Plugge, a radio enthusiast, would collect the schedules of radio stations he visited during long motoring holidays on the European continent and sell them to the BBC to publish in "Radio Times" and other magazines such as "Wireless World". On one such journey, Plugge asked the café owner at the Café Colonne, located in the coastal village of Fécamp, Normandy, what there was to see in the town. He was told that a young member of the Le Grand family – which owned the town's Benedictine distillery – had a small radio transmitter behind a piano in his house, and that a local cobbler's business had increased after his name was mentioned during a broadcast.