My Top ∞ Radio Songs #12: How To Get A Job In Radio

So how do you get a job in radio?

I've no idea how you'd do it nowadays. Thirty years ago though, the main route was via hospital radio. I did do some of that, and I'll talk about it another time, but it came AFTER I started working in the actual radio station where I'd spend a good 23 years of my life.

So how did I get that job? Ironically, since it was my preferred career choice, I got the radio job by being a writer!

From listening to local radio, I'd noticed that the DJs often read out amusing letters from listeners (some of them regular contributors), and as I had experience of letter-writing from the world of comics (pick up a stack of 80's Marvel or DC back issues, check their letter columns... eventually you'll find my name), I decided to have a go at getting my words read out on air. It turned out to be a doddle.

There was good reason for this. Most jocks of the time were desperate for link fodder. After they'd read the day's showbiz gossip and celebrity birthdays from the Daily Star*, they'd grab at any half-witty wittering that came their way... hell, it was better than having to think up anything funny for themselves.**

Eventually I got my name known as the guy who wrote those funny letters, a regular contributor, a loyal listener. In return I'd get a few requests played***, and win a few cheapo competitions - promo singles mostly, by the likes of The Rah Band, Tiffany and Status Quo.****

Around this time, I'd been using my comic book abilities at school, doing short cartoons about friends and teachers. I wasn't a brilliant artist by any stretch, but the stories and gags were mostly well received. (A friend, who was a much better artist than I, but not as good a writer, started doing his own strip too. I took my bat home. It never occurred to me that we might team up. My teenage ego wouldn't allow it.) It was only a matter of time before I transferred these skills to my budding radio career. Obviously, the strips couldn't be read out on air, but I'd moved past the excitement of hearing my name on the radio by now, and onto the next stage of my grand plan. I got hold of a set of presenter photo cards, worked up some crude caricatures, and began sending in comic strip adventures based on the people who worked at the station. These were also well-received - though god knows why, because they were bloody awful. 

Then, at the end of Fifth Year in school, those of us staying on as Sixth Formers were told we'd have to arrange a regular Work Experience posting to coincide with our 'A' Level studies. Having laid the foundations over the last few months, I wrote to the radio station and asked if there was a chance of me doing Work Experience there. A few weeks later, I was offered a job (unpaid, naturally!) answering the phones and making tea on their popular Saturday morning show, 9 til noon, with the presenter who made that Roy Orbison gag I mentioned a couple of weeks back. (Shortly afterwards, a new jock started in the slot before us, a young man named Culshaw who was noted for his celebrity impressions. He still is.)

It was August 1988, and writing had helped me get my first job in radio. But it was only going to be a temporary thing. Just until my proper writing career took off...

12. Edwin Starr - H.A.P.P.Y. Radio

Edwin Starr's disco classic seems most appropriate here since I was never happier at work than during those first couple of years in radio. Of course, I was also chock miserable too because I was a teenager and I was me. But good memories are much stronger than bad ones. Good job too, I reckon.




*I recently discovered a diary I kept late 80's, in preparation for my future career, packed full of celebrity birthdays... ah, the days before the internet!

**Back in those days, most jocks arrived in the studio with a tub full of home-made jingles and sfx on cart, a stack of scratchy LPs, and two or three old Tom O'Connor or Frank Carson joke books they'd picked up from the Oxfam shop. Some even wrote dates next to the jokes, so they knew when they'd last used them on air, and when it'd be safe to use them again.

***My Top 3, played one afternoon circa 1987... Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody, Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart, and... I can't remember the third, but it would most likely have been either The Isley Brothers - This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak For You), The Real Thing - You To Me Are Everything, or Huey Lewis & The News - The Power Of Love. What a young romantic!

****I soon found out how easy it was to win on-air competitions - particularly write-in ones... entries rarely reached double figures.