Pop Shield

Can’t you put a better record in by Four Star? What are you trying to do – uncoolify me?

DJ Nelson Travis has a sense of his own coolness, and this just doesn’t cut it.

Started to feel a degree of concern last night when the swirling snow fell thick and fast and settled all around. I made provision to travel in to London by car instead of by train and to leave much earlier than normal for the Saturday breakfast show on Nations Favourite with live band Florals in session.

Come 4am I have preempted my alarm by a good half hour and decided to leave. The snow is several inches deep and the country lanes around me have turned to pistes, the dual carriageway more of a mono carriageway. As I press on carefully through the thick fog armed with blankets, a flask of green tea and the back catalogue of 20DD, I stab at the heated front windscreen button repeatedly, in the quest to prevent my limited frosty view from closing in on me.

Fast forward ninety minutes. I am safely ensconced at Wobegon Towers in plenty of time. I am warmed to discover that Mad Dog has already kindly got the band mics out for me as per our emergency plan.

After the soundcheck Florals come through to the control room for playback prior to live transmission and the lead singer says “Great. Always get the best sound at The Corporation.”This comment makes me swell with pride. On behalf of all of us who strive so hard to make bands sound nice on the radio. Proud that finally after fourteen years I no longer feel that I am letting the side down. That I am getting somewhere.

These relationships with artists are the crown jewels of The Corporation. These little nuts-and-bolts studio sessions are not technically complicated but the challenge is to capture the feel of a band in eight or nine channels, straight to stereo, no retakes, no remixes, live to air to millions of listeners. The real goal is not to obsess on one part and lose the bigger picture.

Come 4pm I am driving back up the clear black North Road, this time with my session on repeat. Melting snow all around, warmth in my heart.

Love my job ❤️

Despite numerous highly successful occasions working together on the early Sunday programme ‘Greetings God Squad’, Hilary and I will always fondly remember our darkest hour.  The time our presenter Deepak failed to show up for work and she went mental on the phone trying to get a new presenter whilst I creatively segued overly-long quasi-spiritual records back to back for thirty minutes flat with the odd drop-in.

This celebrated event always gets a mention when we work together because we – as much as you lot – secretly love a horror story. Whilst we are mightily professional in our roles, and go the extra mile to do our best, and hate hate hate it when things go wrong, it’s a fact of life that successful transmissions do not a funny blog maketh.

Ah yes.  When it comes to on-air disasters I’ve certainly had my fair share.  Well, there’s been on-air swearing, venue power failures, studio power failures, live obituaries, Chardonnay Hole, not to mention THAT Rusty Rockets and Wonathan episode, one too many pips, elevator small talk hell, soundcheck humiliation, theft, jazzy timecode errors, equipment meltdown, a keyboard mime fail, fire test fail, death by percussion, and of course who could forget the famous Battle of Portaloo.  All of the above leading to the inevitable engineer anxiety nightmares. 

And today it’s another under-ratedly busy Sunday morning shift following an ugly alarm call and here I am busy sourcing and setting up mics, DIs, cables, keyboards, bass amplifiers, and looking forward to my first health-and-safety-gone-mad frothy tepid tea of the day.

Shock horror, the delightful Kate Gelding has left the show. We have a new presenter, who thankfully is also a tip top pro. We should get on well.  We rehearse the top of the show and then I call across to the Mothership news summaries desk.

“Hello, Nations Favourite here. Just enquiring the name of the 0700 news bulletin reader please”

“Certainly.  You will have the return of the Space Cowboy.”

“Space Cowboy.  Jolly good.”

I then select and pre-fade the news studio, hear a soundcheck, say a brief hello, take control of the Nations Favourite network and wait for the end of the proceeding show to end before crossing to the three minute news bulletin.

“…And with the Corporation News on Nations Favourite on Sunday 7th January this is The Space Cowboy. Good Morning. Major retailers say they will no longer sell corrosive substances to under eighteens…”

So far so good. After several news stories we have a mere twenty seconds to the start of the show. Fabulous, it’s time for the lighthearted ‘and finally’ story.  I take the loudspeakers off ‘dim’. 

“A Corporation investigation has found that only a fraction of the stalking crimes against men are recorded by the police…“

Ooh that’s very cheery.  Hang on a minute, we’re ten seconds over. And what’s this? An illustrative clip about male stalking is being played in. Maybe they are taking advantage of the soft posts?  I wait for it to end.  But – what’s this? Now we are thirty seconds over! Meanwhile…

“An oil tanker has caught fire after colliding with a cargo ship 160 nautical miles off the coast of China…”

I turn to Hilary. “I think Space Cowboy has lost the plot, Hils.  I reckon he’s going in for a five minuter.”

Hilary informs the presenter to stand by for an indefinite period of time whilst the bad news drones on. Then…

“The American Astronaut Dave Old who walked on the moon and flew the first space shuttle mission has died. “

There follows a wobbly audio clip from NASA. Followed by another story about the arrest of eleven Saudi princes staging a protest about having to pay their own utility bills (god forbid).  We are a good two minutes over, but still The Space Cowboy runs a-mock. Fantastic. Now he is playing a long clip of audio describing the repercussions of the attack on a satirical magazine in Paris. I start to scan my mind for personal error.  Have I have selected the wrong studio where the news is being read for a different network? Perhaps Space Cowboy has gone alien or is doing this for some sort of power crazy charity prank?  Is it the first April?  We are now a good two and a half minutes over. Hilary suggests we axe the bulletin.  She has a point, but how? 

“Englands cricketers are struggling to avoid an innings defeat…”

At last, he’s started some sports news. This bodes well.  We’re only three minutes over time.  That’s just basically drop a record and jobs a good’un.  Gotta love Nations Favourite.

“And the weather, much of the UK will have a sunny and cold day…”

Bingo.

“And that’s the Corporation News at five past seven”

MORE LIKE SIX AND A HALF MINUTES SPACEY!!!  HAS YOUR RADIO-CONTROLLED STUDIO CLOCK LOST CONTACT WITH NPL?  OR HAS YOUR BODYCLOCK GONE BERSERK AFTER A TWELVE HOUR NIGHT SHIFT? 

Nevertheless, we kick off the show as if nothing at all weird has happened. During the first record Hilary very sweetly points out to The Space Cowboy on the talkback that we generally only require a three minute bulletin at 0700 on Sunday morning. The Space Cowboy is highly apologetic citing sleep deprivation for his temporary madness. We make the time up by leaping along to the one minute headlines at 0730 adding a veritably sassy gallop to the show. Ms Gelding would be proud. 

Around 0728 I check the line from the news studio. “Hello. This is Nations Favourite calling The Space Cowboy.  Do you read me? Come in.”

No answer. Zilch atmos on the line, no mic check to snoop on.

“Hello Spacey!  Cowboy, you there?”

After two minutes of greetings tourettes I turn to Hilary. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one”.

Ten seconds to News ident. Nothing. “We simply can’t go across to News” I say. “No one is there.  It will sound like major muppetry.”

Hilary duly instructs our presenter to throw forward to another record. I fire it in, after which some coughing appears on the line. We call out to a rather discombobulated Space Cowboy.

“Hello! So sorry! So sorry! Err, do you still want it?”

“It’s ok thanks, don’t worry, we’ll drop it. “ says the ever-diplomatic and kind Hilary. “You go home to bed.”

“Ah well, you clawed one of your minutes back anyway!” rationalises Spacey.

Indeed.  You win some, you lose some.  It’s just radio. You gotta crack eggs to make an omelette. 

“My head hurts. I smashed it on a pole in a vulture cage….”

Another day in the life of Bette Wilde

How big is five millimetres? I have NO IDEA.

Lorraine Staige gets mathematical.

I’m on air on The Nations Favourite with Jack Daniel. The album of the week is Never Mind The Cobblers by The Love Guns. After careful consideration the Powers That Be have decided that it’s actually perfectly fine to say ‘cobblers’ on the radio after all. So far Jack has said it about four times. The punters are loving it. Happy days.

I arrive at Wobegon House and immediately feel disorientated by the walk to Studio 4Z which takes me along a non-existent corridor, now a half-familiar open plan office. Punctual as ever, I enter the studio at 14:00 exactly. It is empty. The radio-controlled wall clock reads 14:57. Hmm. I look at the source selector screen to check the time. It is stuck on yesterday at 08:22:11. The engineer I am supposed to be replacing enters the studio. This feels like I might be dreaming. Am I dreaming? I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to log into the PC. The KVM is not responding. Oh, hang on, my mistake. This is reality.