Lifetime achievement honour for Roger Hill

ROGER HILL - music radio presenter of the parish since before there was a parish - has picked up a Lifetime Achievement gong at the inaugural Liverpool Music Awards.

The event, hosted by another BBC broadcaster, Liverpool-born Janice Long, saw Rebecca Ferguson take the award for Best Female Artist. It marks a happier turn of events for the X-Factor star who was at the centre of controversy in Liverpool, earlier this month, after she gave an interview to The Sun. She tweeted: “So happy my first award thank you Liverpool glad it came from my home town xxxx.”

The Hummingbirds

The prize was presented to her by ex-Spice Girl Melanie C, but she wasn’t the only one flying the flag for girl power in a male-dominated industry. LIPA graduettes Stealing Sheep were named Band of The Year. Charlotte Bowers, who represents Liverpool singer/songwriter  John O'Connell was named Best Manager and the awards were organised by Ellie Phillips, daughter of local radio’s other well known Roger, Roger Phillips.

If that wasn’t keeping it in the family enough, colleague Billy Butler sat n the judging panel - as did son, Lee Butler, who won the Best DJ category!

Esco Williams does a turnMore than 50 Liverpool musicians gathered at Grand Dome Central at the weekend for a show that featured performances from Lawson, fronted by Liverpool singer Andy Brown, MOBO Unsung award winner Esco Williams, X Factor finalist Craig Colton and the Sense of Sound Choir.

Presenters included The Coral, The Wombats, Connie Lush, producer Mike Di Scala and MP Steve Rotherham.

Ex-Icicle Works singer Ian McNabb won Best Album for his solo work, Little Episodes.

The Local Music Champion was named as Phil Hayes, from The Picket, and The Roger Eagle award for outstanding contribution to music went to Liverpool Sound City founder Dave Pichilingi.

Roger Hill took over Radio Merseyside’s Friday evening Rockaround programme from Phil Ross in the early 1980s when Liverpool was enjoying something of a musical renaissance.

At the time he was still the director of the Everyman Youth Theatre and what he lacked in broadcasting experience he made up for in a vast record collection and knowledge of the local indie scene. His show, in one form or another, has stood the test of time and currently goes out at midnight on Sunday as The Popular Music Show.

It survived, by the skin of its teeth, the BBC local radio scheduling cuts earlier this year.

Roger Hill

After being presented with the Lifetime award, Roger said: “I should have given it up years ago, I suppose, but I didn't because I'd always felt that I'd been gifted this programme, this amazing thing, and it was my responsibility to look after it and keep it alive and current in the world.

He added: “We were talking on our table about fashion and how you sometimes pass somebody in the city centre and think: “How did they put that and that and that together to make such an amazing look?” It's the long streak of individualism in Liverpool, I think, and that's also the kind of music we've been championing.

“It hasn’t brought me any great fortune, until tonight, and it's been hard work, looking after the maverick music of Merseyside, but I wouldn't have missed a second of it and I just knew it was something that had to be done.”