Jill Bowyer

Self-effacing station manager Jill Bowyer is the beating heart of Salford City Radio, whose determination to help revive a community asset from the brink has not gone unnoticed – even if she refuses to accept the credit she’s due.

“Jill does things very quietly,” explained smooth-talking presenter Allan Shalks, pausing to lead listeners from Les Misérables to Barbra Streisand. “She doesn’t stand on a hill or shout about her work for the radio station, charities or virtually everyone; the only person she doesn’t do anything for is herself.”

Allan, a Salford City Radio stalwart who hosts the Tuesday’s Magic of the Musicals programme, showered praise on the “selfless” woman without whom the station “simply would not exist.”

“Community radio can be a friend to people who can’t get out, it is the first thing many people put on in the morning and people look forward to our station,” he said, beaming behind the microphone. “Jill dedicates her life to keeping this alive.”

From her bright blue office, where records are pinned to the walls and the programme schedule is mapped out on a whiteboard, Jill credited her “wonderful parents,” Mavis and Sid Lomas, for instilling a strong sense of community spirit which has shaped her life and greatest achievements.

“I am the person I am because I was born into a family of strong women, with wonderful parents,” she said. Jill came into the world at Hope Hospital, lived her early years on Zebra Street in the “Salford five” – an area now known as Ordsall. She attended St Bartholomew’s school on Tatton Street and was a chorister at St Bartholomew’s church.

“I lived on a long, terraced street and felt there was a real sense of community between the streets in the area. The night before I took my 11-plus exam, one of the older kids took me to one side and said: ‘You can do it, do it for the street,’ she remembered, smiling as her eyes welled slightly.

Jill did her street proud. Passing the test with flying colours and graduating to Broughton High School was cause for celebration, despite some minor logistical drawbacks: “Only two girls in my class got in. It seemed like a massive journey getting the bus all the way to Broughton, but it was worth it,” she laughed.

One of the ingrained traits learned from her “poor” mother and father, who each lost a parent to tuberculosis and were forced to leave school for factory work, is “charitability.”

“At the age of eight, my mum scrubbed steps to buy new socks to help her mum,” she explained. My dad worked on the docks all his life, and he always provided for us despite having no money. He was the first person I saw demonstrate charitable behaviour and would always give away whatever he had left.”

She described how her father would always treat “Cokey Nolan,” – the street-surfing, bike-riding character canonised in Salford folklore by legendary artist Harold Riley – to a “few bob” whenever he could.

Inside Salford City Radio station.

Jill explained that her “very bright” mother was forced to forgo opportunities available to her because of family commitments, but worked to instil the value of a good education. After moving between part-time jobs, her mother eventually fulfilled her long-held dream of owning a business when she was offered a loan by a local bank manager, which enabled her to buy a chip shop that provided Jill with part-time work while during her studies.

“I lived on the then-new Ordsall Estate on Phoebe Street before moving to Pendleton to study occupational therapy at the Frederick Road campus, now part of the University of Salford,” she said, explaining that she went on to work for the NHS as an occupational therapist, before moving into roles with a Jewish charity, a medico-legal company, and later becoming self-employed.

“I have been fortunate to work with people of all ages and from a wide range of socio-economic and religious backgrounds.”

The chapters of Jill’s life before Salford City Radio help to complete the picture of the conscientious and caring working-class hero who has come to define the station.

It was by chance that her long-time love affair with the station began. An advert in the Salford City reporter calling for a soap opera writer to fill an audio drama slot piqued her interest and was the perfect chance for Jill to do something with her drama-loving daughters.

“I saw the advertisement and immediately thought it was something I would love to do, as I had always made up stories for my kids when they were growing up and wrote poetry.

“My daughters were into drama, and I thought they would love to get involved, so we came along together and we started to form a group, she explained. We would do castings and would have as many as 80 people involved in the drama programme.” With the group far exceeding expectations, Jill was brought in to temporarily manage the department while they found someone permanent to take over the workload.

Of course, Jill’s replacement never materialised; she hung around balancing Salford City Commitments with her career and mothering three children. “There are lots of bugs to be bitten by in community radio – I was bitten by them all,” and her infatuation with the station and the medium grew from there, to the point where she flicks the television off at home to tune into her favourite stations.

Salford City Radio won the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service in 2016.

A charity skydive ranks as one of the highlights of Jill’s years spent fundraising, organising and hosting events to fill the station’s coffers. In 2016, the station won the Queen’s Award, the highest honour for a voluntary organisation, and the equivalent of an MBE, for “Providing an inclusive, educational and entertaining service for local people of all backgrounds and cultures.”

Surely being “addicted to radio” makes her a nightmare teammate for a quiz? Fear not, Jill was then asked to host a show interviewing everyone from community champions to stars of the stage and screen. If a Star Wars question cropped up, she could call on her conversations with David Prowse, who played the physical form of Darth Vader in the original trilogy.

“I interviewed him several times, and we became quite friendly,” she recounted. “He came to Salford to promote his book. I went down to meet him at the Lowry. He was an ordinary person.

“I used to laugh because I had his phone number and when he rang me, I’d go: ‘Wow, hang on a second, it’s Darth Vader.'”

Instead of the celebrity guests, it was the “wonderful volunteers, students and retired or recently bereaved people who rely on the station for a network and a sense of purpose,” that Jill kept front of mind when she stepped up amid a funding crisis to keep the station running in 2018.

She recalled the moment she picked up the phone to the station’s chairman, pleading her to fill the boots of the outgoing manager who had moved on as austerity cuts decimated Salford City Radio’s already-streamlined budget.

“I agreed to a meeting with the board on the phone and, after talking to my family, decided I could not let the station close. I worked 21 hours on a fairly basic paid wage and did 63 hours volunteering on top of that,” she explained.

Continuing to work on a part-time basis, the mum-of-three has worked tirelessly to haul the station out of the mire. “My son says to me that my idea of having it at rest is to do something else, and he’s probably right.”

The team at Salford City Radio.

It’s fortunate for Jill, then, that in the rolling world of news, sport, music and entertainment, there is a constant flow of work to attend to and new, unexpected problems to solve. 2020’s global pandemic tested her ability to train show hosts to present remotely while the station became a Covid 19 testing centre for two years. “I’m really proud of the work we did supporting residents during an unusual and traumatic time,” she said.

When the pandemic subsided, the station was in a state of disrepair and had to be demolished. After a successful crowdfunding campaign backed by the “brilliant people of Salford”, she set up a new facility in rooms owned by the council at Swinton Civic Centre.

“I soundproofed it and painted it with the help of my family and worked with a group of caregivers who produced some lovely artwork on spare ceiling tiles. Bright yellow, blue and pastel pink coloured album cover artworks now line the walls, the same blue plastic chairs were brought from the last station to give returning volunteers a sense of “familiarity” and the “close-knit” community Jill formed a bond with down the years has been seamlessly transferred into a new, warm and welcoming home.

“The biggest sense of pride I feel is that we are still going,” she said, smiling. “We could have closed down the station 10 years ago, it’s wonderful to have played my part in keeping it open.”

Written piece produced by Salford Now.