Radio Songs #74: Now, one day a man in a pinstriped suit…

There are big schedule changes afoot at my favourite radio station, BBC Radio Scotland. For years now, I’ve been listening to late night shows from that station (and a couple from BBC Radio Ulster) to help me get to sleep, and to keep my mind from racing when I wake up in the wee small hours. Radio has always been a big part of my sleep routine, even as a child I slept with the radio on and if I woke up in the night, it was reassuring to have a friendly voice there playing interesting music to keep the night at bay.

The Kinks – Around The Dial

These days I don’t listen to live radio, but through the wonder of BBC Sounds, I always have a bank of shows to go to in the night. Mickey Bradley and Ralph McLean on the Irish station; Iain Anderson, Natasha Raskin-Sharp, Roddy Hart and Ricky Ross from Scotland. There’s nothing on Radio 2 or 6Music for me anymore. 2 is too mainstream, far too much chance of hearing U2, Celine Dion and Simply Red. 6Music is too in love with dance music, or more likely to play something too loud which will wake me up with a hammering heart. And I can’t listen to commercial radio (what’s left of it) because of the ads (irony, I know, because I spent a large part of my life writing those bloody things).

Lucy Spraggan – Don’t Play This On The Radio

Anyway, Radio Scotland has a new programme controller, and I lived through enough of those in my time in radio to know that it’s rarely good news. Most new programme controllers arrive in the job with a mantra of “If it ain’t broke – fix it”, and so it is at Radio Scotland. Two of my favourite shows are ending while a third is being shuffled to the weekend in order to create a new regular late show that will appeal to the 45+ demographic… i.e. it’ll sound just like Radio 2. I may be prejudging, but I expect we’ll hear a lot more U2, Celine Dion and Simply Red.

Neil Young – Payola Blues

Farewell then to veteran broadcaster Iain Anderson, who's been on Scottish radio since the days of the Ark, but has always been a reliable place to go to hear the best singer-songerwritery material of the last 60 years. And an even sadder farewell to the wonderful Natasha Raskin-Sharp, a presenter with a Peel-like commitment to shining light on artists that never get played anywhere else on the radio. I’ve listened to both their shows for over a decade now, I’ve welcomed them into my home, they’ve become warm, stalwart, dependable friends, and I’ve valued the comfort they’ve given me in the long dark nights of the soul… I fooled myself into thinking they’d always be there.

Tom Petty – The Last DJ

There’s a campaign running to save these shows, to get BBC Radio Scotland to reverse it’s schedule changes (slated for the New Year), a campaign backed by a lot of the independent Scottish musicians who have come to rely upon the shows for airplay. I’ve signed the petition (currently at 15,000 signatures), but I don’t hold out much hope. Because I’ve worked in radio, and I’ve seen too many good presenters forced out over the years because the market testing showed audiences didn’t want individual choice or musical eclecticism.

Public Enemy - How To Kill A Radio Consultant

A week or so before the announcement, Iain Anderson played my favourite song by Mark Germino, and took a moment to dwell upon its message. I didn’t understand the significance at the time. I do now.

Now, one day a man in a pinstriped suit
Took the owner of the station to a restaurant booth
His pitch was simple, “you'll increase your sales
“If you only play the song list we send in the mail.”
He guaranteed a larger audience
Less confusion and higher points
“But your drive-time jock won't get to do his thing.
“Hey he's not half bad, tell me, what's his name?”

Radio Songs #73: Reunion

The Hiss - Back On The Radio

On Saturday night, I attended the 50th anniversary reunion of the radio station I spent 21 years of my working life at. Although the station itself no longer exists (don't start me on the sad state of the UK radio industry), it originally turned on its transmitters in 1975... although I didn't start working there till I was 16 in 1988. 

Agnetha Fältskog - Back On Your Radio 

It was a very emotional evening, seeing so many old friends. I wouldn't go anywhere near a school reunion, and I hardly remember anyone from my university days, but I knew so many good people during my years in radio, I couldn't resist the opportunity to catch up with them. (I knew quite a few arseholes too, but thankfully, none of them attended. Which says a lot, really.)

James Banbury & Sleep Club - Reunion Radio

The night was a blur. I couldn't stay late as Sam had a football match early the next morning, and the event was an hour's drive from home, so it all felt a bit of a rush. Looking back, I know I didn't get the chance to see everyone I wanted to, while those I did get to talk to, I would have liked to have much more time with. But it was wonderful, how easy it was to fall back into the old banter once we'd got past the "what are you doing now?" bit. It's at least 16 years since I've seen most of these people, but it might as well have been last week.

Simon & Garfunkel - Old Friends

A lot of organisation went into the event, tracking down many different people who'd worked in all the different departments over the years. Sadly, it's unlikely there will be another reunion in the future, but I hope to stay in touch with some of the old friends I saw again on Saturday. 

Morrissey - Hold On To Your Friends

Working in radio had its highs and lows, and the lows took over towards the end, but it was a very special time in my life. We had a laugh, but we got the job done too. That's the best you can say about any workplace, I reckon.

 

Radio Songs #72: Reception

This is the reception at the old building, so this will have been the first room I entered when I was led down the stairs from the side door featured a couple of weeks back. The reception didn't remain a reception for long after I got there. A few years later is was moved upstairs, into the light, and the old wood panelling here was stripped away. But this is how it looked when I first arrived, the day I came for my interview and was immediately given the (unpaid) Saturday morning job. I was 16, but I finally felt like a grown up.

Here's a close up of some of the presenter photos on the wall. The dashing young gentleman in the middle is the only one I really remember. In fact, though I never worked with him directly, he's one of the few people from the early days that I'm still in touch with, via Facebook, and he still does the odd spot of presenting, I think, on one of those retro-online stations that harken back to how local radio used to sound before the commercial homogeneity set in. 

This isn't the most interesting of posts, I will fully admit, since I don't really have any stories about reception. But for me, these photos are still worth a million in prizes.

Here's a song that starts in reception... and is still very, very true. Plus, it's got a French Horn in it, which always nice.

Radio Songs #71: Switchboard

I spent a lot of time in this room, answering these phones. That's the original switchboard that was in MCR when I first joined back in 1988. It was updated a couple of years later, before I started on the late night phone in, to a smaller white plastic box with lots of green and red LEDs. My first job was answering the phones for quizzes and requests on the Saturday morning show. Although I don't think we ever played requests. And this was long before the term "shout out" was coined. It was mentions, back then. "Can you give us a mention?"

I've talked before about what the job entailed and how I go it, so what else do I remember? I remember that I took over from a girl called Sorrel, and the reason she was leaving is because she was going to university. This all seemed very exotic to 16 year old me, who'd just sat these new fangled GCSE exams. We were the first year of those, anyone older than us had done O Levels or CSEs, and naturally looked down on us.

Sorrel trained me up on how to answer the phone, and how to put callers on hold so the presenter could pick them up in the studio. Those big clunky buttons, I feel so much affection for them now. She showed me where the kitchen was so I could make coffee for the jocks. And then she was gone. Everyone gave her a hug and wished her well. Tears were shed, but I wasn't yet a part of their family, so I just felt out of it.

I'd never drunk coffee till I started working in radio. This world, it was all so sophisticated.

This seemed an appropriate tune to play today. For Switchboard Sorrel, wherever you are now...

Radio Songs #70: Side Door

This photo was taken long before I worked at the station, but that side door is very familiar to me. The little kiosk outside was run by a sweet but grumpy guy called Keith. You'd be grumpy if you sat in a tiny box all day long selling sweets and fags and the occasional top shelf magazine*, only locking up for a few minutes if you had to nip into the main building to use the lavvy.

(*A colleague once persuaded the office junior that "Razzle" was the name of a chocolate bar from the 70s, and sent them out to ask Keith if he still stocked them. "They're having you on, pal," was Keith's reply. You'd been sent to HR for that kind of thing these days.)

Through that door, you either went down some steps into the dingy old reception, the presentation offices, and right in the bowels, the studios... or up a flight to the sales office, where I spent many of my latter years writing radio ads.

The name of the station is visible in the photo, and that's the name it had when I first worked there, though they changed it after a couple of years to something trendy, focus-grouped and pointless.

I spent a lot of time going in and out of that door. If I was first in the building, or (more often) last out, I'd have to set the burglar alarm which was just down the steps on the left. I wasn't even out of my teens, but I often had that responsibility given to me.

The building has long since been gutted and turned into trendy flats, but if I could go back now...

Radio Songs #69: Back To The Start...

Longtime readers will remember a regular series on this blog that fizzled out a couple of years back entitled Radio Songs. In it I told stories from my first, and best, job, working in local radio. The series fizzled when the fun started to run out, with the arrival of my Arch Nemesis "Tim Allen", computerised playlists and the end of my short-lived on-air career (although I'm not sure I ever got to that story). There are other tales to be told... quite a few actually... and perhaps I'll return to them one day, but in the meantime I thought I'd run a few photographs stolen from a Facebook group full of anoraks who collect bits and piece from the golden age of local radio. These photos show the station I worked at, how it looked when I first arrived there in 1988... although much of it changed dramatically in the following years.

Let's start with the record library. I spent many long hours in there, cataloguing the vinyl you see above at first... and soon after overseeing the beginnings of the compact disc library. And when I say cataloguing, I'm not talking about computerisation... I mean index cards! Be still my beating heart. Just the thought of those old index cards warms the cockles.

I've probably mentioned this before, but when the process of replacing that vinyl with CDs began, a large proportion of the LPs above (along with many of the 7" singles, which were on the unseen opposite side of the central column with postcards pinned to it) ended up in a skip. I, and many of my colleagues, rescued a good few of those records and gave them better homes... but looking back now, I wish I'd rescued a whole lot more. Of course, the ones I did rescue have long since been donated to even better homes... but such is the circle of life.

I can't express to you just how precious it is to see that messy little room again. Joy and heartbreak in one single photograph.

Here's The Big O, leading the charge with the Traveling Wilburys on backing duties...

Radio Songs #68 - Face For Radio

(Click the image to make it readable.)

Here's something that follows on quite nicely from Friday's post. It's a strip I wrote for a friend of mine to draw a few years back, that was published in a newspaper-style anthology. I always found it tough writing really short stories, particularly in comics format. But this worked quite well for what is was. I will hold up my hand and say it owes a sizeable debt to Les McQueen from The League of Gentlemen, but he was a faded pop star, not a has-been DJ.

It wasn't the first time my experiences in radio inspired a comic strip. More on that another time, maybe.

The title, "Face For Radio" is an old, self-deprecating DJ gag, explaining away why they never got any TV work. It also inspired Scottish band The View to pen this little tune... which is a lot better than I remember.

Mid-Life Crisis Songs #34 / Radio Songs #67

It just hit me, like a punch in the gut... I am now as old as Rex Bob Lowenstein.

And his name is Rex Bob Lowenstein 

He's forty-seven, goin' on sixteen 

His request line's open but he makes no bones 

About why he plays Madonna after George Jones 

Rex Bob David Saul Lowenstein only exists in a song, but he's been a hero of mine since I first heard his name back in the early 90s. He was the DJ I always wanted to be. A DJ not confined by playlists or genres, a DJ who defies his bosses and plays whatever the hell he wants... or whatever the hell his listeners want.

Of course, that doesn't end well for him. That's radio for you!

Now Rex Bob David Saul Lowenstein 

Quit his job a week later, but before he'd leave 

He locked and bolted the control room door 

And played smash or trash till they cuffed him on the floor 

Well they drug him into court and the judge said, “Rex 

“I've got to lock you up, for what I'm not sure yet. 

“But your boss here says he thinks you're wrapped too tight. 

“But, by the way thanks for playing ‘Moon River' last night” 

Back when I first heard Rex Bob - played by Bob Harris on his much-missed late night show in the early 90s - I imagined some grizzly old DJ of a similar vintage to the hero of Harry Chapin's WOLD. I mean, 47... imagine being as old as that! It was unthinkable.

And now here I am... and it doesn't seem that old at all. Those of you who are older are no doubt wishing you could be 47 again. Time plays tricks on us all.

The closest I ever got to being Rex Bob Lowenstein is this blog. I can live with that.



Have you ever grown as old (or older) than a character in a song you always thought of as much older than you? There's a question to get you scratching your heads...

Radio Songs #66: Critic's Pass

There were many perks to that old radio job. Beyond all the free CDs and guest-list tickets to see some of my favourite artists at that time... and others who would become my favourite artists in the future... beyond all that, perhaps the biggest perk came when I managed to convince one of the local cinemas to give me a critic's pass.

This glorious piece of plastic entitled me to go see ANY film of my choice, any time, FREE. And even better than that, it got me invited to preview screenings of the latest new releases BEFORE THEY EVEN CAME OUT.

I've always been a huge film fan, so this pass was just as valuable to me as all the free CDs and gigs. And it was on one of these late night critics' previews that I came to see what instantly became my all-time favourite movie.

The showing was around 11.30 on a Wednesday night, but back then I still worked the late show a few times a week so staying up till 2am was the norm. I remember the excitement of going to the cinema as all the regular patrons were going home. I have a picture in my head of the dark night outside and the brightness in the lobby, the empty lobby: no brighter than it would be if I were going to see a film at 9 with everyone else, but somehow more special. They were cleaning up and shutting down, but we were just arriving. The special ones. The chosen few, from radio, TV, the press. It's nice to feel important every now and then, to get something nobody else gets. It was for me back then, anyway. It meant a lot.

And this is where I met my hero... or, to put it another way...

"Sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? Sometimes, there's a man. And I'm talkin' about the Dude here - the Dude from Los Angeles. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's the Dude. The Dude, from Los Angeles. And even if he's a lazy man - and the Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in all of Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide. Sometimes there's a man, sometimes, there's a man. Well, I lost my train of thought here. But... aw, hell. I've done introduced it enough."

Radio Songs #65: The Day I Almost Lost My Job Over Robbie Williams

In the mid-late 90s, my role at the station was split 50/50 between programming and commercial production. The programming side involved working on the phone-in, cataloguing music and attending playlist meetings. These were held weekly to decide which new releases should be put on the A list, B list, C list (evenings only) or restricted to "specialist shows" such as chart rundowns or our weekly "anything goes" indie/rock show. Usually present at these meetings were myself, D (drivetime presenter and "Head of Music", still a good friend of mine so many years later), J (deputy programme controller) and (occasionally) "Tim Allen", my nemesis (see previous post). The commercial production side involved writing (and occasionally producing) radio ads. I'll talk more about that in the future, but for now it's enough to say that while I worked in that department, I had three of the best managers I've ever had: P, M & I. Each was different, but each understood the fundamental nature of the business: writing radio ads is an utterly ridiculous job, so let's get it done as quickly and easily as possible and then have some fun. They were, each of them, the complete antithesis of Tim Allen, and I'll consider them close friends to the day I die (even though M has completely disappeared off the face of the earth and I doubt I'll ever see or speak to him again... but that was just M).

Anyway, the playlist meeting where I almost lost my job because of Robbie Williams... Iffypedia tells me this story must have taken place in early 1998. We'd spent a couple of years by this point fighting to get the likes of Blur, Oasis and Pulp daytime airplay, with occasional victories, but I'd never expected my greatest defeat to come via Robbie Williams.

This day, however, Tim Allen had elected to join the playlist meeting to contribute his own distinctive brand of ignorance. Bear in mind, for those of you who weren't present last time...

This man had NO INTEREST in popular music WHATSOEVER.

He also had no KNOWLEDGE or UNDERSTANDING of popular music WHATSOEVER.

And so we come to Robbie Williams - Let Me Entertain You.

Now I'd ask you at this point to put aside your own personal prejudices (whatever they may be) concerning Mr. Williams and consider the fact that, at this point in time, his career could not get much higher. After successfully escaping Take That, he'd build a solid repertoire of solo singles which were threatening to eclipse his former band. His previous single, Angels, had been one of the biggest selling songs of 2017 even though it was released in December and ended up selling even more copies in 2018. It had been A-listed by every radio station in the country, so playlisting its follow-up seemed a no-brainer to everyone in the meeting.

Everyone except Tim Allen.

Tim Allen did not like this song because it featured "heavy guitars". It was, he said, "too rock - verging on metal". It was not suitable for our station at all. "I wouldn't even want it playing on your little indie show, it's too loud for that."

(For the record, neither myself nor D would have considered playing Robbie Williams on the indie show... although we may have given his cheeky, rocked-up version of Back For Good a couple of spins.)

At this point, I rather lost my cool with Tim Allen. I tried to explain to him that given the success of Angels, Williams was guaranteed another big hit with the follow-up (and although it didn't sell more copies, Let Me Entertain You did eventually achieve a higher chart position than its predecessor) and we'd be foolish to ignore it.

"No," he insisted, "it's a godawful racket. He's a one hit wonder. Beyond Angels, nobody will even remember him in 6 months time. He'll be back in Boyzone before you know it."

OK, I made that last line up for effect, but the rest of it is verbatim. Even two decades later, I remember this bullshit word for word.

It was the "one hit wonder" line that did it for me. After that, I stopped listening to him.  I may have tried to point out that Williams had had four Top 20 hits prior to Angels, or I may have just put my head in my hands and given up. For the rest of the meeting, I treated him with the contempt he deserved. I refused to speak to him. I refused to make eye contact with him. I sent him to Coventry.

Looking back on it now, it wasn't the most mature reaction, and much as I still loathe Tim Allen and everything he represented, I feel I could have been a bit more grown-up about it. But I was a young man, full of piss and vinegar, and he was an idiot.

Only much later did I learn that my behaviour in that meeting almost lost me my job. Apparently, on returning to his office, Tim Allen was so incensed by the way I'd treated him that he got straight on the phone to P, my other boss at that time (in commercial production), to demand that I was fired immediately. (For some reason, Tim Allen couldn't unilaterally fire me as I worked for two departments; it had to be a joint firing from both my managers.)

P, however, wasn't in. He'd gone out on a call. (Not that P would have fired me, ever - he would have fought my corner to the end. He had very little time for Tim Allen. Few sane people did.) A colleague took a message for P to call Tim Allen back, which then got lost, so P never even had the conversation. By the next day, Tim Allen had calmed down enough to decide he didn't actually want my head on a platter, though relations were even chillier than usual between us for the next few months.

Some years later, when Tim Allen finally left the station for pastures new, he remarked to another colleague, "I bet Rol's throwing a party to celebrate". And do you know what, reader? I did.

Here's a song I've never been able to listen to in the same way since. For all its pomp and cheese, I love it... perhaps just because Tim Allen hated it. What better reason could there be?

Radio Songs #64: Nemesis

They say he came from the north country* where he once made his living designing bus timetables, but now he was our new programme controller...

And as a programme controller, it has to be said: he was an excellent bus timetable designer.


He had the personality of a rolled-up newspaper.

His sense of humour was
                                            

He had NO INTEREST in popular music WHATSOEVER.

And his name... was Tim Allen.

OK, that last bit is a lie.

His name wasn't Tim Allen.

It was Tim Allen Spangler, but prior to arriving with us, he'd dropped his surname and taken his middle name in its place so that he now had the exact same name as a relatively famous comedy actor of that time.

(It wasn't Tim Allen. It was actually someone even more famous than that.)

Why had he done this?

Because, apparently, at some point in the past - and presumably for all of five minutes until listeners to the radio station in question took a hacksaw to their own ears - he had been a DJ.

(After designing the bus timetables, obviously.)

He was my nemesis.

And we would clash.



When I played Radiohead last week, I explained that my Nemesis would be horrified at the sound of Paranoid Android. This week's radio song is the complete opposite of that... yet I image his reaction would have been similar. Because this man... this inhuman robot thing who was now in charge of our airwaves... had NO INTEREST in popular music WHATSOEVER.

I play this without shame because variety is the spice of life.

Unless your name is Tim Allen and you have NO INTEREST in popular music WHATSOEVER.

Power from the needle to the plastic

AM FM I feel so ecstatic

Now it's music I've found

And I'm wired for sound

(*Newcastle.)

Radio Songs #63: Fight The Power!

Last week I wrote about how the introduction of playlists marked the beginning of the end for local radio - something which struck a chord with many of you.

Local radio became very safe around the beginning of the 90s... but curiously, this was a decade when guitar music would return to fashion. We have to put that largely down to Radio 1, the station that championed everyone from Nirvana to Pulp.

At some point in the mid-90s, the charts went to war with local radio. The bosses wanted to playlist safe pop music... because that was still what tested well... but the charts were full of first grunge, then Britpop. Paranoid Android got to Number One - and thirty seconds of that played down the phone to a 35 year old mum in Huddersfield... well, she probably wasn't going to give it the thumbs up.

This was particularly frustrating for me. I'd just discovered gigging, largely because I worked in the record library and the A&R people were showering us with free tickets to all the latest cool Britpop bands in an effort to get them more airplay.

However, we didn't go down without a fight. There were those of us who strove to get more variety - more of our kind of music - on the air. They were little victories at first - playlisting those songs in the evening when more young people listened. Persuading the powers that be to let us have an indie show that went off playlist altogether... on a Sunday night, when the boss never listened, so we could push it as far as we dared.

And every week we'd have a playlist meeting where we fought to convince the boss that Blur or Oasis or Pulp or Babybird or even Radiohead had crossed over into the mainstream and maybe we could play them daytime too. It was a hard-fought battle, but we tried our best.

One man stood in our way.

My nemesis.

More on him next time.

Here's a song he would have absolutely hated... and to him, I'll say what I thought... over and over again... back in the day...

When I am king, you will be first against the wall

With your opinion which is of no consequence at all

But of course, I never became king. We don't, do we?

Radio Songs #62: Playlist

Where did it all go wrong?

With the playlist.

In 1988, when I started worked in radio, there was a box of 45 singles in the studio that represented the current playlist. It was a selection of the latest hits and new releases which had been decided upon by committee (the programme controller, head of music and the jocks) and was updated weekly. Three or four times an hour, the on-air presenter would choose a disc from the front of the box (not necessarily the first one, they could flip through a handful and find the right one for right then), play it, then put it to the back of the box when they were done (to prevent the same tune being played in consecutive shows). Beyond that, presenters had free choice in the music they played. They were given a basic pattern to try to stick to - big hit at the start of the hour, 70s oldie, current, 80s, oldie, recurrent etc. - but they could mine the record library for whatever they wanted to fill those gaps. If they ran a music feature in their show, they could (with agreement from the boss) go off-piste completely, given the right justification.

The best DJs used this to make endlessly engaging radio - "Ooh, I haven't heard that in ages" moments followed by big, comfortable hits, followed by "What's this? Never heard that before, but I like the sound of it..."

(The laziest DJs grabbed a pile of old Now compilations and picked from those. But those guys were the exceptions rather than the rule.)

In the early 90s, with our first takeover (or the first one I'd experienced), all this changed. The new management decreed that listeners didn't want unpredictability from their radio shows - they wanted familiarity. DJ choice was almost completely gone, overnight, replaced by computer-generated playlists that rotated oldies, often with a frequency only marginally less than the rotation of current chart hits.

How were these songs selected for addition to the playlist? By audience testing. Someone would call up a random selection of people who were roughly the right age and socio-economic profile as the station's target audience and play them a bunch of 30 second song clips down the phone. Those that got the thumbs up went in the computer. Those that didn't get an immediately positive reaction were confined to the dustbin of history.

Now, apparently I'm in the minority, but even at a young age, I never listened to radio to hear the same old songs over and over again. Yes, I wanted to hear my favourites - new and old - but many of those favourites had only been discovered because some DJ with free choice and an extensive musical knowledge had ventured beyond the predictable. In short, I wanted a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar - where else would I discover my new favourites?

With the exception of new releases (and those were only selected based on their "heat" in industry mags like Music Week... and a little bit of playlist discussion, of which, more later), local radio listeners were deprived the joy of discovering something "new" (i.e. something they'd never heard before) sometime in the early 90s.

And radio would never be the same again.

There were two songs that cried out to be featured this week, although both of them have appeared in this series before...

Mark Germino & The Sluggers - Rex Bob Lowenstein

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - The Last DJ

...but here's one that hasn't featured here before, not as classic as the two above, but I can't argue with the message.

Will someone tell me why we even listen?

Airwaves are filled with repetition.

What ever happened to selection?

Tune in and they will waste your time.

Is anybody bored yet?

Radio Songs #61: The Beginning of The End

When I look back on my time in local radio, it's easy to pinpoint the moment the rot set in, when it all started to go wrong, the top of the slippery slope that led to my eventually redundancy in 2011.


The end began in 1990, just three years into my 23 year radio career. It began with the first takeover.

One radio group taking over another is commonplace. It is an industry that devours itself... almost to the point of self-destruction. There are presently two big groups that own the majority of UK radio stations and it's only a matter of time before there's a complete monopoly.

During my time in radio, our station must have been taken over four or five times, and every time the same thing happened.

First: someone from the new head office would come along and tell us how nothing much would change.

Then: things would start to change.

When they did start to change, they'd promise us amazing things: that life - and our jobs - would be so much better.

Things always got worse.

I came to realise that the defining state of UK radio was entropy. Because local radio stopped being about providing entertainment and being your friend sometime in the late 80s. Instead, it became about making money. Not enough money to sustain a business, pay the staff (and the PRS!), and keep the lights on as it had once been... but enough money to pay shareholders and stakeholders who never set foot in the building and didn't know a turntable from a turnip, and certainly wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between The Jam, Hot Butter and Marmalade.

I have more to say on this, obviously. But for anyone who was wondering how I've managed sixty posts so far in this series and not yet featured possibly the greatest radio song ever written... well, I was saving it for today.

Radio is a sound salvation 

Radio is cleaning up the nation 

They say you better listen to the voice of reason 

But they don't give you any choice 'cause they think that it's treason 

So you had better do as you are told 

You better listen to the radio

I wanna bite the hand that feeds me 

I wanna bite that hand so badly 

I want to make them wish they'd never seen me

Some of my friends sit around every evening 

And they worry about the times ahead 

But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference 

And the promise of an early bed 

You either shut up or get cut up; they don't wanna hear about it 

It's only inches on the reel-to-reel 

And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools 

Tryin' to anaesthetise the way that you feel

Radio Songs #60: Helicopter Chase Scene

Working the late shift on the phone-in programme meant I often ended up driving home between 2 and 3 in the morning. A journey that took up to an hour during the daytime; I could do it in under half an hour when my bed was beckoning, if I put my foot down.

Of course, putting my foot down too much meant I occasionally got stopped by the boys in blue, although luckily they usually let me off with a slap on the wrist once I explained why I was out at that time and they ascertained I wasn't a boozed-up boy-racer.

One time though, things got a little more serious...

I was about five miles from home, driving not too fast, but approaching some traffic lights just as they were turning to red. At any other time of day, I'd have stopped... I'm not really an amber gambler... but the roads were deserted and I just wanted to hit the sack. So I drove through just as they changed to red. I kept on my way, but about thirty seconds later, a car appeared seemingly from nowhere, driving very fast and very close behind me. I checked the mirror. It wasn't a police car. I slowed to let them past but they stuck to my bumper. So I put my foot down again.

As fast as I went (in my battered up Ford Fiesta), they stuck to my tail. I was starting to get worried. Some kind of road rage psycho? A psychotic criminal intent on ramming me to claim the insurance... or mug me and steal my Creedence tapes? All kinds of things went through my head. Would I ever make it home alive?

Luckily, up ahead the road forked... and I knew for a fact that very few people took the fork I did as it only really led to my parent's old farmhouse. So when I took that fork and the car behind kept on following... that's when I really panicked, and floored it.

I screeched round the dirt track that led to my dad's garage/shed and got out of the car, prepared to make a run for it and hope I could beat my pursuers to the house. The other car screeched to a halt behind me and its door flew open.

"It's all right - don't panic - police!"

Don't panic? I'd just been doing 90 (well, maybe 75... battered up Ford Fiesta, remember) while being chased by an unmarked police car. I was going down.

But the copper wasn't interested in me right at that moment. No, he was talking into his radio.

"It's OK, it's OK... false alarm. Call off the air support. Call off the helicopter!"

He would later explain his mistake. On coming up behind me, he'd seen my number plate. My car was an F reg, but there was mud on the number plate so the F looked like a P. Fake plates, he told me, he'd though they were fake plates. Then when I put my foot down... he was certain I was a master criminal.

He apologised and drove off, seemingly embarrassed over making such a mountain out of what might literally have been a little bit of mole hill stuck to my number plate.

This is a true story, and that is exactly how it all ended. But I've told it a few times over the years, and a couple of people have questioned it. Not my version of event, but the "police man's". They've asked me why a plain clothes copper in an unmarked car was essentially doing traffic duty. They've even suggested that it was all some huge 3 a.m. practical joke and that he wasn't the fuzz at all... but personally, I find that a lot more frightening.

Still. I never ran a red light again, and I kept my number plate spotless.

Radio Songs #59: My Teenage Stalker

As a nice follow on to yesterday's post, here's the tale of my own teenage stalker, torn straight from the pages of my own diary/notebook in August 1991 when I was a naive, confused, never-been-kissed 19 year old...


(In this tale, P is the phone-in presenter at that time; J, a colleague, similar age to me; M, the station manager at that time; L... the "stalker".)

P arrived at work one night last week to find a teenage girl (L) waiting on the doorstep to the station.
She seemed like another average anorak (radio groupie) and when she told him how much she loved his show and gave him a small cuddly toy as a gift, he invited her in for a quick tour of the station...

(Different times. Nobody really thought anything about doing such a thing back then, nobody worried about security or inappropriate allegations, anything like that. It just seemed like a nice thing to do.)

The following Wednesday night, P opened a letter from L saying she'd like to speak on the phone-in. Why she couldn't just ring in with everybody else... well, we probably asked that question... but as it was a quiet night on the switchboard, P told me to give her a call on the number she'd provided. The subsequent conversation proved she had rather an overactive imagination, but no more than a lot of our callers."

The following evening, L called the switchboard. When I answered, she immediately asked me, 'What's your favourite love song?' I waffled and told her I was mostly a Smiths fan - not many love songs. She seemed disappointed - her intention had been to sing it to me down the phone.

(I'd only just got into the Smiths in the early 90s - always late to the cool parties.)

On Friday night I arrived at work around 6.30, intending to do a few hours in the library before the phone-in. I'd been there just a little while when the doorbell rang. The cleaner answered it and then came to tell us she'd let L into the building and she was waiting... for me... in reception. I sent J out to make my excuses and get rid of her, but he soon returned.

"You better go," he said.

I dragged him along with me. Now it was my turn to receive a cuddly toy. I thanked her but told her we weren't allowed to accept gifts from listeners."

"But P did," she argued. Damn you, P!

Eventually, M came and rescued us both with the old "urgent telephone call" routine. We said our goodbyes and showed L to the door.

Two hours later when P arrived for work, she was still there as I opened the shutters to let him into the courtyard.

"You better not call me tonight," she shouted through the rising shutter. ("I wasn't planning on doing," was my instinctive reply.) "I'm sad, you see."

"Oh," I replied. "Why's that?" (Well, you've got to, haven't you?)

"I've just discovered my father's got cancer." At that, she burst into tears and fled the scene. Quite convincing...were it not for the fact there'd been no mention of this two hours earlier. We let her go... what else could we do?

The next day. I was on air, co-hosting the Saturday morning show. We put out a call for contestants for our regular quiz, Outburst... and who should be first on the line but L? Bright, bubbly, laughing and joking... no mention of the previous night's drama. She didn't get on the quiz.

Then immediately after the show, at noon, a call came down from reception. L was waiting for me. I made a quick exit out the back door and caught the bus home, checking over my shoulder the whole way.

That's the last entry in my notebook involving L... I never updated her story and I doubt I'd remember it at all now if it wasn't for what I wrote at the time. It all seems quite innocent now, but at the time I just wasn't prepared to deal with that kind of thing. I've actually had a much scarier "stalker" experience since becoming a teacher, but I'll have to save that for another series of posts, perhaps once I've retired.

This seems an appropriate choice today. You'll understand why if you're a Clint Eastwood fan...

Radio Songs #58: The Attack

The last couple of radio posts have involved some of the ne'er-do-wells I encountered during my 20+ years working at an inner city radio station, and today's is another one of those... if a little more serious.

This was later in my radio career, when I was working daytime. Usually I got into work extra early - between 7 and 7.30 - to avoid the traffic and left around 4.30. I spent the first hour or so at work doing my own thing - writing projects, mostly - but I had a good manager at that time and as long as the proper work got done at some point during the day, he didn't care what I spent the rest of my time on. (Those were the days!)

This particular day, however, I arrived late to work due to a doctor's appointment. During the day, we didn't park in the courtyard, but in a large open air car park round the back of the building. (At some point, long before I worked there, the back half of the old textile mill had been demolished to make a car park for the offices that had taken over the front half.)

Driving towards the car park that day, I was following an old car that was going slowly. Aware that I was already pretty late, I was getting pretty frustrated with his driving... so when he stopped in the middle of the road without any indication to let a passenger out, my frustration began to boil over. Particularly when said passenger then proceeded to walk down the centre of the narrow side street we were on even after his ride had departed, effectively blocking the whole street and preventing me from getting past.

Eventually I lost my cool completely, blew my horn at him and shared a few choice words about how he should get out of the blinking road... which he eventually did, allowing me to drive past and get into the car park.

I parked my car, collected my things, exited the car park and began walking down the pavement that led around the side of the building to the main entrance... when out of nowhere, I was attacked from behind. I was pushed to the ground and kicked repeatedly by the man I'd blown my horn at earlier. I was up against the building, shielding my face, while he screamed at me that he was going to put my head through a window.

Somehow, I managed to calm him down. I'm still not quite sure how. I apologised, maybe begged a little, told him... I'm not sure I can remember what, but he stopped attacking me. At which point, he had a radical change of personality and actually helped me up off the street, dusted me off and picked up my bag, apologising profusely for his behaviour.

Stunned by now, I just wanted to get away, so I took my bag and hurried off towards work. As I did so, his personality shifted again and he began screaming after me, "next time, I'll fucking kill you!"

There's a lesson here about how we behave as motorists when we think we're protected inside our little metal bubble, but mostly... well, mostly I think today's song probably sums up what happened that day more than anything else I can write.

Radio Songs #57: Tidying Up

My final story about the courtyard where we used to park our cars at night to stop them getting nicked, or at least to stop manual labourers getting in, to warm their barnacles...

At the time, I was kind of half-seeing a girl who also worked at the station. It was complicated, as these things usually are, because she was still living with her ex at the time. She worked a couple of nights answering calls for the phone-in, and occasionally I'd hang around and keep her company, after I'd finished my work in the record library.

One night I ended up staying right to the end of the show, and because the presenter had to rush off at 2am, we volunteered to hang around and "tidy up". Well, the "tidying up" took some time... get your mind out of the gutter, it was very innocent "tidying up". Well, for the most part. But after about an hour, we were both ready to go, and as I'd offered her a lift home (like I said, complicated), she went out the side door to open the courtyard shutters while I went to set the alarm, and exited through the front.

Except when I got outside, she told me she'd been rather surprised to find the shutters to the courtyard already open. We puzzled over this a bit, then shut the shutter and went home.

The next day, I arrived at work to find two policemen on their way out. I was immediately invited into the boss's office and shown CCTV footage of the courtyard from the previous night...

Only one vehicle was parked in the courtyard all the time: the radio station's roadshow van. The CCTV footage I was forced to watch... for what seemed like an eternity... showed the phone-in presenter opening the shutters and heading off at 2am. She later claimed she'd left the shutters open because she thought we'd be straight behind her. She obviously hadn't factored in quite so much "tidying up".

About ten minutes later (they kindly fast-forwarded through the stuff where nothing happened), a local hoodlum was seen hanging around outside the open shutters to the courtyard. He peered in, he looked around, he gradually plucked up the nerve to venture inside. Took one look at my car: not worth the hassle, not even for his barnacles. But that nice shiny roadshow van... that looked pretty tempting.

So he broke into it. But there was apparently nothing inside worth nicking and he was hardly a master Gone In 60 Seconds car thief. Hotwiring looks a lot easier in films than it is in real life, apparently.

For the next ten minutes then, I watched in excruciating embarrassment as the grainy CCTV footage revealed the hoodlum pushing the roadshow van from one side of the courtyard to the other. He let off the handbreak and tried to get up enough speed so that he could run back to the cab, jump back inside and... I dunno, bump start it? (Again, not the brightest.) He then tried pushing it from the driver's side, with the door open and one hand on the steering wheel. Back and forth, back and forth... but he was never going to get it out of the courtyard. Eventually he crashed it into the wall, pretty much back where it had started out, and then... well, I guess he just sat there for a while, inside the vehicle, cogitating on what to do next. Until he heard the door to the side of the building opening, and somebody coming up the stairs from the basement... and he scarpered out of the tunnel and back to the delinquent's training academy.

Incredibly, my own part in this travesty went unquestioned. Most people, even the boss, saw the funny side and the damage to the roadshow vehicle was minimal. Even the police had had a good laugh. I'm not sure if they ever caught the gentleman responsible, but that was pretty much it for the "tidying up" after that. Story of my life.

Any excuse to play this...

Tell me - how long've you been combing your hair with a wrench?

Radio Songs #56: Barnacles

I mentioned a few weeks back how I wouldn't want to park my car on the streets outside our old radio station when I was working nights, and was always glad of the internal courtyard car park, even though it was a bit laborious getting your car in and out of there. This reminded me of another story...

On the Saturday morning show that I co-hosted in the early 90s, I worked with a couple of colleagues making short comedy sketches and skits. They spent long Friday nights voicing and mixing my silly scripts or coming up with ideas of their own, and most of the time, they weren't getting paid.

One Friday night there was a particularly bad snowfall, but we all still made it into work because we enjoyed this particular creative outlet... and also, I guess none of us had proper Friday night lives back then. Because of the snow, one of my colleagues couldn't be bothered putting his car in the courtyard - he basically drove it into a snowdrift on the street outside and left it.

A couple of hours later we glanced out of the window of the first floor sales office only to see someone sitting inside his Mini. A complete stranger. We wondered what to do: call the police? What chance they'd come out on a night like this? In the end, we decided to go confront this would-be car thief. After all, there were three of us and only one of him.

"What the hell are you doing in my car?" shouted the owner of the Mini.

"I was cold," said the guy in the car.

"So you broke into my car!?"

"I was cold," he repeated.

"I don't care how cold you are - get out of my car!" (Expletives may have been added to this sentence. But more in desperation than aggression.)

"Oh, it's all right for you guys, isn't it," the cold-handed SIWOC-er cried.

(Sitting In Without Owner's Consent?)

"Oh, it's all right for you guys... working in your fancy radio station - cushy job with a big fat salary. I'm a manual labourer, I am! I can't even afford a car to sit in on a Friday night! Look - feel my hands - they've got calluses on them. They've got barnacles!"

Eventually he got out of the car and went on his way. But only after one us had gone inside to "call the police", leaving the other two out there to "keep him talking".

The irony of all this is that to people in the outside world, a "media" job might seem cushy and well-paid. That certainly wasn't the truth back then. None of us were getting paid that night, and when we did get paid, it was on a variable hours contract with no benefits or job security.

Still, he was right about one thing: our hands were completely barnacle-free.

Here's the first song that came to mind today... worth watching the video and playing "spot the special guests". Jarvis! Jason Donovan!

Radio Songs #55: Shampoo (The Ghost - Epilogue)

A couple of weeks back, Lynchie asked if we'd ever got anyone in to investigate our radio station ghost. An exorcist? A paranormal investigator? A ghostbuster?

Not officially.

But there was Shampoo.

I've changed Shampoo's name slightly, but it sounded pretty similar. That wasn't his real name, of course. His real name was Barry or Trevor or Gordon, something very down-to-earth and ordinary. Shampoo was his psychic name.

Around this time, the presenter on the phone-in show (who was all-out crazy in ways I won't even go into) was looking for ways to boost listening and get more callers. When she invited a local medium in, I was extremely cynical... but credit where credit is due, Shampoo did get people calling. There are a lot of gullible people out there, especially the lonely ones listening to late night radio shows.

Shampoo traded in speaking to the spirit world. He wasn't as extreme as some of the charlatans out there - most of his otherworldly conversations were pretty vague, to be honest, but the people who called in often seemed soothed or reassured by his gentle, non-specific "clairvoyancy".

From the moment I met him, I thought Shampoo was a fraud, and I made my feelings quite clear. When he spoke about seeing people's auras, I jumped in and offered, "I bet when you look at mine it's pitch black, isn't it?" Shampoo just smiled. A wise and extremely patronising response, but we both knew where we stood. He only came in once a month, but after the first couple of times I made sure it was on nights I wasn't working. That was better for both of us.

It didn't take long before someone mentioned the ghost to Shampoo, and of course he claimed to be able to sense something... something... something... It never went much further than that. By this time, the spooky events had died down anyway, so even if Shampoo had been a bona fide medium, all he'd have got would be echoes. Or perhaps Shampoo's arrival was the final straw for our old friend Sidney.  I wouldn't have blamed that ghost if he took one look at Shampoo and thought, "to hell with this place - I've had my fun, but it's time to move on..."

There was only one song I could play today...