TRUE HOUSE STORIES® W/ GORDON MAC # 135 INTERVIEWED BY LENNY FONTANA
Kiss FM first broadcast 7 October 1985 as a pirate radio station, initially to South London then across the whole city, on 94FM. Kiss FM was founded by Gordon "Mac" McNamee, George Power (of London Greek Radio), and Tosca Jackson, with its engineer Pyers Easton. Transmitting seven-days from the start, it would be regularly taken off-air by the authorities and so became a weekend operation shortly afterwards.

The station developed a cult and committed following across Greater London, with figures in the press at the time stating that the station commanded some 500,000 listeners while operating as an unlicensed pirate station, and an Evening Standard readers' poll in 1987 put Kiss second, behind Capital Radio. Gordon Mac approached a successful London club promoter, Guy Wingate, to discuss ways of improving the Kiss FM profile. As a result, Wingate launched the very successful Kiss nights at the Wag Club (which included the first ever UK Acid House party – an idea put forward by Colin Faver and Danny Rampling), both DJs on the station.

Mac and ten of the DJs on the station including Norman Jay, Jonathan Moore, Colin Faver, Trevor Nelson, and Tim Westwood would become "shareholders" in a company called Goodfoot Promotions, with Mac heading up the station as its majority holder. By 1988, Kiss was at its strongest with a DJ line-up which had become the cream of London's clubland, and in that December, Mac and the other shareholders would announce that they would decide to close down in order to apply for a legal license. Listen to how Gordon Mac goes up the ladder and then leaves it all behind to come back eventually and create his next venture called Mi-Soul on Dab.