I have just returned from
Bulwell where I was a guest co-presenter on the radio show Castle Rock
on Trent Sound. Lee Beaumont invited me on a while ago and having worked with
him before I was keen to get behind the microphone for the first time since I left
Trent Sound earlier this year. Since the end of NottinghamLIVE
and The Sunday Alternative I haven’t
actually worked in radio for most of the year, having also brought The Sound of
Nottingham UK to an end on June 1st. although the podcast is doing
better than I could have imagined and I have expansion plans for the name, the
buzz of presenting a live show is like the most addictive drug you can think
of. I often found that being live on air was a wonderful help with my
depression, and presented some of my best shows when I had travelled to the
studio wishing I was dead. Live radio is something I really miss and have been
looking for a way back in. as great as the new Trent Sound studio is, it isn’t
big enough to accommodate live music performances, which was behind the
decisions to end the two shows I was doing for the station.
To begin with I was a little
nervous and didn’t really give a lot for the first half hour, but once I had
warmed up it was as if I had never stopped. The three hours flew by and I had a
brilliant time. Lee is a great host and we have a good comedy chemistry, (his
show isn’t a serious one and conversation can flow quite well), resulting in a
show that was hopefully as much fun to listen to as it was to present. Some of
the best ‘lighter’ radio presenters have the ability to make a conversation between
themselves entertaining to listen to; Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie on BBC
6Music are a good example, as was Danny Baker’s afternoon show on BBC London. Topics
tonight snowballed from the death of Raphael Ravenscroft, the saxophone player
on the song ‘Baker Street’, to the fact that it wasn’t Bob Holness who played
on the song but it is true that Holness was the first James Bond. This was my
chance to pull out two of my bank of unlikely but true facts; the first person
to use a cash point machine in the UK was Reg Varney from On The Buses (from
Barclays Bank in Enfield on June 27th 1967), and Ernie Wise made the
first ever call from a mobile phone (on New Year’s Day 1985). By the end of the
show I was a little bit frightened by the amount of factual knowledge I have in
my head about On The Buses, even managing to link with another subject of ‘the
first person to…’; Reg Cox was the first person to be seen on screen on
Eastenders, one of the people who discovered his body was Arthur Fowler, the
part of Arthur Fowler was originally offered to Reg Varney. This could be how I
get to appear on Mastermind.
While I type this there are
four cheeseburgers cooking in the oven for my tea, and adrenalin is pumping
through me once again. The live radio bug is back with me now, and I am
determined to get back on air. Mandi warned/advised me not to take on too much
work as she knows how stressed I get, but a live microphone beats any
prescribed medication hands down.
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