When the station faced difficulties in 1993, Smith and Parry organised a one-off open air festival titled XFM Great Expectations in London's Finsbury Park on 13 June, with the Cure at the top of the bill. Xfm was officially created in London in 1992 by Jacob and Parry, with the station broadcasting at festivals and legally from Fiction's Charlotte Street headquarters on short-term licences.

At this point the station was still a pirate radio station operating out of his parent's flat, though Jacob had plans to get a number of Restricted Service Licences for Xfm, which would make Xfm a legal radio station even though it could only be on the capital's airwaves for short periods of time. The Cure's singer Robert Smith used the radio as a platform to promote the release of a Cure remix album Mixed Up during night-time radio shows, broadcast live on the airīy 1991, Q102 was off-air, with Jacob re-organising this rock station as Xfm in Clapton, East London.

In late 1990, Fiction Records founder, and manager of The Cure, Chris Parry got involved with the London station, even though at that point it still did not have any official authorisation to operate. Jacob was one of the presenters on this forerunner to Xfm alongside Adrian Gibson, Donald Johnson, Steve Lamacq and CD93's Bob Matthews (a DJ also known as Bob Mower), with the format changing to play only indie rock music by 1990. In 1989, the pirate radio presenter Sammy Jacob, known as DJ Sammy Jay on London's Horizon Radio and Solar Radio, set up an indie music station called Q102, which started broadcasting rock music on a part-time basis from 1 January 1989, with other hours following the soul format of another local station called CD93.

The station has employed a number of personalities that have since gone on to greater fame, including Russell Brand, Karl Pilkington, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Simon Pegg, Christian O'Connell, Justin Lee Collins, Adam and Joe, Alex Zane, Tim Lovejoy, Dermot O'Leary, Jon Holmes and Josh Widdicombe.Īs of September 2022, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 1.9 million, according to RAJAR. The station became a legally licensed London-wide station in 1997, and in 2015 began national broadcasting under the name Radio X. The station launched in 1989 as a pirate radio station named Q102, before being renamed Xfm in 1992. Radio X is a British National commercial radio station focused on alternative music, primarily indie rock, and owned by Global.

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