Long before the internet and instant messaging or Facebook (although Hamish had a modem for his BBC Micro and we had actually been on-line in 1985), Nosher had a CB radio - a Maxcom 4e connected to a Wattpole "twig" which was dangled outside through a small window in the bedroom. Many evenings and nights would be spent gassing away to various CB chums, a group of which would often meet - sometimes on Barton on Sea cliff top, or in pubs and houses and sometimes on excursions to the Isle of Wight, which was easily in radio range and where there were another set of "CB buddies" based around Totland and Freshwater (the Isle of Wight Needles could just be seen through the trees out of the bedroom window). Before mass on-line communications, there was something magic about being able to just randomly chat to someone else, for free, who might be miles away (although not that many miles, as legal FM CB radio only had a range of 5-10 miles on a good day).

Nosher was "Golden Nugget", Hamish was "The Hacker" and Sean went by the handle of "Abacab". Phil and Sean also had rigs in their cars, which would be quite handy whilst driving around the New Forest.

Internet Relay Chat, invented in 1988, inherited much from services like Compuserve's CB Simulator (1984). Both of these kept the channel and handle/nickname paradigms, along with public rooms (like Channel 14 or 19 on CB) as well as more private rooms (Nosher's usual channel was 05). Of course, nothing on CB radio was actually private as anyone could "earwig" on someone else's chat.