Pop Shield

“O.M.G. I was working on this very show exactly SEVEN years ago today’” I say to Dave Wrong yesterday on the anniversary of DJ Reel’s passing, shellshocked by the memory.

And – let’s face it – I am also a little bit shellshocked by the fact I have been working on this show for SO long…

“Were you?” says Dave.

“Yes, it was me and Gary, I remember it vividly” I recount. “News broke at lunchtime. We tore up all the prepared material and did a special tribute show”

“Really? I just can’t remember it at all.  I liked Reel, he was a nice guy wasn’t he?  Hard to get to know but a good guy” says Dave.

I warm. Then…

“By the way, I’ve been working with Gary for THIRTY YEARS” he adds. “Seven years is NOTHING!” he says.

Oh.

The parting of a celebrity and their mobile phone is a traumatic moment.  But all guests at a radio station have to go through this step. Most opt to leave it with a minder in the control room. Others take it in but turn it to silent or off.

Our guest this morning is wild-eyed, wild-haired, comic monitor lizard Buzz Bailiff, who adopts a typical leftfield approach.

“Paranoid about the phone!” he exclaims, walking straight into the studio.  “Yes, take it apart!“ he says, proceeding to dismantle the phone to render it powerless.   “Aha! That should do it!” he pronounces, separating front from back from battery and laying the three pieces on the desk in front of him.  “Ha ha! Won’t go off now!“

For the period of the interview, Buzz looks not into the eyes of our jaunty Irish host, but at the three pieces of mobile phone which he lines up in parallel then reverts around each other, always in straight lines, tessellating wildly throughout.

“I seem to be bereft of tea” says Top Cat.

“There’s one on its way” replies Top Cat’s producer.

“On its way doesn’t do it for me” protests Top Cat.

“Look at the state of me! I’m in showbiz for crying out loud!”

—A dishevelled Dave Wrong after inadvertently spilling half a tub of Preque soup on his shoulder.  

It’s Sunday morning and I am back in the studio after getting married.

“So, how was it?” asks Jerry Wobegon.

“It was amazing, brilliant, the cake collapsed and I didn’t care, it was great!”

“And is your other half in the industry?”  says Jerry.

“Sort of. In audio, but not show business” I reply.

“And will you be starting a family now?” he goes on.

“Hmm, perhaps”  I say, slightly taken aback by the sudden directness of the small talk.

“I’m sure you will” says Jerry.

“I’m sure you will, and I’m sure you’d have lovely children”.

God bless the showbiz Pope and his wild predictions.

Charming Rusty Claypole the Victorian scarecrow is back in the building to give an interview about his new Hollywood movie. This is the first time I’ve seen him since fading up the last telephone balance unit of his radio career.

Rusty enters the studio. He says hi to The Team and gives me a really long hard puzzled stare.

“Don’t I know you?” he exclaims.

“Yes, of course, hello again!” I say, not mentioning the thing that must not be mentioned.

“Hang on a minute”, says he, “I know you; I know all of you! OMG, I used to work here!”

Pickering: I met the singer Frank Munro once, lovely bloke. Have you met him?

Piper: Yes, I have. I thought he was a bit of a letch actually.

Pickering: Oh, I didn’t know he slept with you too!  And I thought I was special!

– Peter ‘The Acquisitor’ Piper and Pop Pickering quip relentlessly for five hours during our studio recording.

February can be a tricky and sticky month. God only knows why. And now, everything has gone awry with our trusty studio equipment.  Reliability is a very important quality in man, animal and machine alike.

In the last twenty-four hours my colleagues and I have been involved in a head-spinning, plate-spinning stress-inducing performance of fault-finding, fault-reporting and confusion-diffusion. And of course, nothing is ever allowed to stand in the way of getting the Nations Favourite radio shows made.

Here is a summary of the various faults:

Failure of playout server – faulty hard disk and cache disk replaced.

Distorted cue send on telephone balance unit via talkback panel.

Telephone balance unit silent owing to fault at exchange.

Telephone balance unit failing to divert to desk.

Corrupted desk aux causing the reverb unit to be routed to itself.

Fault 5 was nasty. It produced a horrible howl-round every time the reverb was faded up during soundcheck for country queen Peggy Lou. The fault rendered the reverb unit unusable, but this sadly wasn’t an option due to the material.  So, I was left with no other option but to reset the entire desk and start again. Not good. Times like these it would be useful to be able to snapshot desk settings rather than the usual situation.  Which is generally a piece of camera tape that someone has drawn a button on and hilariously written the word ‘Snapshot’ under it. Not the first time I’ve been here and it’s stressful. At least we weren’t live to the airwaves.

Amongst the madness of the day, Max Marbles, a 1980’s TV presenter (also the father of charismatic radio presenter Mavis Marbles) arrives for an interview. Lovely chap. In fact, my partner was a participant on one of his kids shows back in the day, owing to owning up about owning a sizeable collection of vintage light bulbs. We had a little chat and a laugh about it. Max asked if the collection still exists. “Yes, it is cluttering up the garage”, I replied. “Well hang onto it, it will probably be worth a few bob soon” he says.

Well, that’s all fine then.  I can relax in the knowledge we’ve got a nest egg to fall back on.

Some days, visitors to the Corporation radio studios have unfulfillable beverage requests.  Nothing outlandish, just a concoction that slips outside the corporation staples of tea, weak coffee or water.  Hot water and honey is a regular request to be greeted by production staff with a smile and a shoulder-shrug, and a waft in the direction of Presque.

When award-winning arranger, composer and songwriter Dick Cadillac featured on Culture Chat a few years ago he asked the producer for green tea. As a regular drinker of the stuff, I was able to magic a sachet out of my old kit bag.

Today, Roy Jones, lead singer of The Twists, has come in for an interview with Jack Daniel. He has a terrible head cold and is asking for hot water and honey and tissues.  An operative is dispatched to the shops.

Now, it so happens, that I had passed The Organic Planet on the way to work and decided to pop in for some Ayurvedic teas.  And here, I am presented with the perfect excuse to try and foist my pungent herbs on rock royalty.

“I can offer you a Yoga Cold Season, Roy?”  I ask, jubilantly.

Roy doesn’t look up, nor does he indicate yes or no.  He just pleads plaintively; “Anything “.

I decide to leave the teabag next to his cup of hot water and return to my faders.

Roy sniffs and coughs his way through the ensuing ninety minutes of questioning by Jack Daniel. Jack keeps him focussed on the job in hand with steely determination and responds to “Can I use the loo?” calmly with another question about how Roy wrote his hit song “Lilo”.

The interview wraps.  Jack, ever a tidy man, gathers his papers (having conducted the entire interview without needing to refer to them once), together with the unopened teabag pouch and leaves the room.