Radio 1 Roadshow  The Radio 1 Roadshow was an annual summer event hosted and broadcast by BBC Radio 1 from the 1970s through to the 1990s. The roadshow enjoyed three decades of live broadcasts from beach resorts around the UK. The curtain was brought down on the summer roadshows on July and August 1999, when the BBC replaced them with a series of one-day pop festivals in cities around the UK. The concept for the Roadshow came from Radio 1 producer and later controller, Johnny Beerling and was envisaged and purchased by Tony Miles, built and maintained by John Dean, with engineers Peter Lucken and Johnny Heritage. The first Roadshow was held at Newquay, Cornwall, on Monday 23 July 1973, and was hosted by Alan Freeman. Various disc jockeys from the station would visit British towns, usually on the coast, to play a live set, meet local people to play their requests, take part in games and give away "goodie bags" of Radio 1 gifts. Accompanying the DJs were the support crew, led by Tony Miles, nicknamed "Smiley Miley", who had provided the original caravan for the first Roadshow. Several games were devised especially for participation in by the live audience. Most notable were two that ran throughout the Roadshow's history, 'Bits and Pieces' and 'Smiley Miley's Mileage Game'. In the former, contestants selected from the Roadshow crowd had to name a series of pop hits after hearing a tape containing a dozen or so brief excerpts, the winner being the one who accurately identified the most. In the latter, gamers had to assess how many miles the Roadshow truck had travelled from the previous venue, the one making the most accurate guess being deemed the victor. The typical roadshow summer season started in July and ran for eight weeks, broadcasting live on Radio 1 from the roadshow locations from 11am to 12.30pm each weekday. The first hour from 10am was a warm-up ahead of the 11am start of the live broadcast. By the late 70's they became a key part of the summer schedules for Radio 1, and attracted much support during their run. The largest attendance was at Sutton Park, Birmingham, on Sunday 30 August 1992, when 100,000 fans turned up to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Radio 1 with live performances from bands including Del Amitri, Aswad, The Farm and Status Quo. In the early 1990s several attempts were made to modernise the Roadshow. Under Matthew Bannister, for example, in 1993 and 1994, the station commissioned an independent production company to make an audio postcard for each venue in advance of the Roadshow's arrival in that place. 36 whistle-stop "2 Minute Tours" were made each year, and broadcast several times in the 24 hours leading up to the Roadshow proper, in order to give a wider reflection of life in each place.