The Golden Hour (radio feature)

The Golden Hour is a long-standing feature/segment on UK radio station BBC Radio 1, where records are played that all charted in the UK Top 40 in a certain year and listeners are invited to guess the year. The feature was presented for many years on Radio 1 by Simon Bates, and has more recently been heard on BBC Radio Devon after Bates became their Breakfast Show presenter in January 2015.

In June 1973, Noel Edmonds took over presenting the breakfast slot on BBC Radio 1 and Tony Blackburn moved to present the mid-morning slot (9–12 am). One of the features he started on this show was the Golden Hour. This was originally an hour of records that had all charted in a specified year, with Tony using a different year each weekday.

Tony Blackburn continued this feature until he vacated the weekday mid-morning slot in Autumn 1977 with a move to weekday afternoons. He was replaced by Simon Bates, who would continue the feature at the top of the show between 9 and 10 am.

Bates amended the format however, turning it into a guessing game for the audience to participate in. Records were played, sometimes interspersed with clues, so listeners can 'play along at home' and guess what the year was. The year would be revealed by Simon near the end of the hour. Later on, Simon split this into two half-hour segments, playing songs from two different years.

Towards the end of 1993, when new controller Matthew Bannister took over and reorganised both the shows and presenters, Simon Mayo moved from breakfast to mid-morning, taking over the feature from Simon Bates. The Golden Hour, or 'Mystery Years', as they were now sometimes referred to, lasted until 1996 when they were replaced with an hour of music from a number of years including the current one. Between May 1994 and April 1995, Sunday lunchtimes also gained the Classic Years (12–2 pm), also presented by Mayo. There was also a feature which ran between 1996 and 1999 on Fridays called "Golden Hour Jukebox", then "The Jukebox", then "Greatest Hits Jukebox," where listeners could ring in and suggest tracks instead of the normal format.

The 9–10 weekday slot was eventually named "Radio 1's Greatest Hits", becoming the somewhat unwieldy "Radio 1's Greatest Hits: The Mystery Years" in 1999. Listeners were challenged to answer a question on a piece of archive footage from the relevant year.

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