If you could, would you have
sex with a cartoon character? It is the question that has the whole of
Nottingham talking thanks to it being one of our ‘stock questions’ on NottinghamLIVE. We should thank Richard Herring of course
for the homage we are paying him by basically ripping off his ‘emergency
question’ bit from his chat show podcasts. There’s also the big issue of who
would win in a fight between a Moomin and a Care Bear, but I spent today trying
to think of another question to break the ice and tested them by texting them
to Darren and Gary, and also my daughter.
Would you rather have legs
made of sausage meat or tear ducts that produce shampoo and conditioner?
Your legs
do not look like sausages, (that would be stupid) they are made of sausage
meat. If you take a bite out of your leg it will grow back in a week. If you
eat your whole leg it will take a month to grow back. You aren’t allowed to
profit from it but can use it for good, such as cutting off your foot to give
it to a homeless person to eat. On the other hand, your tears only produce
enough shampoo and conditioner for one shower at a time.
Gary reasoned that a dog might
try to eat his legs, but the dog wouldn’t know you had sausage legs unless you
sliced a bit off for it to eat.
Would you rather have wheels
instead of feet, or be able to fly?
You are
born with the wheels, they grow with you so they are tiny to begin with and
grow with you just like feet do so there’s no problem of getting used to it.
The ability to fly comes from flapping your arms like wings as a bird does, so
you wouldn’t look as cool as you would if you could fly like Superman.
Everyone I asked said that
they would choose the ability to fly, even when I took the question to the
studio and asked there. The best conversation about it was a text exchange
between me and my daughter Emily.
Me: Would you rather have
wheels instead of feet, or be able to fly?
Emily: Fly, because I wouldn’t
be able to climb upstairs with wheels as feet.
(I have to admit that I hadn’t
considered the stairs situation)
Me: What if your flying was
flapping your arms like a bird. Not like Superman, remember you wouldn’t look
as cool.
Emily: I would still be cool
because I can fly and you would have to drag your wheels up the stairs.
She had me with the stairs
argument. I rang her for a chat and we got back to the subject, with her making
the brilliant observation that I would have to live in a bungalow because I
need the toilet a lot. She made me laugh out loud when I asked her the sausage
leg/tears shampoo question:
“Sausage legs, because I no
longer need to walk because I can fly”. It didn’t count because it was a
different question, but it was a brilliant answer.
On the way to Trent Sound
Towers (not an actual tower), I asked if she would prefer to be made out of
bread, or have milk instead of blood. Again she gave me an answer that made me
laugh out loud (I believe the youngsters would have simply said that it made
them ‘lol’) on the tram:
“Have milk as blood because I
don’t have to get up to go to the fridge, all cats would be nice to me and I
wouldn’t have birds trying to peck me to death”. When I texted her to tell her
about my tram lol-ing, she said if anyone saw these messages I would end up in
St Luke’s, which made me ‘lol’ some more. (St Luke’s is an institution in
Middlesbrough that in less enlightened times would have been called a mental
home). To try and win this discussion, I pointed out that although it is milk
it would still be operational as blood, so you would need to cut yourself every
time you needed some, a bowl of cereal could come with a fainting risk. She
didn’t text me back.
Since we started doing NottinghamLIVE, we have had an unbroken run of live music
sessions that has sometimes been threatened by a cancellation, and the day has
always been saved by a last minute booking. On one occasion, Alex Young came
down in response to an appeal put out on Twitter and jumped in his car and
joined us to play. Tonight was our first very last minute cancellation, with
our singer suddenly being too ill to appear and suddenly (yes, I used ‘suddenly’
twice) acquiring a manager to do her ringing in sick for her. I suspect that
she wasn’t ill at all, but time will tell I suppose. She has appeared on BBC Introducing in Nottingham, so why would she turn down
the chance to appear on a relevant Nottingham music show?
The first hour was taken care
of by way of an interview with Dave and Mark from ROFL Audio to talk about the
official launch of the studio, and what they are about. I’ve been using the
studio myself for the Robin Hood Radio sessions, and it really is an amazing
place to work, so if Nottingham’s plethora of quality bands and musicians want
the best then they would be fucking idiots to go anywhere else (quote for the
brochure).
Neither of us had thought to tell our sound
engineer Joe that we didn’t have any sound for him to engineer, which I could
tell had pissed him off a bit as he has to get a bus to Trent Towers (not an
actual tower). However, he had his guitar with him as he leaves us to go and
play at an open mic after the bands have finished, so I suggested to him that
he plays. Like all sound engineers, Joe is also a musician with a solo project
called The Sinister Minister and as a drummer in The Fade. Thankfully he agreed
to this and helped us to keep our record intact. But first he had to restring
his guitar.
Joe did a brilliant set of
three songs, and pointed out that he had never been in the broadcast studio
before when we talked to him afterwards. It was a nice change for him to be on
the other side of the controls, and to show that she can turn her hand to
anything, Cassia took charge of the sound engineer’s cupboard.
We were joined by Cassia once
again, and rather than just watching us at work I decided it would be a better
learning experience to drop her in the deep end and let her drive the desk. I
hadn’t thought to ask her, as she didn’t want to last time she joined us, but
she asked if she could talk on air. After showing her which faders to slide and
buttons to press, she was away. Darren and Cassia presented the weekly gig
guide Looking Ahead, a feature that we famously never seem to do smoothly. This
week it sounded amazing, which obviously makes it my fault that it is usually
shite. After the show I asked if she’d ever worked on air before and she said
no. Unbelievable, I was utter crap when I first presented on radio. It's a shame that Cassia is now going on holiday as I suggested to Darren that she could take over the gig guide presenting as a regular feature.
In the final hour we were
joined by Mike Atkinson and his regular pick of new tracks and music news. Last
time he came in we couldn’t fit everything in, this time we managed by some
miracle to come in slightly under time and had to fit another song in to fill
the ‘radio hour’ (58 minutes).
From a shaky start we somehow
once again managed to produce a high quality three hours of radio, all right
maybe it was two and a half hours.
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