User:Lawrence john

Lawrence John is a deejay, songwriter, record producer and TV presenter from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He began his broadcasting career with Downtown Radio in 1976, starting with a Saturday morning oldies show called Yesterday's Favourites. This was soon followed by additional programmes including a Sunday afternoon Top 40 Countdown, a nightly 3 hour show called Downtown Downbeat and eventually a nightly Country Music show, called Downtown Country. His appetite wetted for Country Music, he left to pursue work on Country Music radio in the U.S.A., but after several stints on small U.S. stations and difficulty in obtaining a green card to work there, he returned home and ended up presenting a daily Country Show on Dublin pirate station, TREBLE TR.

While living and working in Dublin, he became a fan of the hugely successful super pirate, Radio Nova and eventually joined the U.S. style Top 40 station as the presenter of All Night Nova, week nights, midnight to six. The station at the time regularly enjoyed a 70% share of greater Dublin's radio audience, until the station's owner Chris Carey, incurred the wrath of the journalist's union. Picketing of the station by journalists led to Lawrence being warned by the musicians union not to cross the picket line or risk losing his union membership, which would have meant he could not work on legal TV or radio in Ireland or The U.K.

Reluctantly forced to leave Nova, Lawrence bounced back soon after, by launching rival station Q102, before being head hunted by Aiden Day, the former controller of programmes at London's Capital Radio, who poached him for Riviera 104, an exciting new radio project in Monte Carlo.

After several years on the Riviera, Lawrence returned to Ireland in 1987 to work on KISS FM, Monaghan, along with several of his former colleagues from Radio Nova. Lawrence presented a daily 7-midnight show, using the name, John Friday, to reflect a change in style from his early days at Downtown Radio. KISS FM was a powerful half a million watt cross border pirate targeting Belfast some 70 miles away, creating the first competition for Downtown Radio, Northern Ireland's only commercial radio station at that time. However, despite being hugely popular in Belfast, the station closed down after a year in order to be eligible for two different licence applications, one for Co. Monaghan, the other for Belfast.

Both applications were unsuccessful and with KISS FM failing to return to the airwaves, Lawrence joined the successful applicant for the Belfast licence, BCR, as presenter of the afternoon drivetime show, on condition he drop the name John Friday. When BCR was taken over by Owen Oysten's radio group in 1996, Lawrence who claimed he had been lied to by the new management, resigned live on air and became embroiled in a bustup in the studio, which was captured by a TV camera crew invited by Lawrence to witness his resignation. The furore, gave the newly renamed station Citybeat, an estimated half a million pounds worth of free publicity. It also upped Lawrence's profile considerably, leading to an on air interview on The Chris Evans Breakfast show on BBC Radio 2, the following morning. This resulted in backing for his own super pirate dance station, ENERGY 106, which broadcast from the former KISS FM site in Co.Monaghan, renamed Alien Mountain as part of the stations space themed identity. The station whose primary target was Belfast, was built and maintained by engineer, Miles Johnston, with Lawrence programming the music, doing all the announcements, writing, producing, voicing and selling the adverts and handling all the publicity. The station which began broadcasting in 1998, gained cult status almost immediately, finding huge popularity among both adults and teenagers and regularly attracting 3,000 kids to the ENERGY teen discos at Dundonald Ice Bowl and other venues around Northern Ireland. Eventually Lawrence enlisted some deejays to help out with the live shows and two of them Danny Dee and Stevie B began presenting a Saturday night mix show, which became a big hit with listeners. In 2005, after seven years on air, the station was closed down in by the Republic of Ireland's radio authority and after one short lived attempt to continue broadcasting, was eventually closed down for good.