Wednesday 13th November

Not the best start to an edition of NottinghamLIVE this week, which was a bit of a pisser considering we were without Darren. In his place we had his wife Geri instead, (next time I’m off it might be good to see (or indeed hear) the two of them doing the show together Richard and Judy style, except that Darren and Geri are a married couple and not mother and son). Nottingham’s ridiculous bus service was to blame for my almost lateness, and I had already warned Joe on the phone that Cassia was going to have to start the show without me. She knows how to drive the desk, (radio term, ‘drive the desk’ basically means pushing the right buttons and sliding the right fader) so I knew that the show could at least begin with one presenter in attendance. On air I pitched the idea of a special bus service for people who work in the media; radio presenters taken to their studios, bands taken to gigs, journalists taken to stories, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a free service, I am not asking for the earth, but a speedy service that only uses bus lanes and is possibly allowed to jump red lights as the emergency services do. I’m not saying that hosting a radio show is on the same level as a fireman or nurse, but we do serve an important service and as such should be given some kind of special treatment.

(Most of the above paragraph was written by my on-air character, the arrogant radio character that I invented. If you took any of it seriously then you are, sadly, one of those idiots who can’t differentiate between what’s real and what is showbiz gloss).

To give the three of us an easier start for the notoriously weak opening hour of the show, we just played what the playlist gave us to play. This enabled us to plan the second hour with our live guest; the third hour was devoted to the upcoming week’s gig guide so we had less pressure on us.

Our live guest was Ram1, someone I wasn’t overly familiar with as I don’t tend to dip my toe in the hip hop waters. It turns out that he was more reggae than rap to be fair, and thankfully he spoke well which helped with the fact that I would have struggled to interview him otherwise as I had nothing. The set was brilliant, although he had to cut it short due to a poor throat. Even more worryingly, he asked where the toilets were about thirty seconds before he was due to go on air, so decided to wait until after the performance, so I was a bit on edge that we might have our first on-air toilet accident. The first that I am aware of at least.

picture by Joe Sheldon, check out his music here

It was a different dynamic for me because I’m not used to doing the show without Darren that often, and I’ve never worked with Geri before which I found enjoyable. If I was compiling a Panini sticker album of radio co-presenters I would just need to co-present a NottinghamLIVE with their six month old baby then I will have completed the Patterson page.

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