On the mic - Surrey Life - July 2012

Good morning Britain. I am not in Surrey. I am on holiday. Somewhere Else.

Our holiday cottage is, for a moment, quiet. My wife and children are sleeping. I am downstairs watching dawn break with a cup of tea in one hand and the laptop on the breakfast table before me. Peace and happiness abounds.

It is, needless to say, raining.

A holiday with three young children is not really a holiday.

During the course of a normal week in Surrey, the kids have any number of distractions - school, nursery, friends, grandparents - to occupy them. On removing those distractions, by going on holiday, we have put the onus of childcare completely upon ourselves.

It’s fine, though. They’re having fun. Boat trips, train rides, usual stuff. On Monday we visited a castle. Yesterday we visited another castle. I couldn’t bring myself to go in. When I was a child I had a profound objection to traipsing round country houses/museums/galleries/gardens. Now I’m older, my profound objection has matured into a deep loathing. Of course, that hasn’t stopped me becoming a member of the National Trust. Darling, I live in Surrey.

Thankfully, yesterday, my son fell asleep in his pushchair just before we reached the castle gates. On enquiring at the ticket desk we were told this particular castle was not buggy-friendly (outrageous!), so I volunteered to stay outside in the rain, guarding my sleeping son. 

I found some shelter near the castle entrance. A nice man in an English Heritage waterproof called over:

“You’re standing far too close to the English Heritage annual membership salesman for me not to ask if you’d consider joining.”

“I’d rather poke my own eyes out.” I cheerily replied. 

“Is that why you’re not going in?” he asked.

“Sort of.” I said, pointing at the sleeping infant beneath his rain cover “Your castle was not apparently built to accommodate families with pushchairs.”

We got talking. I told him I held a family membership for the National Trust. He told me a lot of people play the National Trust off against English Heritage by taking advantage of a joining offer for one organisation, then letting it lapse to take advantage of a joining offer for the other organisation the following year. Then they pick up another joining offer to go back to the first organisation… and so on, year in, year out.

Until our conversation I thought English Heritage and National Trust memberships were complementary, something you accumulated like a set. Now I see them as two giant empires, locked in mortal combat, fighting an epic and perpetual battle for our cash. 

“So you’re like the AA and RAC of middle class tourist attractions. ” I suggested. 

The rain had turned to hail by this stage, so the man in the English Heritage coat decided to move inside. We parted agreeing that when my National Trust membership lapses, I’ll see what joining deals are on offer from English Heritage. Maybe I will.

Time to go. The boy is crying upstairs. It’s 6.30am. Happy holidays.

Olympic Torch OB, Crawley

This morning was quite a challenge - up at 3.15am to get to Crawley to co-present our Olympic Torch Relay coverage from 6am to 10am (the above photo was taken at around 5.30am).

My co-presenter, Neil Pringle, the BBC Sussex breakfast show presenter, started the broadcast in Brighton outside the Pavilion. He waved the torch off, I saw it arrive.

We also had a reporter on the vehicle which follows the torch bearers (and carries the flame between towns), a reporter on the ground in Crawley and several production staff trying to keep things flowing at Brighton, Guildford and, of course, in Crawley itself.

Very few OBs (outside broadcasts) have both presenters out (unless it's a whopping set piece like the Open golf on 5live), and it was a production challenge to get it right. But we stayed on air, and I hope we did it with some panache.

My personal challenge was to avoid the linguistic banalities which seem to infect so much live broadcasting nowadays. If I were a news editor I would ban my presenters and reporters from saying the following words forthwith:

Absolutely
Fantastic
Amazing
Exciting/excited
Unbelievable
Huge
Literally
Brilliant
Major
Extraordinary
Beautiful

I failed. I did issue one "excited", in four hours on air.

By trying to remove those words from my vocabulary for the duration of the broadcast, I was forced to think about what I was saying and what I wanted to say. It made me consider the phrasing of my sentences. I found I was more accurate, original, and hopefully, entertaining in my descriptions of what was going on around me.

Listen to the masters - the Clare Baldings and John Inverdales of this world. When they do OBs - their pickups, funnies, descriptions, interviews and eye for detail sets them apart from middling hacks. It takes effort, research, forethought and presence of mind to sound that natural and relaxed, but it is possible. And when you take the time to bother, surprisingly easy.

If you get caught in the moment and you've got nothing to say other than the worn out cliches listed above, you're not broadcasting, you're emoting.

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Nick Grimshaw "not a morning person"

I'm not allowed to listen to Radio 1 any more out of duty to the BBC. They're trying to get rid of elderly gentlemen like me as it distorts the average age of their listeners.

Mrs Wallis, though, works there, trendy young mother of three that she is. This week she has been sharing an office with Nick Grimshaw.

I've never met Grimmy, but I listened to a couple of shows he did ages ago on Radio 1 on a Sunday evening (? I think) and remember being struck by how natural, relaxed and genuinely funny he was.

This morning Grimmy told Mrs Wallis the story of how he was offered the Radio 1 breakfast show. It was yesterday, and Big Boss Ben had called him in for a 9.30am meeting. Grimmy thought he was in trouble, and to compound it, he was running late. He rushed in to Ben's office all of a flutter, sat down, apologised, and the first sentence he managed was: "Sorry. I'm not a morning person..."

Wahey!

Just a note about Chris Moyles. I think he is one of the greatest talents to work in radio. Frank Skinner is extraordinary (download the podcast now), Jonathan Ross was a class act, Adam and Joe, Sara Cox, Danny Baker and all the rest are people who all do what they do with some verve, but Moyles has something extra. Not everyone feels the same way, so I'll try to explain it.

He isn't just a very funny man, a clever anecdotalist and an accomplished technician (watching him work a desk, record and replay sound clips, manage the other voices in his team and use the effects is like watching a conductor work an orchestra), Moyles also has a wonderful gift for using sound itself.

There were many times, especially early on in his Radio 1 career when you would hear long pauses, or links that you thought had gone on too long, but that was where his genius and belief in his own talent came in. He was working desperately hard to make every link special, every link memorable and if the link didn't have it, he would pause, re-group, and try to steer the link in the right direction before he pushed the button on it.

Moyles didn't mind if he was giving us dead air, because he had the confidence in himself to make sure the next thing he said, the next thing we all leaned in to hear (because we thought something was going wrong, or were keen to hear how on earth he would get out of it) would be funny enough to justify us doing so. In the early days not everything went right, but you could almost feel his brain ticking over, working, absorbing, learning and constantly going for brilliance, rather than settling for humdrum.

As the years went by, he became more skilled and grew his talent to make the pauses less frequent, as the right phrase or direction to go came to him quicker, but the reason he got better is because he staked out his on-air space his own way in the early days, by following instinct.

Moyles did all this whilst remaining acutely aware of the tolerance of his own audience - a football crowd who can spot a phoney, or pounce on a weakness instantly. Any sign he was getting carried away with his own celebrity would be quickly anchored by his audience and own self-awareness. There aren't many people who can stay at the epicentre of popular culture for 8 years and still sound like a bloke you know down the pub. His gift was giving you a window into that showbiz world, articulating its ridiculousness and making you laugh at it with him.

Grimmy will obviously be different. But he has a way about him - that sense of having something to say and an entertaining way of saying it, which I'm sure will see him through.

Right, I'd better go. I have a breakfast show to do myself.

On the mic - Surrey Life - June 2012

Sadly I failed to make the county's richest 50 again, but here is my June column for Surrey Life magazine. July's issue and my thrilling column therein is available for purchase now, kids!


In the gym


“I can help you lose that weight.” said Dan, my new-found personal training buddy. Good. I thought, because that’s what I want to do. That’s not all I want to do. I really want a body like Brad Pitt’s in Fight Club, but I’m not going to tell him that. He might laugh.

I have to get up at 3.45am for a living, six days a week. Then I put everything into my breakfast show on BBC Surrey. When I get home, all I want to do is eat, or sleep. The motivation to spend what little free time I have fannying about in a running kit has gone south, as has most of my physique. 

So I joined a gym. Just like that. Didn’t realise how easy it was. Tick a few boxes, hand over your direct debit details and you’re away. It was Dan who showed me round, and it was Dan’s polite enquiries which led to the awkward personal discussion about my spare tyre.

I have a problem with gyms. Why pay money to bounce up and down on a machine alongside a bunch of people you don’t know when you can do real exercise - running -  for free, in a vast and convenient gym situated directly outside your front door?

And seriously, does anyone actually enjoy wearing lycra? Or flailing about in a room stacked full of medieval torture machines? Or being subjected to appalling music videos played at ear-splitting volume? 

Yes, apparently. And it turns out I can cope with it too. Well, nearly. I am still no fan of the collective inhabitants of the free weights room.

If they could stay in the free weights room, that would be fine - but no, having bench-pressed themselves into a raging storm of testosterone, these fellows will insist on prowling the main gym floor, staring down pudgy, sweaty, normal gymmos like me. 

I can just about deal with looking like an exhausted, red-faced hippo in public, but I don't like my tubby frame being used to reinforce a muscle-bore's alpha male self-image. 

Secretly, of course, I’m jealous. And it hasn’t put me off. Since joining up two months ago, I have been going three times a week to gasp my way through evil Dan’s routines. I’ve learned how to do it properly too, with my little gym towel and water bottle, my sport earphones and stretchy clothing fibres woven by space mice from the future.

It works too. My stomach has flattened, my biceps have hardened and my manboobs are fading. But I still haven’t lost any weight.

I mention this to Dan. “Of course you haven’t!” he exclaims. “Muscle weighs more than fat. You’ve just replaced your fat with muscle.”

But I said I wanted to lose weight. 

“I thought you meant you wanted to lose that weight” he says, helpfully pointing at my midriff.

We still, clearly, have a long way to go.

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A love letter I waited too long to write

The Word Magazine has died. Next month's issue will be the last.

It's not lost on me that the medium I am using to communicate my grief probably killed it, but whilst I consume vast amounts of media online and expect it to be free, The Word was something I was happy, nay, grateful to throw money at.

It was brilliant. Ludicrously knowledgeable pop culture journalists writing with verve, wit and faith in the intelligence of their audience.

I bought the first ever edition of Word magazine (as it then was), because it was advertised somewhere I could see it (on illegal flyposts outside BBC Television Centre), and it had my hero Nick Cave on the cover.

As a disillusioned NME subscriber it was perfect - The Word was the wondrous illegitimate lovechild of Smash Hits and Melody Maker in their 80s heyday. But this precocious publication eschewed the blinkered approach to different musical genres and just celebrated what was good.

I'm listening right now to music which I got on the monthly Word CD. 15-tracks every 30-odd days which opened up endless avenues of discovery.

The iPod re-connected me with music, but The Word gave me something to put on it. There are hundreds of bands I just wouldn't have listened to without The Word putting them through my door - Sun Kil Moon, Can, Cashier No.9, The Leisure Society, Epic 45, Steve Pilgrim, Warren Zevon, John Grant, The Broken Family Band, Sebastian Tellier, Harry's Gym and many more....

I learned about Spotify, how Jean Jacque-Burnel got that ridiculous bass sound on Peaches, which books I should read... films I should see... I got an education in music pre-1976 (an area I've always been hazy on), and the working lives of jobbing musicians before they became global superstars. One interview with Phil Collins about his life pre-Genesis was humbling, and a Noel Gallagher cover interview gave a genuinely affecting insight into the life of one of the most over-exposed artists in pop history. I don't keep copies of old magazines, but I've still got that edition in the attic.

Why do I know what Barack Obama said to Andrew Marr moments before their recent-ish sit-down interview? Because I read it in The Word magazine. Why did I watch all five series of The Wire on the fx channel before you did? Because an article in The Word magazine made it clear in no uncertain terms that it was the single best thing on television ever. And it was. Why have I even heard of Azealia Banks? Because I read a piece delighting in her lyrical filthiness in The Word magazine.

The Word cared about its readers. It curated a friendly, whimsical online community - the Word Massive - it produced a superb weekly podcast, and it put on live events, including, on one delightful occasion, a musical boat trip down the Thames on a fake Mississippi paddle steamer.

Bands read it. Big-time radio DJs read it. Film-makers read it. Best-selling authors read it. And now it's gone.

And of all the shit things in the world which make piles of money, and all the shit people in the world who do nothing but lie, cheat, avoid tax and fix interest rates whilst being handsomely rewarded for making our society steadily more unfair and unequal, there weren't enough rich investors, or subscribers or casual readers prepared to pay enough money to keep a few brilliant people at The Word magazine on a liveable salary.

I haven't been this upset since Roger Taylor left Duran Duran.

I wonder if I'll get my remaining subs back...?

Ho hum.

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Putting the rest of us to shame

This is Tim Brabants from Chertsey. He is an A+E doctor and a current Olympic champion. He has an MBE, collected shortly after winning his kayaking gold in Beijing 2008. Tim is old enough to compete as a veteran club kayaker. Instead, he's out there performing against the very best in the world.

I spoke to Tim on my show just after he'd won the race which confirmed his selection for London 2012. Today I met him for the first time at Eton Dorney, the Olympic rowing, sprint canoeing and kayaking venue (very impressive, by the way). It was the first time the kayakers had put their Team GB uniforms on and the mood was, ahem, buoyant.

Tim is just about the nicest man you could wish to meet. Determined, modest, polite, disarmingly grateful for what has come his way, and clearly reluctant to spend much time talking about the incredible amount of hard, thankless work he must have done over the years. Years I spent, er...

Tim's day job is saving peoples' lives. He also just happens to be a world-class athlete with a golden past, and still possibly a golden summer ahead of him. He has, quietly and successfully, already achieved an incredible amount.

He's only 35.

On the mic - Surrey Life - May 2012

Here is my column for the May edition of Surrey Life. Regular readers will note this is not the first time I have used the angry imp metaphor. It doesn't improve with age.

Links to previous Surrey Life columns are at the bottom of this post. If you want to subscribe to Surrey Life and read my latest column, I'm sure that would make my editor very, very happy.

 

Radio is about stories. Whether you are listening to the narrative development of a song, or the heartbreaking personal testimony of a parent who has lost a child, radio excels at enriching the world we live in with the lives of others.

 

At its best, the medium can be so compelling we find ourselves reaching into somebody else’s world, connecting with their stories, and intertwining them with our own emotions and experiences.

 

Every radio professional should be working tirelessly to create those moments of connection with the listener. A facility with the written and spoken word, accuracy, ideas, empathy and a sense of theatre are all important, but nothing beats individual, human stories. 

 

Finding those stories and the people to tell them takes no little skill. On a breakfast show, those tales need to fit in around all the things you would expect from breakfast radio - news bulletins, weather reports, travel updates - the complete delivery of all the information you need about the world around you.

 

The secret is in what we call the “clock hour”. Every minute of every hour in the breakfast show has a designated purpose. A radio programme should sound like nothing more technical than a series of smooth, easy, purposeful conversations, but the reality is very different.

 

Each guest, each story, each information segment should appear at a specific time and serve a specific need. Not just because we have a lot to fit in, and not just because every breakfast show needs light and shade, but because people set their morning routines by what they hear on their kitchen wireless.

 

If you switch on your radio at eight o’clock in the morning, you expect to hear the news. If you know you need to be in the shower by the time I get to the paper review, how infuriating would it be if an interview overran, and you found you were late for work? 

 

Plotting the clock hour starts a day in advance - there is a set amount of “furniture” we have to negotiate - the travel, the sport, the weather, the news. Then there are the minutes allotted to stories - different sorts of stories for different parts of the clock hour. If you are listening at 7.10am, you will hear a different sort of story to one you hear at 7.25am, and again at 7.50am. The idea is to create a rhythm to the programme that you can subconsciously use to inform your morning routine.

 

Of course, this all goes out live, which means it does so in an atmosphere of controlled unpredictability. I have a hopeless recipe-based metaphor about this which I will inflict on you now:

 

Get an angry imp, some good ingredients, ten talented chefs and a boiling cooking pot on a portable stove. 

 

Ask your talented chefs to stand in a circle at least 20 yards from the portable stove and chuck some prepared ingredients towards the boiling cooking pot, whilst the imp (has to be an imp, or a hobbit), pushes the stove around the room, swearing loudly at everyone.

 

To make a live radio show work, you need the quality ingredients, you need the talented chefs, and then you need to accept that whatever you're trying to make may be completely different from what you set out to make, or rather wonderful in spite of the circumstances.

To read April's column click here. To read my first column, in March 2012, click here.

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