promised ‘free cider for everyone’.

Loaded up with apple-y goodness, the kids just couldn’t get enough of Wrighty. Even being seven months pregnant wasn’t enough to put young Mairead off, but there was no cider for her.

She had been a frequent flier at the Deerpark in her student days, even perhaps (allegedly) lifting a spud or two during picking season on the way back to her digs through Kirby’s Lane.

“The owner Mick McPoland wouldn’t allow me into the crowd, so he sat me right at the side of the stage!” she laughed.

“I thought he wasn’t going to let me in at all, but he was so good to his customers, he really looked after the nurses, so up I went, right beside Steve Wright!

And she had a first class view of the action, snapping away on her Polaroid camera.

“We couldn’t get enough of him in those days, we listened every day. But I was really shocked to find that it wasn’t just music - there was lots more entertainment and quizzes and the like.”

And there was the revelation that old Wrighty did something quite rude indeed with a cucumber...but as this is a family newspaper, we shall refrain from divulging any further details.

Sadly, no pictures of this incident exist.

“He really knew how to entertain the crowd, he had us all in the palm of his hand,” said Mairead.

“He was great at getting people up on the stage, he wasn’t hogging the limelight at all, he wanted to share the experience with everyone in the crowd.

“It really was fantastic.”

And did this in-utero showbiz experience give Emma Burke, now of course 40 years old, any musical gifts?

Mairead revealed: “Emma is really into her music, and her ten year old daughter is too, so it may have been Steve’s influence, but it was probably more me!”

The local woman said that Antrim was a brilliant place for young music lovers in the 1980s.

“The Deerpark was brilliant and had all the best acts of the day. Baker Kennedy the barman was a great character.

“Years later, Emma was invited back to meet Phillip Schofield and she still has a picture of herself with Phillip and Gordon the Gopher in her hallway!

“The Railway Bar was amazing too. On Halloween and New Year’s Eve people would start queuing at teatime to get in.

“There were doormen, but they were never needed as people were there to enjoy the music, there was never any bother.

“We would be dancing on the tables, but Joe Mulholland didn’t care, he was just pleased that we were enjoying ourselves.

“Antrim was an amazing place to be in the 1980s and I am really sad that we lost that scene.”

Steve obviously had a great time in the town, as he was back again in January 1985, when a local paper fond of inverted commas proclaimed: “When popular Radio One disc jockey Steve Wright says “Goodbye” to his “Afternoon boys” on Thursday, January 31, he will be winging it over the Irish Sea to join the revellers at Mistys, Antrim’s Deerpark Hotel weekly disco.

“The fast-talking Wright, ‘Top Of The Jocks’ and self-proclaimed ‘Wimp Of the Wimps’ has to live up to his last visit to Northern Ireland - he really packed them in at venues all over the North.

“Before Steve’s visit, on the Tuesday night, in fact, the hotel holds its Big Wheel Country Club meeting, with Kid Creole on stage.”

Fan yourselves down, ladies and gents.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Wright appears to have been able to keep his hands to himself and former colleagues have only ever had good things to say about him.

However Eddie McIlwaine, late of this parish, seemed keen to cast amore ‘problematic’ hue over that squeaky clean image, implicating him in having inspired some sort of proto-Father Ted ‘Lovely Girls Competition’.

Eddie, writing in 1983, trumpeted: “It was BBC Radio 1 man Steve Wright who started it all - he told promoter Cecil Thompson that the girls he had seen in Antrim at the Deerpark Hotel and in Newtownards at Mingles Nightrie in the Strangford Arms Hotel were among the best dressed in Europe.

“So on Saturday night down at Ernest McMillen’s Mingles, Thompson will put the theory to the test by staging a best dressed wench competition. The girl voted by the judges, Eamon Holmes of television fame and rugby Lion Trevor Ringland, to be the most stylish on the night will carry off a prize of £100 ‘CT’ says he agrees with Wright that the girls in these here parts know how to dress up.”

But of course, they ALL had lovely bottoms.

Wrighty also returned to Northern Ireland over the years for a series of Radio 1 Roadshows at coastal venues.

A paper which should have known better revealed: “Steve Wright is nicknamed “The Collector”. He is a hoarder of old radios, grotesque masks, electronic gadgets and useless information.”

Well if that in itself wasn’t useless information...sorry...a ‘factoid’...we don’t know what is!