Good Morning Nantwich: Adventures in Breakfast Radio

Oh it wasn’t like that at all…

A large and lightly perspiring man sat on the opposite side of the counter in the standard security guard uniform of white shirt with epaulettes and dark blue tie. We nervously gave our names and our reason for being there, just in case the names alone weren’t enough. He jotted them down in a book and handed us each a yellow sticker stamped with the day’s date and the familiar BBC logo. He barely looked at us while picking up a telephone and mumbling into it before pointing in the direction of a nearby cheap sofa. ‘They’ll be down for you in a minute. Take a seat please…’

The reception area could best be described as ‘utilitarian’. I felt like a character marooned in some backwater of the Eastern Bloc in a Cold War spy novel. This thought had me muttering ‘Yes we have no bananas’ under my breath in Russian. You couldn’t fault my tradecraft. Presenters of the day grinned forlornly from framed photos on walls, which clearly looked embarrassed about having to display them, and by the doors a rack groaned with cheesy postcards of the same faces and a few others. I wandered over and took out a John Peel postcard for myself, simply because he looked so deliciously uncomfortable at having his picture taken. Dave Lee Travis, on the other hand, appeared to be over the moon. He had opted for ‘wacky’ from his extensive catalogue of looks.

Once we were introduced and on air the time whizzed by. As I glanced around our surroundings I was delighted to note that studios really did have a red light up on the wall that said ‘ON AIR’ when the microphones were faded up. I had always thought that was just a Hollywood conceit. Little Brother performed his excellent parody of Stanley Holloway’s monologue about Sam the soldier, which he had re-imagined for the recent Falklands War. We both chatted with the presenter for a bit and then I read out my poem ‘They’ve All Grown Up in the Beano’. I can remember that as I spoke I experienced the dizzying sensation of my heart hammering in my chest combined with a simultaneous delight in what I was doing. It was a feeling I’d only ever experienced before when kissing girls.

Our segment was soon finished and we were politely ushered out just as quickly as we had arrived. And before we knew it, we were stood out on the windy pavement of Portland Place like nothing had happened. This being the age prior to mobiles, there was no instant debriefing phone call like one might expect these days. David and I looked at each other and wandered off to a nearby pub to drink the remainder of the afternoon away. I was fizzing with excitement. I had just made my first broadcast on the radio. And it was so cool, they had microphones and soundproofing, and a control booth through the glass; and everybody who wasn’t on air still had a role to play.

While the experience was a bit of a let-down in one sense, the actual working environment was oddly inspiring. These people were being paid to do what I had done for pretty much every day of my life since I was thirteen, which was to play records and chat. This could very well be a future career! When I really thought about it, radio was the only thing that I was in any way qualified to do. So why not do it? It was one of the first times I experienced any kind of aspiration. I wanted to get myself a job in radio.

Even though this was the first time in my life I’d felt such a powerful surge of ambition, it took another ten years of poorly attended benefits and ropey gigs in the back rooms of pubs, plus the rise and fall of Red Wedge, my debut at the Edinburgh Fringe, a tour with Paul Weller, a few illadvised television shows and the birth of two daughters, before I was to walk into a radio studio again…

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