A decade ago Mark Trimming co founder of Radio Ascot, was sitting in a temporary shop, within a shop, in North Ascot, having lost his premises in Virginia Water. He had just lost the home of the World’s first Internet Shop, internetshop.co.uk, which he had established in 1997. The internetshop had helped and supported the local community through the growing pains of the internet, even opening a training centre and small cafe. Mark and his partner Nicky Clarke had not made fortunes, but had come to enjoy being at the heart of the growing Global Village! They were the hub for the village for all things IT and loved being part of the community.

Unfortunately one day, a local, respectable, Grandmother asked Mark, if he had work for her Grandson, who had been having a difficult time, but was a decent chap, who needed a brake. A year and a half later the decent young man had brought the business to its knees. Far from decent he was a dangerous crack cocaine addict, who had already fleeced a famous TV personality!

Despite this misfortune Mark was convinced that all communities would eventually have their own Media Centres/Hubs. He registered localmediacentres.co.uk and looked for backing. Ahead of his time and being down on his luck, this proved to be a bridge too far.

Mark managed to keep internetshop, but lacked the resource to rebuild its online presence. So it ticked over for a decade whilst Mark dealt with his set backs.

During this period Mark teamed up with a new business colleague, Sergey Shchetinin, who was already established with his own clients in the Ascot area. Mark mentioned his idea for the Media Centre and Sergey saw its merits, but the focus needed elsewhere.

So over the last few years Mark and Sergey have been building up their businesses and keeping internetshop trading, with a view to rebuild its online potential. They never forgot about the media centre and, with all the upheaval created by Brexit and a delay in a project Mark was working on, the idea re-surfaced!

In the meantime, Mark and Sergey had learnt that it was a better to start small and to build up to the total media hub concept. With that knowledge they decided step – a local online radio station.

Radio Ascot was born.

The plane to was to build, test and prepare for launching in the latter half of 2020. Along came the pandemic! A perfect situation to demonstrate how Radio Ascot could help, support and bring together the local community.

Seeing it as their way, and duty, to do their bit, in the battle against COVID-10, Mark and Sergey decided to launch Radio Ascot as soon as possible. Radio Ascot will continue running in ‘beta’ mode until the official launch later this year – pandemic allowing!

Radio Ascot born to serve you!