Pop Shield

It’s Day Three in the Little Sister Festival / Maid Of Orleans Household. It’s the big one. Sir Pete McCarthy. It’s such a scoop, but the power of his camp to say no has been testing the nerves of the management and production staff. Who’s proverbials are made of steel? Probably the machine’s itself, rather than either party. There is a last-minute kerfuffle over Pete doing live telly. As a result TV have pulled out of the morning show and all the live radio studio cameras are turned off. The studio is radio scruffy before you can say Mrs Robinson.

The Macarcopter arrives late, meaning that Pete misses his studio interview, if there was ever the intention of one. It doesn’t really matter to anyone (except possibly me and my mum) since Laurel La Hardy does a great job of it in the big room, parked on the piano stool with him in chatting in front of the audience.

From a technical point of view, it’s probably for the best. For such a fortunate and seemingly sunny man Pete just seems to have a bad glitchy hitchy karma that orbits like the rings of Saturn around his puppy dog head.

As it turns out, today is actually no exception to this rule. Should have seen it coming but circumstances are such that I can’t see the wood for the trees.

Tony and I arrive at 5.30am to get Maso Mercury’s one-off Maid Of Orleans show on air. I’ve been in training on the Orleans Continuity job, and I have been up until late the night before writing up notes on how the whole system works. By 6.30am we are all set. I’ve got my final questions answered and I feel bouncy.

We have been successfully on air for a short time when suddenly we hear a deafening one-stage alarm sounding in the studio. Alongside the plummy announcement “Attention please. Attention please. Please leave the building immediately.” Oh, goodness gracious, great balls of fire.

Tony sprints to reception to check the situation and nearly gets evicted. I line up an hour’s worth of segued emergency material and instruct Maso and Paul to crossfade to it. “Shall I say something first?” says Maso. “No, definitely not, just put it on.”

“Everybody leave now!” commands Tony. We run out of the building where we meet Mike arriving ready to mix McCarthy. He joins the throng. The Paddington firefighters arrive within an impeccable five minutes. I look for my chirpy chimney sweep, but I don’t see him.

Tony calls the Broadcast Manager, I phone Control. We are in network for a marathon six hours sandwiched between two Manchester shows. As such, it’s a pain to unpick the situation, We are all agreed that we should just ride it out and hope that we are back in the building soon. As it turns out we are. We are back on air within about twelve minutes.

And the reason for the fire alert? Steam from McCarthy’s early morning wardrobe crew’s irons activating the sensitive smoke heads.

Maso is great, and extracts lots of funny material from the incident. Cold from the autumn morning air he is sat wearing a judge’s cloak from the drama props cupboard, intended for the missing visual element. Broadcasting in his laconic drole style with a surreal pseudo-gravity.

Later on in the show, the technical gremlins rear their ugly other-worldly heads once again. They, or the distractions of the whole hoo-ha infiltrate the mechanism of the mock radio drama. Resulting in the somewhat distorted and reverb-soaked voice of an apocalyptic actor going live to air.

One thing not infected is the McCarthy session itself. Mike does his traditional bright and exciting spacious mix with Martin Giles by his side. Who I am informed is ‘with him’ funny not ‘at him’ funny like his dad. Or is that just me?

Anyroad. All’s swell that ends swell. Order!