Pop Shield

It’s Sunday morning again and I’ve strategically packed down the IDEA tall stools in the studio to make space for the two ex-boy band member acts performing live on the radio.

Best not to risk embarrassing myself with any key change jokes. I can be somewhat prone to it.

Things are going fine until the arrival of a Dutch country music duo who rose to fame on the back of the Europop Competition a couple of years back. They tune guitars whilst I place microphones and make polite conversation.

Me: “You guys were on Europop right?”

Girl: “Yeh, zat’s right!”

Me: “I thought so! I remember you from the mic clip.”

Girl: “From ze what?”

Me: “The mic clip arrangement. You know, single heavy-based stand, stereo bar, two goosenecks, two end-fire condensers. Nice.”

Girl laughs incredulously.

Guy: “Aha yes! And zey are slipping lower and lower!!!”

Through the glass I see our producer hanging his head in shame.

The shock of losing a colleague / national treasure to cancer is one thing, and the shock of losing another colleague / national treasure a few weeks later to a bizarre sacking is another.

It’s a dose of sadness in duplicate and the juxtaposition of the two events fires like a gunshot, ricocheting through my working world.

Once again, being sat inside the mechanics of showbiz leaves me in some kind of eerie vacuum. Unpleasant echoes, blunt and distorted, of the Rusty & Wonathan saga and of our fight against the closure of Little Sister Radio pulse through my head.

Here in the inner sanctum of The Nations Favourite we are indeed like a family, sometimes dysfunctional and always close knit. We work hard in ever-morphing small teams, we are passionate and proud of our many years of effort for The Corporation. Through these events we are being pulled apart and pushed closer together.

Right now, I feel bewildered and saddened by the new status quo and the uncertain path ahead. Trust is crucial and central to what we do, and must be so for our work to survive, yet it all feels hideously awry.

Personally, I absolutely adored working with Pop Pickering. A funny, earnest, untiring, delightful and sweet man from where I sit. And one of the longest standing voices of corporation radio who IMHO deserves accolades for his decades of dedication to broadcasting just as Jerry did. Rubbish at controlling a sheepdog, mind.

On the back of these peculiar events, I’m at work on a Saturday. Dispensing hugs with my right brain and routing audio with my left is becoming commonplace. Poor old Fettuccine is pacing around the studio in frustration, rankled but trying to get in the zone and carry on to the best of his abilities. He sums up his personal feelings in that lovely Simon Paul song – we lived so well for so long, where did it all go so wrong?

The on-air silence surrounding the whole topic is deafening. But within these walls no one can really talk about anything else. Like little radio robots, we go into entertainment mode, because the show must go on, but the warmth and the humour that runs through the core of all we do, is very absent.

Tonight, I am sad to say, the mics are on, but no one’s at home.

It’s 4am on a Sunday morning and – despite a later than intended bedtime and an alarm-call-based anxiety dream – I head to the local station car park by moonlight to transfer into a much nicer car to be driven into London.

The driver has Classical Gold on and has the in-flight temperature up. So good so far, if a little quirky; he doesn’t believe in Sat Nav and refers to his car as ‘she’.

By the time I have directed us to the Great Northern Road, I am not very well placed to  rest up quietly, because our driver has engaged his mouth: How his mother is unwell; how he likes to walk from London Bridge to Golders Green to work out his anger; how he comes from the Ghanaian fishing village where Brock Alabama visited – the port where the slave ships departed; how he believes route master busses belong in a museum; how bicycles in London should be banned; how London should be turned into a garden city. He laughs his head off when I explain that my village has just one shop. He wants to know how old the oldest living person in my village is. He believes that we need to stop complaining about Global Warming and focus on adaptation to the new circumstances. In return I tell him what I know about slavery and Memphis and New Orleans and the birth of the blues and jazz. He says he believes music was a terrible profession for black people to adopt because it ‘kept them down’. He wants to know my views about Africa and Europe. And he believes President Nissan Maindealer had got it all wrong.

Readers may recall how I was broadcasting live on air with Jane Smiley when the news of Nissan Maindealer’s passing broke. Sometimes when I think about Nissan Maindealer, I forget for a moment that he has passed, the professional detachment required somehow having caused a block in the emotional process of remembering.

Scroll forward to 0845 this morning and I am on air with Kate Gelding, in the last leg of the show. Out of nowhere, Paul comes rushing into the studio. Something has happened. A swiftly assembled hit squad are broadcasting a live show instead of the usual Dave Wrong’s Loved Up On Sunday. No context yet. Curious. Paul and I briefly discuss the technicalities of handovers and he asks me to nip down to the studio during a record. I spend the next few minutes of the interview between Kate and the actress whose name sounds like a canapé wondering what the hell has happened. I look on Twaddle. I run down the corridor to hear some sad news that I am not expecting. That our dear Jerry Wobegon has gone.

I rush back to my studio, via the newsroom which is in a stalemate locked between two editors as to whether they can break the news or not. I have no option but to tell Janet, though we opt not to give the details to Kate for fear of upsetting her. We swap the upbeat “Live Talkie” by the Geebees to the swoony” Your Love” without stamping a mood swing onto the network before the news breaks.

You may recall that Deepakisyourlove@xxxxxxx.com is the email address of another presenter who I had cause to give a big hug to on his arrival one strange Sunday morning. But that’s another story. We finish the show, then halfway through the news bulletin, the reader breaks the story and then the tribute show starts. I hold it together until then next show takes network, then my hand shutting the fader starts to shake. I look up and realise Kate is standing there ready to give me a hug. She knew Jerry as a young girl. We hug and shed a tear. What goes around comes around.

Baby David appears. He tells me the bands that I’ve been busy planning and rigging for have been stood down. I pop into Paul’s studio and see dear Glasgow Boy is back. We hug. He asks for my help with ISDN lines. I run out for a breakfast bap then rush straight back and stab at touch screens. Then busy myself with team teas, coffees, telephone balance units, whatever. We brainstorm all Jerry’s favourite songs.

At 10am I am back in my own studio derigging brass mics and cutting up clips of Jerry. Dick Maybe appears. He holds out a flat hand. I ignore and go in for a hug. In for a penny. Dick goes to sit in Jerry’s chair. We make a good, if peculiar, show. Jerry would have disapproved of all the fuss. The mood is so disconnected. It veers from sincere to chipper to insincere to melancholy. Like a funeral. But it is always professional. Suzy Travel, Zen Hoots, Fred Coates, Mfanwy Boule all pay tribute.

At the end of the show there is a weird buzz that zips through in the studio, but I shut it out. I have three minutes of news and a network junction to get through. I catch Baby David’s eye and see it is red like mine and by the time I close the faders I properly feel like crying. Little thoughts of nice funny jovial warm Jerry in my mind. Little flashbacks to bagels heated under spot lamps and being cajoled to tuck into roast dinner and pork pies and curry and sausage baguettes at 7am. When Top Cat took over the breakfast show I missed all this warmth.

I last worked with Jerry in November. He felt old to me but certainly not a dying man. A brief fatal illness is a mercy in so many ways, but for the shock it leaves us all behind in. Dear Jerry. He would always ask non-specifically after the family. He was a family man and sensed I was a family girl and left it at that.

And then I leave the building. My head is a muddle, so I offload it onto paper, and then return to my family and a hot roast dinner.

Sometimes Dave Wrong asks his operational friends for a mono down.

But the Nations Favourite has just received a letter of complaint. As follows.

General Feedback Contact Type: Feels that Dave Wrong is a poor DJ

Comment: “Dave Wrong played Petunia Clock’s ‘Downturn’ in stereo, but he broadcast it in mono. It is inconsistent and it’s not good enough. Kenneth Sykes broadcast on pirate stations on Sunday night and he broadcast music in the best quality and to me it is the exact opposite with Dave Wrong. He is ignorant and slapdash in his approach to his work.”

We are prerecording an episode of Culture Chat today and the producer is making me giggle with her various pointers to the BA as to how to recognise the guests arriving in reception.

“Look for big I mean BIG hair, think Leon Sawyer…. You’re after a thin guy with wandering eyes that meet in the middle…” and so on.

“OMG, Pop! I’m SO excited about the baby!”  exudes presenter Bambi Twinkletoes when she arrives at the studio.  “Now, you know that you mustn’t be in a rush to leave the hospital don’t you!  Take as long as you need….“

I make a mental addition to the long list of celebrity baby advice I am collating.  It’s never ending.  “DRUGS ARE BRILLIANT!!” shrieks Cat Thornley to me in a mildly unhinged fashion on the talkback.

From Clarice: “Don’t forget to breathe!  Oh, and write it all down afterwards or you won’t remember a thing”.

Cheers Clarice. Tablet and finger at the ready.

“If I don’t see you, good luck!” Says Maso Mercury and gives me a heart-warming hug as I pass him by the lifts. Everyone is being so NICE.

Back to Bambi. “Gosh!  And what are you going to call the baby?”

“We’re not 100% decided yet, Twink, so if you have any good suggestions, now is your chance.”

“Well!  For a girl I just LOVE all the lovely flower names!  Mmm. Lovely!  And for a boy you’ve got to call it BUZZ!  I mean it’s just brilliant and [sotto voce] no one’s done it yet.  It’s there for the taking!”

This is not entirely true as I’m aware of two celebrities who have named their offspring ‘Buzz’ in the last year or two, but there’s no denying it’s probably not a name that is ringing around the playgrounds of Great Britain quite yet. Thanks Bambi, methinks that’s a very fitting name suggestion for the future offspring of a sound engineer and a physicist.

Watch this (outer) space.

Gary (on talkback):  ”How’s it going, Wrongy?”

Dave Wrong (on talkback): “It’s going well! But it could start going wrong at any minute!”

Gary (on talkback): “Is there a procedure if you get Ebola?”

Dave (on talkback): “All breaking through, Gary.”

All breaking through is a phrase Wrongy has used for many years, referring back to the possibility of crosstalk within analogue systems in the form of undesired signal leakage from one circuit to another. It is basically code for ‘be careful what you say on talkback in case it accidentally ends up on air‘

Dave (muttering, on talkback):  ”Hello… If this is all breaking through, then Gary said that not me.  OK?”

Later on, Dave suggests a song he would like to play on the radio using the following description: “You know.  He’s wearing a silly hat.  He’s wearing a silly hat, he’s a con man.  He’s a con man, he’s stealing a painting.  He’s a con man, he’s stealing a painting, he’s round.  He’s round like a spiral in a wheel.”

No idea.

“Been writing lately, Pop?” Mate asks me over chicken in the Maid Of Orleans canteen last week. “Nope”, I say, “but there’s definitely been some stuff brewing. Plus, I want to write about the hilarious Molly Carlton Mudstock Mimegate scandal, but I need to gather some more information first. “What do you want to know?” say The Mixmaster General and Roger Andrews. I start grilling them about sax packs. In the mists of time this tale may or may not come to light.

But in the meantime, a nod to the past few weeks, which have been a blur of sessions, desk faults, pilot shows, long planning emails interspersed with inefficient sleep and peppered with random conversations with the rich and famous about my impending parenthood.

“It’s going to be a girl. Trust Mystic Suzy The Trucker’s Floozie” says Suzy Travel. “Actually, no I’ve changed my mind. A boy.”

“One thing is for sure, Suze.” I reply. “It will be one of the two.”

Dave Wrong is full of questions and ideas relating to hospitals, cheap pushchairs and eating coal. “Tell you what, Pop,” he says, “once the baby has arrived, bring it into work and I’ll show you how to hold it properly.” Now there’s an offer.

Jane Smiley discusses the merits and downfalls of different forms of pain relief, whilst Pop Pickering offers his services for the birth itself. “I think I better be present at the delivery. That way when the baby arrives, I can be standing there ready to say “Greetings, Pop Picker!” Given the practicalities of him fitting this into his numerous local radio commitments, we settle for a notional pre-record played out via mobile phone.

Speaking of pre-records, there has been some very bad technical karma in The Wrong Studio lately. As I am setting up for the usual Fictoids etc. plus an interview with a tall boffin from Timewatch, several issues come to light. The state of the computers and blank KVM switchers make it immediately clear there had been some kind of overnight power outage. The desk has not come back in a healthy state – there is no audio from the studio sources and nothing on the studio monitoring either. After a crate reboot fails, we have no option but to relocate. Guy and I hurriedly replicate the setup next door once Zen Hoots is off air, whilst I try and juggle maintenance engineers and work out contingency plans with the Broadcast Manager and the office. “This is quite fun!” says Dave, who is being very patient and nice about it all. “A few years ago, I would have gone bananas about it but, y’know. What’s the point?” “Precisely” I say.

After the pre-record, the desk is fixed (DSP card reseated) so we move everything back into the studio for the transmission.

The next day I’m back on Dave Wrong for the fifth time in a week, on the de-umm and tighten. I’m flitting between fielding installation questions from Herbert Floppenwanger and editing an eccentric Ali Nuthatch interview when the audio playout screen reverts to desktop with three minutes to go to show time. I’ve not worked so fast to get something up and running since the morning Deepak told me to take his mic control back off him during the one minute 0730 news bulletin. Get it all sorted in the nick of time. After the adrenaline subsides, I head off to go and have a nice relaxing vaccination. As I get into my car and turn the engine key, the radio fires up the Nations Favourite just in time for the material I’ve just edited to be played out. Argh. Turn off radio. Arrive in the doctors waiting room and – hurrah! – it’s Nations Favourite being piped there too. Pick up a magazine to distract me from the radio and the first page I turn to features a holistic lifestyle interview with Dave’s sidekick Laney Bee Face. Help!

More faults in the Wrong studio continue the following week. Fortunately, the desk holds it together for Wonathan’s highly scrutinised return to the network after seven years bad luck, which I am booked on. Unfortunately, the audio back end of our playout system doesn’t – due to a major network failing. Following a collective scramble, we are unable to schedule the closing song of the show which has been specially selected by the audience. Somewhat embarrassing and stressful. Other than that, my main worry is Wonathan repeatedly forgetting to close his microphone. I watch him like a hawk, over controlling the fader and repeatedly flashing a green cue light at him each time until he remembers. He is somewhat nervous, and nice about it all. He doesn’t mention the fateful Rusty Claypole show, nor do I. To be honest, I doubt he actually remembers who his engineer was that day. But I haven’t forgotten.

Poor Nick cops it in there too, whilst working with Wonathan two days later. Mid-broadcast the desk logic goes mental on the first four cart channels, causing random lights to come on and audio to play out of the wrong channels. Nice.

The next day I am back in there again, for a pre-recorded show with Laney before Wonathan arrives. Just as we start, the mic red light intermittently flashes on and off every few seconds while the fader is closed, causing the studio loudspeakers to cut each time it goes on. We push on through. Laney has to do the entire show on headphones. There is no way I’m going to put up with this during a live show with big-mouth Wonathan, so I spend my break cracking the whip on two very mañana ex-Branch technicians. They eventually stop telling old Branch anecdotes and clear out all the crumbs and coffee from the faders until the fault clears just minutes before the producer’s arrival.

No further gremlins, until a further two days later when Frankie Funk’s presenter mic randomly loses 15-20 dB of gain mid-interview, causing me unpredicted major consternation immediately prior to a four-hour network-hopping marathon with him. After grappling with an unpleasant signal-noise ratio I sort a workaround. We have a very lovely time on air, despite all the confusing multiple network switches to handle. Much hilarity ensues when at the top of his toned-down Nations Favourite broadcast, Frankie accidentally refers to the online presence of Little Sister as ‘the webshite’. Oops.

Other than that, my recent memory is a muddle of: resolving confused comms lines to Edinburgh right up to the wire; planning and networking meetings; testing video tie-lines with a sweet project engineer who is high on intelligence but low on eye contact; Mark Albike complaining about his crisps; stroking a jazz singer’s fluffy dog Alan in the lift whilst Doreen Zipman talks to me about her grandchildren; peering through the window of Waylon Wine’s studio to see a man laying bricks with a Schroder KM84 pointing at them; mixing some lovely vocal harmonies, and some iffy ones too. A dream job in all senses.

Meanwhile a million baby-related things at home to sort out. “Are you winding down at work before the big day?” emails my aunt. My reply: “Um, no. In live broadcasting there is no such thing as winding down. It’s basically on or off.”