Listening to the radio while driving around the boroughs of Liberty City is one of Grand Theft Auto III’s greatest pleasures, because of the licensed music, eccentric personalities, and ridiculous ads.

Grand Theft Auto previously included radio stations full of licensed music to listen to, and Grand Theft Auto 2 introduced DJ banter and commercials to the mix, but Chatterbox brought a new, real-life radio style to the virtual airwaves.

Have you played Grand Theft Auto III?

This year marks 20 years since players first got the chance to tune into Chatterbox FM, so, to celebrate, we spoke to those who brought the station to life, including its host Lazlow, and the voice actors Reed Tucker and Frank Chavez.

Lazlow has appeared in multiple GTA games since, but Grand Theft Auto III was his remarkable debut.

While Grand Theft Auto III was in development, Lazlow was working at a digital ad agency in New York called Blue Dingo (named after his dog) while hosting a technology and video game-focused radio show called Technofile.

As he explains, he became involved with Grand Theft Auto almost by accident.

Lazlow Jones (image courtesy of Lazlow Jones).

Lazlow (image courtesy of Lazlow Jones).

Lazlow and Houser populated Chatterbox FM with a cast of quirky characters to give the fictional Lazlow plenty to play off, including everyone from a British expat named Freddy, who would keep calling the station to voice his nanny fetish, to a concerned parent who insisted video games are warping her son’s mind.

According to Lazlow, Dan and Sam Houser decided early on that he should be the host of Chatterbox to add authenticity to the station.

Meanwhile, for the show’s ‘authoritative’ guests -- the love guru Fernando Martinez and the wimpy self-help author Reed Tucker -- Lazlow brought on board two of his co-workers from his advertising and radio jobs.

“I had never even heard of Grand Theft Auto at the time.

Reed Tucker (image courtesy of Lazlow Jones).

“Originally Fernando was only meant to be a commercial that ran on all the radio stations,” Chavez explained.

Frank Chavez (image courtesy of Lazlow Jones).

To this day, Lazlow, Tucker, and Chavez still receive the occasional bit of fan mail from those who heard them back on Chatterbox in 2001, which often takes them by surprise.

Following Grand Theft Auto III, Lazlow and Fernando became mainstays of the series, with Chavez even getting his own station, Emotion, in follow-up Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Chavez has since appeared in every subsequent game, except for Grand Theft Auto IV -- something Rockstar immediately rectified in Grand Theft Auto V after a successful fan campaign for his return

But Grand Theft Auto III’s Chatterbox FM set the template, created its own stars, and forever cemented its wild conversations as a key part of the fabric of Grand Theft Auto