I’m reliably informed Trinity FM launched 25 years ago. Which must mean it’s 21 years since I walked through the arch into front square. I remember the riotous menu of society stalls and how intimidated I was facing them. Toddling around a mad buffet of potential futures and wishing I knew anyone. As an ancient mature student of 23 I felt discombobulated in the company of school leavers. Not quite an adult, not part of the swell of friends who’d drifted from school to college together. It wasn’t that week I discovered TFM. It must have been later that year, or early the next when I got involved. The station’s first real committee and founder Daithi Mac Sithigh (then a post grad) were still in the picture. TFM was a young but vibrant little society, located at the top of twelve flights of stairs in House 6. A ramshackle common room for musos and hacks alike. It was there – along with the sadly exiled Sci Fi soc once located across the hall, that I would find my dearest friends in college.

At the time, societies in Trinity were flush with registration-fee funding, and we made best use of it. Broadcasting just six weeks a year only encouraged us to celebrate each with a bacchanalian drinks bash in the CSC room. Junkets to Galway and London were enjoyed. We also invested in the future, launching online streaming and podcasts as early as 2005. I worked as a DJ, senior producer and station manager along with numerous talented and creative students. We introduced a system where listeners could message a digital bulletin board in the studio directly from the website, and had grainy live webcam footage, and even an internet TV show running long before the invention of Youtube.

Right as my time in Trinity drew to a close, we also launched a nationwide music magazine Analogue, edited by station manager Bren McGuirk. Analogue gave us the chance to interview many of our musical idols, from the Magnetic Fields to Owen Pallet to Seasick Steve. Alongside numerous now legendary indie acts like Dublin Duck Dispensary, Gran Casino and the Dead Flags. A few Analogue writers and photographers — Dan Gray, Darragh McCausland, and Loreana Rushe, went on to distinguished careers in writing and journalism.

My own TFM shows ran the gamut from music to sex and relationships, but like many of the committee I was frequently to be found filling in whatever slot needed a mouthpiece into the wee hours. We played host to numerous bands from rising indie acts to rock legends like Fight Like Apes. Recording each broadcast to VHS tapes that would periodically be hauled off by serious faced men from the Broadcasting Commission who stored them in case of potential future lawsuits.

The station was chaotic — drunken rabble would drag themselves up from cocktail receptions to break broadcast law by gabbling inebriated onto a hot mic. We once lost our licence for a year, broadcasting on the wrong week. IMRO almost sued over unpaid licence fees. Somehow the station never died. Year after year it remained a place for students (and a few lecturers) to connect, communicate and express their creativity.

TFM launched my career in radio, and I’ll always hold close my memories of that little studio and the places it took me. So I was delighted when this years committee invited myself and as many other alums as they could find to be part of their anniversary broadcast. In the end only a few of us made it to air – Mark Hughes, James Van De Waal, Stephen Shannon, and Ronan McDonald. Carrying the torch for the history of a tiny but ambitious little station, crammed into an overlooked office looking out onto the campanile.

I took to the stream again yesterday (alas TFM is no longer a broadcast outfit) to play some highlights from my radio career. A couple of minutes each from the shows linked below. It was surreal craic. Long live TFM!

Kick the Kat [TFM, 2004]

TFM Jingles

Technolotics! [2004 – 2005]

Thrust Us [2007, TFM] 

Thrust Us was a sex and relationship advice show that ran on Trinity FM in the late 2000s.

Thrust Us – Episode One (Best Of) (42 megs)

Show ran under other hosts on and off for at least 10 years!

Any Other Dublin [2013, Near FM] – Bernie in the Community 

Ideopreneurial Entrephonics 2 [2014] from Culture File

Mad Scientists of Music Doc – ‘Hiding Music in the Mountains’ [2014, Near FM]

Paraudiollia from Bluebottle Collective’s Hibernation Radio project

Getting into the Game [2016, Newstalk]

The Wall in the Mind [Newstalk, 2016]

The Listening Stage Documentary [2018, Newstalk]

Everybody Wants to Love You [Podcast, 2022]

The Emerald Arts [Satirical Arts Progamme, Near FM, 2013]

The Wedding Tree