Today was the first of three
radio Christmas specials that I will be involved with this week. I’m doing the
Robin Hood Radio one this week to send over to America and on Sunday I’ll be
live on air with The Sunday Alternative. There’s
also the Christmas edition of Steve’s LP Box
and my audio book of A Christmas Dinner
by Charles Dickens. Tonight I was live on the radio with the NottinghamLIVE special. Not a bad haul for someone who wants to skip
Christmas next year.
We were without Cassia this
week due to illness, but we had invited Mike Atkinson along to join in.
Originally we had decided not to have a live guest this week, but thanks to
some quick fire texting during the day we ended up with two.
There were no Christmas songs
in the first hour as Mike presented his picks for 2014, he usually turns up for
the final hour but had a prior engagement so had to dash off as soon as the
eight o’clock news kicked in. We didn’t really have time for a picture, but we
took one anyway.
Don't we look Christmassy?
Nick Aslam played in the
second hour, performing his Christmas song ‘I Know You Wish (It Could Be
Christmas)’ along with last year’s festive tune that he hadn’t played since
last year. We did put him on the spot with that, as we didn’t really make any
plans regarding tonight’s show. Here’s a future pub quiz fact for you, Nick
Aslam is the first singer to appear on NottinghamLIVE
twice. Nick was great fun and didn’t even seem to object when I plonked a Santa
hat over his perfectly prepared hair.
Behind the scenes fact: That 'wine' is actually Coca-Cola.
A band that I have thrown my
support behind this year is of course The CTRL. I have wanted them to do an
acoustic session for one of my shows for ages, and tonight they finally
obliged. The appearance was only sorted out a couple hours before the show
started, and even as the show started they didn’t really know what they were
going to do. We arranged for them to do two of their regular songs and a
Christmas song to end. Charlie kept winding me up saying that they have
prepared a “really gay cover” to play during their set, but wouldn’t tell me
what it was. They played in the final hour, a member down and with Charlie
playing percussion on an upturned bin and tambourine. The “really gay cover”
turned out to be a version of ‘When You Say Nothing At All’, best known in this
country for Ronan Keating’s version (hence it being a “really gay cover”).
Weirdly enough, they did a brilliant job of it and I hope they do at least put this
acoustic performance on their Soundcloud page. They ended with a great version
of ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ by Shakin’ Stevens, by which time the show was
nearly over and Christmas cheer had been spread throughout Nottingham.
All photos by Matt Stone
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