A Space For Radio : Paul Camo on Margate Radio turning Five
As Margate Radio turns five, founder Paul Camo reflects on its past, present and future
Young faces peering in to see what is happening in the room, having little or no idea what radio actually is and where it comes from.
The glass box that houses Margate Radio (@margateradio), to the side of Where Else?, is something of a window into the past with its hanging mics, turntable decks and On Air signage.
Why would they know? They’ve just got to turn it on, or ask Alexa to turn it on, and it’s there.
Having celebrated its five-year anniversary, founder Paul Camo explains that Margate Radio is on a journey that is nowhere near finished.
“We celebrated five years with an event, which was a milestone in itself,” he says. “We got so many DJs with so many talents and so many different aspects to what they do. We used the community hall in Cliftonville to get people in a different space. It sold and then probably another 100 or more people turned up. It was packed. This is what we’ve been trying to work towards. Margate Radio is a shopfront for that. We’ve done the Turner Lates events, and the youth training scheme, which, again, was amazing, but that’s why having that Physical Margate Radio space is a great shopfront for us.”
“It just feels like it’s a very liberal way of being able to put stuff out there”
The booth opened at live-music venue Where Else? as it transitioned from its original name and format Elsewhere, having previously operated from various spaces - but mainly from Paul’s home.
“I remember speaking to Sammy [Clarke] quite a lot,” recalls Paul. “Our values are very similar in terms of community but also grassroots and underground music and independent platforming. It’s just people doing their stuff, it just seemed like it really made sense to move there. Having a physical space was really important to be seen by people walking by.”
While a first iteration, named Radio Margate, started life running out of its cafe-bar on Cliff Terrace, the Margate Radio that we now know began as a lockdown project for Paul, who had previously collaborated on the first version.
Having had a show on London-based radio station NTS for more than a decade, Paul has been in the industry since the early 90s - from putting on music events at iconic clubs like Plastic People to posting mixes on a very early blog site. Devoted to the rave scene from a young age, Paul was inspired by the wave of pirate radio stations that underpinned the movement.
“Pirate radio was huge, it’s where you would hear the tracks, and occasionally they would tell you what the tracks were, but also knowing where and when the next rave would be,” he says. “A friend of mine was driving, you’d have the radio on - I just remember thinking ‘This is f*cking amazing, man. How can someone just set up this thing in a flat and now we’re listening to it in a car, going to the event, and potentially those guys are going to be there DJing’.”
After the birth of his first child, Paul and his family took the decision to move to Margate and escape the trappings of the capital, and while he still worked in the creative industries his desire to broadcast remained.
“I think when I arrived here, it felt like there was loads of potential but not to turn a blind eye to what the problems were,” he says. “And also, this idea of when you move into a different place, what impact do you want to have on a community and what benefit can you bring? What’s the stuff that I really enjoy doing that I’ve got some knowledge of and I remember just thinking ‘Ah, a radio station down here!’.”
STAY AT HOME SELECTIONS
While Radio Margate closed and its owner moved away, the pandemic kicked in. But having agreed to store the station’s equipment on the premise that he could use it, the opportunity arose to start afresh - all Paul needed was a little kick.
“My partner, Maisie, was the one, she was like ‘You need to do it now! All plans are out the window, right? This is an unprecedented moment’.”
With something of a captive audience in the town as the lockdowns took hold, Margate Radio was born.
“It was really apparent that I took for granted going out for a coffee or milk and bumping into people I’d met, and it was really easy to meet people in Margate,” he says. “That was hugely missed. So I just thought ‘How can I contribute to keeping people connected? That might be one small thing I can do that’s going to help in this situation’.
“I just needed a page. I knew how to get that audio up on a site. Up to that point, I was just chatting to a list of people. So I approached them to give me mixes I could put up and promote to the local community, calling them the Stay at Home Selections.”
To start with, Paul was posting one show a week, which grew in popularity so that by the time the lockdowns eased he had enough content to run it all back to back for a whole weekend.
“By that point, the numbers were actually quite good in terms of people listening and anticipating each show every week. I just thought ‘OK, well, I’m doing it now. What if I go to all these people and if they wanted to do it regularly, monthly, would they be up for it?’.
“Nearly everyone said they’d love to do it. What also started coming out was how much it meant. I just thought people were supplying mixes. But after lockdown, there were people who said “This saved me, having this one thing a month to look forward to, to work towards, that was my one hour when I could just take myself away and be’.”
Reaching out to more and more hosts and DJs, Paul started creating blocks, shows that would last for multiple hours that could be run at peak times across weekends.
The popularity of Margate Radio was tested to the limit when the borrowed equipment was needed back, leaving the station’s future hanging by a thread.
“It really highlighted how we were in a quite vulnerable position and could not be in that position - we needed to own our equipment,” says Paul.
Image by Elliott @elotpyne
With a helping hand or two, a crowdfunder was organised, with the pitch looking into the figures and listenership revealing some amazing stats - including having more than one million minutes of playing time.
“I did a video, which I have never done, like being sincere and bloody open about the whole journey. We hit our target within two weeks. It was amazing.”
In 2025, the roster of talent contributing to the station has swelled to more than 80, including hosts taken from the glitterati of Thanet’s creative scene - including some very prominent figures. All shows are recorded and sit on the radio’s website, while new content and live sets are released on the channel every weekend. There’s a waiting list of contributors, while plans are under way to open the schedule up to midweek and include more diverse shows, including chats and mini documentaries.
“It’ll be interesting to see what the listening habits are because during the week in your studio or at work, for example, it’s quite nice to have the radio on, whereas the weekend is a bit more of a commitment because you’ve got things to do,” says Paul. “Also, I think we can be quite specific with how we curate shows. Like, Wednesday evening for instance, we could say that’s like experimental or classical, we can be a bit more curious and playful.”
With the station operating due to the efforts of a band of dedicated volunteers, the next goal will be for Margate Radio to bring in revenue.
“The big thing is for it to be financially sustainable - we’ve got an amazing pool of volunteers who contribute their time,” he says. “But I would love what we do to be like an entry for young people to get experience and also to meet so many great people doing shows, with lots of different skill sets, to be able to start interacting.”
More live events are coming and Paul is brimming with ideas of how to get Margate Radio out to an even wider audience. But at the heart of it all is the ethos of pirate radio and pushing the idea of bringing your creative talents to an audience.
“It just feels like it’s a very liberal way of being able to put stuff out there,” he says. “You don’t have to go through red tape. You don’t have an infrastructure. You just have to have the idea, the motivation and, I suppose, nimble thinking, to be able to just find a way of doing it.”
