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Blog Xtra
Life. It’s what happens to you while you’re busy making other
plans...
Such a rollercoaster of a career ride deserves some honest ups and downs - and a few choice moments I’ve tried to recall through the haze, from starting at DevonAir and Radio ‘Brizzle’ in 1987…upto 1999. And it’s still going on… if there’s a lesson to be learned or any advice to come out of this, it would have to be: Get a job that pays !
...The things that have happened to me in the past, shape who I am now..
Click here for Blog1999
Dec 14th - HTV
Last show for the station as a dream job ends…but what next...? Getting a bit fed up with jobbing contracts that only last for a year… I’ve now got a radio show in Bristol that I’ve signed up to AND one in Liverpool at Crash FM – both only pay just over 50 sodding quid and it costs that in my car one way – it’s all a bit of a mess – I’m back just in local radio again but at least I’m working...Back to Liverpool for the last Nth Degree shows of the 90’s, and the winding down of Crash FM into the new year.
Oct
Do packages for the main news programme on Steps causing mayhem with fans in Broadmead HMV, God knows I'll be seeing enough ( yes enough ! ) of them over the next year, and a new drum invention by Jet Black.
Sept 13th
Stranglers 25th anniversary, Doc Martens gig, Covent Garden. EMI pays me 150 quid and I host the afternoon in front of the large assembled crowd and the press. Reuters still has the footage...The first time I get to introduce the band and bring them on to play. Saffron from Republica is oddly there and sings with Paul on ‘Duchess’. The band are presented with gold discs and sign some specially made, limited edition Stranglers Dr Martens given to me.
August
A strange and surreal experience as a once in a lifetime moment passes. The first total solar eclipse visible from the United Kingdom mainland for more than 70 years occurs on the morning of Wednesday, 11 August 1999, soon after 11:00 a.m.
Accompanied by lots of cloud, the solar eclipse darkens the morning for about 10 mins...a crowd of us from HTV goes onto the green hill behind the studios to watch it, lots of anticipation. Wasn't as spectacular as hoped due to the extensive cloud cover. I'm watching it with our programme team and Vanessa Bewley, more strangely, whom I shall also meet up with during an eclipse in Egypt...schpooky....
July
Various HTV summer events - RAF Fairford, Bristol Balloon fiesta etc
June
Glasto back stage tickets come via contacts through HTV - REM probably play as they get to do it most years now...
The summer is spent doing event roadshows with HTV around the South West and quite a bit of outdoor filming. Pieces include visitor centre stuff at Hinkley nuclear power station.
May
Flashback to childhood and Orchard FM outside broadcast memories as I take to the stage at the HTV roadshow stand at the Royal Bath and West Show. Among the guests are 'Boycey' from Only Fools & Horses, with whom I do an interview for the assembled Somerset folk. One or two familiar faces in the crowd as well from college. It was mum taking me to the HTV stand aged 6 that probably spurred my fascination with telly.
April
Turn up in New York to see the band I'm managing play as part of the Liverpool cultural exchange I've organised. Stay in Brooklyn. It winds up being a Lark Lane house trip...the last such thing Candler, Dipi and I will do as proper mates before things get weird in the house - Ian McNabb is over as well as a special guest. He's the only one who knows I'm rocking up and tips me off on timings as we breakfast at the Paramount Hotel. His publisher joins us for brekky, one Andrew Lauder, the man who signed the Stranglers to UA in '76...I turn up at the gig surprising even my housemates who are at the venue but don't think I'm coming, and watch amused as Ted Mason ( see Autumn 98 ), goes into orbit outside Arlene's Grocery in the village. At this gig, Candler meets a woman, makes a plan, ( eventually quits his job as a journo in Liverpool, moves to NY and marries her - and is still living the dream now, 8 yrs later...Boy made the most out of a casual chat we had in the Lark Lane kitchen in '98 about a New York bands exchange, and good on him!)
A few months later, Kassius are starting to implode a little, a member leaves, after drink and relationship trouble, others are falling out - the drummer phones me as I'm in Bath working for HTV to say they wanna fire me & Andy, who'd lost interest by now anyway....within 6 months they split. That's my last foray into band management...just as well...
March
I successfully reform A Flock of Seagulls for the first time since 1986. They play ‘Wishing (if I had a photograph),’ and all for £75 & an HTV canteen lunch. My mate Woody 'sessions' on drums. The band hasn't done anything together as singer Mike had been living in the states and Frank, bass player, has been running a corner shop in Liverpool city centre. It coincides with ITV's Hunting Venus Martin Clunes 80's new romantics spoof from which spawns a comp album.
Feb
Former Farm manager Kevin Sampson publishes a novel entitled, 'Powder', which could have been a biography of our lives in Lark Lane, the people in our scene in Liverpool, and one of the characters in the book, Keva, even lives in Ivanhoe Road - it's so weird it's freaky - I'm name-checked in the book under a 'nom-de-plume', as Crash FM's DJ 'Fibre'...when I go to Radio 1 in London and read this book on the tube, it could be mirroring my own life...I've previously wondered if Mr Sampson was making notes on the fringes of our social scene as the names are too numerous and accurate to be a coincidence. More recently Ian McNabb & I have wracked our brains trying to recall if he ever came to party's at Ivanhoe - it's one of the best novels about bands trying to make it in rock n roll...and still available.
Jan - HTV
Join the team on Jan 17 as Asst Producer on The Pleasure Guide - first tx on January 26th at 11:30pm, 17 years to the day since my first visit to HTV, when I met Richard Wyatt in the canteen aged 13 - and as I start my first proper working day– he’s still in there! Co-presenters are Vanessa Bewley & Gill Impey. Studio and location presenting, including celebrity guests and bands that visit the area.
1998
Christmas Eve
Maggie Lomas, Exec Producer of regional programmes at HTV phones to offer me the presenting job on The Pleasure Guide - I’m in Orchard FM’s record library when she calls...saved by the bell with the last of the redundancy cash, and I have a great Xmas.
Nov - My 30th birthday
Have some great birthday celebrations in Liverpool - friends from all over show as well as Mum & Dad which makes the night. Actually have 3 different parties for various friends that can't make the main one at the Bold St Life Cafe night. Kassius support Stranglers at the Royal Philharmonic this month too.
Still out of work and getting nervous, money will only last til end of Jan. Go for HTV News reporter job and give best interview yet… don’t get job but details are passed to programme producers.
Oct
Live TV closes its doors after 3 years in Liverpool – Nick Ferrari walks in at 3pm in late October and makes us instantly redundant— I’m logging a story for the 6 0 clock news...it was a rubbish piece about John Moores students inventing new types of tent, so Merseyside was saved an excruciating piece of local telly! HR ceremoniously hand out cheques to get us upto Christmas and we get drunk over the road and start sending out c.v.s - the shock is...well, a real shock. Cable tv is already showing signs of being on the skids...
Autumn
Liverpool / New York music exchange - a plan set up by myself and Ted Mason to play respective gigs in each other's cities and get press. I get my flat mate Dave Candler's band, 'Out', onto the exchange too, simply by telling him that myself and Ted Mason (NO relation, old NY associate from 92) are planning it. Dave's got a New York dream and his whole band is geared towards the CBGB sound of punk 70's. It's sewn up within minutes. I get the M'side Music Industry Assoc involved and they pay for it. Ted's agenda is Beatle-obsessed & he's got some plan to meet up with Pete Best and play the Lomax, Liverpool, then tie Sid Bernstein ( the man who promoted the Beatles' Shea Stadium gig in NY, 1966 ) into the exchange to show support for Scouse acts. In return, we'll all go there in the spring of '99 and play.
Too bad Ted and I fall out after the first night welcome meal when the yanks get here...Ted tells organisers he'll pull the plug if I'm part of the exchange delegation, all because he couldn't take mild ribbing at mealtime...then classically tries to 'BAN' me from the big apple...he's staying in my house too but not speaking to me - a proper jerk! No one stands up to him so as not to rock the boat...I agree Kassius shouldn't suffer and to go without me....I get cheap flight in April '99 and go anyway.
May
Begin managing superb Liverpool band Kassius with Andy Pearman, as well as Chicago expats The Bimbobs, who are cool & quirky. Typically, Kassius are up against an industry that won't sign anything that doesn't have a cohesive image - boy bands are all the rage, Brit pop's over, and a french act called Cassius has a dance hit....some confusion. But. We do get the band a Stranglers support slot in a decent sized venue, London gigs which are great at the Borderline, and a key high profile, all-expenses paid cultural exchange trip to New York to play a venue in the village.
Kassius record in the Pink Museum, a studio in Lark Lane opposite our gaff, where Oasis recorded Definitely Maybe and Atomic Kitten will do their hits. The engineer is Dave Croft, who loves em, and gets an amazing sound live. Thing is, Dave's got a female rottweiler that goes everywhere with him but does appalling farts - we all love the friendly, flatulent Elsa."... I know a girl called Elsa / She's into Alka Seltzer/ She sniffs it through a cane on a supersonic train / She made me laugh / I got her autograph/ She done it with a doctor on a helicopter / She's sniffin in her tissue / Sellin' the Big Issue.." God, did Dave's slobbering 'rotty' really do all that...?
Yes, there's the answer to a rock n roll riddle. Dave and his famous dog worked with Oasis and she was immortalised on 'Supersonic'.... will any of this rub off on Kassius..a catchy hard rocking, tight scouse vocal 5 piece...?
Above - live coverage of protests at the Hare-coursing at Altcar, Merseyside - the controversial practice of chasing small furry animals with dogs which attracts plenty of campaigners - our satellite truck was caught between the two.
Cover some fun stories for Live TV as well as dross. The best being a Liverpool music delegation to the House of Commons, promoting the Merseyside Music Industry Association. I interview Sir George Martin and Holly Johnson for the piece at Westminster.
The stories take us around huge parts of Merseyside, Southport and you're given only 2 hours for each story so it's a sausage factory. When it's a serious story, we often bump into the likes of our Granada colleagues Mark Owen, Paul Crowe, Pat Snell at the scene and we always get together to compare our facts. The tendency to share information is very open esp with these lads - not so the beeb ones.
I’m laid off my weekend Crash FM show by Mathew Levington who’s watching the pennies– Liverpool Echo writes a piece about my local unsigned band show being axed. A month later I’m reinstated to the Nth Degree local bands slot after the Echo reports listeners demanded the show return. Mathew listened... a rare management quality.
April
Officially my ‘missing’ month. Parlophone’s Mike Walsh takes me and Neil Pleasants to see Dandy Warhols at the Lomax, my favourite band of the year. We meet them in the dressing room, chat for a while, and watch a great gig..(recalling it now..) Six months later I complain to Mike about why I haven’t seen The Dandy Warhols live..! This is during their ‘Dig’ videoing period. Check out the DVD... Alot of gigs around this time I don't even remember going to. Neil and I are out most nights.
Do lots of really good bi-media sessions with Tanya Donelly, Hugh Cornwell, Corrs, Travis, etc
Janice Long is fired from Crash FM after an attempted management coup. She tells her loyal ‘cronies’ to ignore whatever new MD Mathew Levington tells them - she won’t play certain artists on the station she doesn’t like or who are too main stream, ie, Manic Street Preachers. Janice organises a march through Liverpool to save her job...some bemused supporters walk to the station door...then on again.... She appears to fall out with anyone that remains at the station who was a friend.
Six months later she winds up on late night Radio 2, which is great for her, but she’s playing Simply Red...where did the hard-bitten principles go...
Dan Green works his arse off making the station work and we become mates.
Jan / Feb.
Join Crash FM team along with Janice Long, doing Sunday indie show. A guy called Mike Grey hires me to do a 2 hour version of what I did on City - and as a cheeky two fingers to the way Dave Shearer handled ditching my show without telling me, I name the show, 'The Nth Degree', instead of the 3rd Degree.
Crash FM goes on air in March, and my original radio boss from DevonAir Dave Cousins surprisingly turns up on the board & the launch. Trouble is, airlines, travel companies, computer firms, car dealerships don't advertise.
It's doomed... What's more, Mike, the 'sassy' PC who's joined from Kiss, thinks it's cool to brand the station 107 Crash FM....OH hell, this is goin dowwwn...it's not until the day before on-air launch that I actually find out what frequency the damn station is on! Mike tells me it's cool because people will try to find it....uhh! I don't share his marketing nouse. I tell him in New York there are 3 stations between 107 & 107.6....He's gone within weeks and replaced by Mathew Levington.
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1997
Sept
A man with mental health problems who'd dropped his music demo off at Radio City reception, and kept coming in to see if I was there, has been stalking me at the station and attacks me outside. I'm just arriving with Live TV cameraman Billy to do interview with Cathy out of Stereo MC's, but I'm v suddely grabbed, pushed up against wall, but not badly hurt. Radio station and police get injunction and it turns out he's got a care in the community order. Scary stuff, and his demo, notably, a poor hi-energy dance effort, was singularly the worst music demo amongst hundreds I'd received on the show in 3 years, which is why he'd not been invited on-air!
Diana is buried on Sat 7th and a whole nation stops. Then it's time to get on with life - it's been on of the weirdest weeks in several generations.
Extraordinary artist Tanya Donelly, having recorded a Belly session for me in 1994, returns for a whole day of radio and tv live session recording, interviews, wedding anniversary dinner and evening gig at K2. Boy could she pack it in....
We'd got on well before but this day is special. What's delightful about the whole thing is how 'up for it' 'T' is when I suggest doing an acoustic performance in Sefton Park for the tv bit of my plans. We record a radio session first, then jump in the car and take her around Liverpool with husband Dean Fisher, also her bassist. Talking Beatles, one of her inspirations, we then do an interview about everything from her spirituality to a belief in UFO's - something we share and something she tackles on her 1997 album. Tanya, a double Grammy award nominated artist, founder of Throwing Muses, The Breeders, and Belly - far from being sick of mine and the record label rep's company, invites us to spend her 2nd wedding anniversary with husband Dean over dinner in the villa trattoria/romana??, in Liverpool. Lovely eve, then onto the K2 where Tanya does a superb gig featuring several tracks from her album, Lovesongs For Underdogs. In a moment that bowls me over, she dedicates a song to me, at the time, the next single, called 'The Bright Light', explaining, " This song is for Dave Mason, because of our shared belief in the little people..." I'll never forget that.... Tanya's continued a solo career, wonderfully is still with Dean, now has two daughters, and lives in Boston. Meanwhile we await the truth on the 'little people'...but it's 'out there....'
August / Sept
Deal with death of Diana on both Live TV and Radio City. The weirdest week I can recall in Britain means that my Sunday Third Degree Show is abandoned and I sit there playing innocuous r'n'b and back-to-back Phil Collins. Meanwhile, on the Monday I'm assigned to do tv interview with Mayor of Liverpool but have to dash to Brit Home Stores to buy a black tie first. The mood is so strange everywhere, I think we had to wear black ties all week - radio programming didn't return to normal until after the funeral on Saturday.
July
’Space in the Park’ -concert live on Radio City but I’m told I have to resource it alone. OB Land Rover generator takes us off-air coz vehicle runs out of diesel, half hour before end of show. Meanwhile, the diesel fumes have almost killed band members in their dressing room while we transmit backstage-several of Space seen staggering from portakabin choking...
Quit full time show at Radio City in July to join Live TV as reporter / newsreader - carry on doing Third Degree on City with a bi-media capacity for filming sessions as well as for radio.
At Live TV, cover murders on Merseyside, the last tour of HM Yacht Britannia and the Southport Flower Show live with satellite trucks.
June
Andy and I holiday in Barbados - superb week as we tour island in a mini-moke and I meet Swedish girl Lisa Vidner ...
Suede record their first proper acoustic session for radio by agreeing to do it for The Third Degree - it goes so well the band gives me a platinum disc in recognition of sales of their superb album 'Coming Up'
Summer, Virgin rep Martin offers me interview a with girl band they’re pushing like mad… I ask if they’ll at least sing acoustic or acapella in the studio. I’m told no, so I turn them down flatly. That’s why the Spice Girls never graced the doors of Radio City!
May
Hillsborough justice Concert – Anfield, May – 8 hours marathon broadcast for me and Neal Atko on Radio City— end up on stage singing with all the bands at the end for You’ll Never Walk Alone - hugely emotional in front of 35,000 people. Interview all acts including Frank Skinner, new band Stereophonics, Ian Broudie and Space.
Night out with Martin Campbell & Matt from Dodgy –end up in Moathouse, fall asleep in bar, woken up by cleaner to find a pint perfectly balanced on my head by the above two ‘jokers’ and my feet tied together with my belt!
3 David Bowie shows in two weeks - two at Phoenix 97’ , one in the dance tent, billed as Tao Jones...clever and then the main stage following night. He later turned up in Liverpool 2 weeks later at the Royal Court –amazing..’under pressure’ with Gail Ann Dorsey.
April
Space are riding high in charts and are toast of yr with TFI Friday etc - I get management deal with their manager Mark Cowley to produce some tracks - so in studio demo-ing wiu fun Liverpool all girl 4 piece Eroica on 'village earth' track. Have a laff.
The studio is Liverpool Music Hse where many artists work incl Lightning Seeds doing albums downstairs - meanwhile I often take my bigger radio artists there to record for my show - incl; Hugh Cornwall/ Suede / Carter USM / PJ Harvey / Stranglers -
Photo above shows Space at Anfield for the Hillsborough justice concert in May 2007. Andy Parle, 2nd from left sadly died in 2009.
March
Do pilot for own show on Live TV filmed next door to Radio City, Stanley St, featuring local band The Burs. Space have another hit with Dark Clouds, reaching 14.
1996
Dec
Stranglers gigs in UK and Disneyland Paris – it’s a mickey mouse affair! Traditonally a riot, the band takes a mob of journalists, tv, radio on Eurostar to France to enjoy a Disney club gig and all the rides, to promote Written In Red. I hate rides, so drink instead til small hours, and sleep all next day missing events– hotel maid boots me out of room - tv producer Chris Cowey takes me on a run around the site to show me what I missed - the band reminds me of this at later meetings!
Oct
Jimmy Duff, who's a conduit to getting loads of local bands on my show, guests and helped me hit the ground running in '94, approaches me as popular spoof quiz show 'Shooting Stars' with Vic Reeves & Bob Mortimer is coming to Liverpool...only, as a live stageshow at the Empire. They want local 'celebs' to guest so Jimmy secures me, Ian McCulloch and Billy Butler. On the big night I do it, Mark Lamarr ( I'm on his team ) gets me a bucket so I can do my spot in the 'impersonation' round...that of the voice of Darth Vadar with the bucket over my head. Ian McCulloch & I are on opposing teams - & we talk about how nervous we both are about this which helps me a bit. As we near showtime, with Matt Lucas ready in his George Daws baby costume, I have a few beers to 'loosen' me up - Vic & Bob have a habit of taking the piss, bigtime. Regrettably, the beers work their way through to my bladder 20 mins in and I spend the rest of the 90 min stage show, cross-legged in front of 3000 people in sheer agony dying for the loo. The pain is so bad I can't think about the 'hi-jinks' at hand and cannot wait for it to end to get off and dive for the bog. When Bob thanks me after the show I say I was desperate for a wee - to which he says I should have just got up and gone during the show..! (aargh.) Still, me and my 5 housemates who I've blagged in, all head off for the 'after-show' bash at Cream. Ulrika and Vic seem very cosy in a seated booth upstairs....
Sept
Been doing this spoof on the radio about a made-up seminal grunge band called 'Treemonster'. Every band that comes in talks about the influence of my fabled band including Tanya Donelly from Belly, and the Stranglers do a whole 'skit' - as if to back up Treemonster some music is recorded especially for me by Neil Taylor ( Robbie Williams' guitarist ) and Jimmy Copley, both of which were in Tears For Fears. Takes on a life of its own...
Neal Atkinson asks to borrow my old Cavalier SRi to drive to a DJing gig in Warrington...Now the car had been broken into and the steering wheel was bent forwards where the steering lock had been forced off...I hadn't got around to sorting it so the lads nicknamed it 'Stingray'...Neal does his gig, uninsured he drives back and gets stopped by police who ask to look in the boot. On opening it they find hammers, tools, half a bag of cement and all sorts of weird things that Neal can't explain...
July
Stranglers 21st - Albert Hall, great gig and fun backstage party. The only downer was the ‘gutbarging ‘ contest used instead of a support act.
Caroline Hopkins & I do all the summer festivals in a round-Britain music thingy Sex pistols reunion gig at Reading / Phoenix fests - Lydon opens with immortal line: “ Fat, back and 40..!” brilliant.
Accidentally run over a tramp in Stanley Street in g/friend Philippa’s car after leaving show at 2am! Well he did try to attack me as I climbed into the car! Stanley Street's a lairy place late at night...crawls to his feet in my rear view mirror...
Radio City rep at Liverpool Cathedral with Everton & Liverpool players handing out certificates to young achievers - Big Dunc comes back to the house in Lark Lane and we go for a few drinks.
June
‘Blur’ weekend gig in Dublin with Paddy Murphy and Steve Kelly. Paddy trained in drama & lived with Damon Albarn in Greenwich during the late 80’s. They’re big mates so we end up at the rehearsals on the Saturday, during which tensions between Damon & Graham erupt into a full blown fight on stage...pushing, fists and a 'handbags' walk-off. This puts paddy in a very awkward position asking Damon for lift back into town followed by a room to stay in...which was the condition that I paid for Paddy's flight! One highly memorable part of this weekend is watching Euro ‘96 with the band, crew and guest singer Terry Hall. Terry, coincidentally, I know because we’ve done several interviews and studio sessions together. We do end up going on small mini-bus with Blur back into Dublin from The Point! Surreal. Duly, Damon kindly pays for our room at the Burlington hotel. Awesome gig, ending on The Universal and millions of bits of silver ticker tape cascading. After show bash with band is at Dublin’s Chocolate Bar…Damon is mullered as is the whole band & we have some catching up to do.
May
Cable tv comes to Liverpool - Channel One & Live TV - no one's biting at my hints that I want a gig..
Form a festival (!) committee with Paddy Murphy, Steve Kelly ( Radio city Producer) and 2 Liverpool music lawyers, (one David Leather), to look into getting a music festival started on a large green site. We basically come up with a festival plan which I take as an idea to the 11th Lord Derby at Knowsley Hall. He drives me around his huge estate in his Land Rover and seems keen in principal. It's just too big a thing to take on for four people who've only put on the odd local gig...Alan Comer (Van Morrison's then tour manager) and Jimmy Duff come on board but it's like a juggernaut with no tractor unit to get it moving. But in 2007, something occurs called the Knowsley Hall Music Festival, so my meeting with Derby left a certain legacy. Cool, WE started that... we'd have lost him millyuns had we tried to do it in '97! ha
Neal Atkinson and his then actress girlfriend Sunetra Sarker introduce me to her actress pal, Mina Anwar, from tv’s The Thin Blue Line. Start dating for a few months– she introduces me to the book, The Celestine Prophecy. Go to tv centre to watch her film one of the last ‘Blue Lines’...Ben Elton seems a nervy, insecure kind of guy when we meet after, real nice bloke tho.
April
Doing late nights on City FM – but 10-2am is getting to me – Third Degree indie show at it’s peak and only thing that’s keeping me at the station – dye hair blond later in year so must be bored! But I am recording getting on for 2 sessions a week with up and coming and established artists creating quite a library of material.
Living off Lark Lane house with 5 blokes - one called Ray whom we nickname 'scoop' ( obviously ), from the News of the World, who wears an archetypal 'hack's mac' and has been sent to write a regular sports column for Neil 'Razor' Ruddock. Ray comes home late, never eats anything other than fish and chips and his kitchen cupboard contains only a bottle of ketchup and some vinegar. He is defined by his constantly harangued looking demeanour as he lurches from one crisis to the next on his mobile phone. He works hard to win the trust of the Liverpool players, esp Ruddock, recounting the odd tale of going on their gambling nights in Southport - invariably to one of the player's flats. The booze flows and a steady stream of ladies arrive...Scoop's time with us ends when the NotW exposes Roy Evans, then Liverpool manager for an affair, and poor Ray is run out of town.
Pete Wylie introduces me to rock hero Mick Jones in club on Duke st. At the modern day Cavern / Erics, The Lomax, the crowd consists of us, Wylie, McNabb, Martin Campbell from Lightning Seeds, Digsy and Ste from Smaller, ( ref to Digsy Dinner, Oasis ), the Real People, Jimmy Duff and Mark & Alan Comer, (who’s tour managing Van Morrison), odd members of Space, including Jamie Murphy, invariably off his face, his uncle singer-songwriter, Ned Murphy, Howie ( now in the Stands ) and a myriad of bands including Paddy Murphy. Glasto called off but doing lots of drinking and all night partying in Liverpool, at Lark Lane, the Lomax and generally hanging around with musicians—record some songs at Space’s studio that I’ve written-their manager Mark gets on board with my stuff. They give me a keyboard which I still have.
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1995
Sept
Flown to London to attend Oasis launch of ‘What’s the story “ beautiful event with string quartet playing all the tracks and a £1000 ice sculpture of the Oasis logo…even their mum’s there and they seem to be on best behaviour. However, we get so drunk, Darren Daley and I are scrapping in street and Noel breaks it up…( he later comes over to talk to me at the baggage belt in Manchester airport…) The next morning, Darren and I decide to burst into the hotel room of another DJ, Anthony Gay, ( I suspect he was irritating us at the Oasis launch ), we tie him up with the flex from a room lamp, and stick a hotel orange in his mouth, before departing for the plane back to Manchester… last I heard he escaped and became the PD at Hallam FM.
I'm moved from the early evening show 7-10 to the late night slot on Radio City...
August - Andy & I holiday in Portugal.
July
Produce Kirsty Maccoll session and interview in Manchester. Pete Mitchell does his bit then my turn - she's lovely but so incredibly nervous about performing the session it makes her a little edgy when we talk.
The Zeitgeist
Glasto with Oasis , Robbie Williams , Pulp – meet and interview all backstage…weather is fab and Pulp play the Saturday night because Stone Roses John Squires breaks hand. Jarvis Cocker gives weight to a zeitgeist feeling when pointing out to me that it's the middle of the middle month, of the middle year of the final decade in the 20th century...something is happening...
I'm interviewing Noel Gallagher about the new single when Robbie bounds over, ( out of it ), interrupts our interview about how he's gonna teach Oasis to dance like Take That. When I ask where the rest of Take That are, he says they're 'tucked up in bed reading Bunty'... two weeks later he's sacked from the boy band.
Ozzy Osbourne int- Midland hotel Manchester - hes seen as a legend at this point, but his career is trading in the past - Sharons v sweet + clearly in control - Oz duly reels out the biting head off bat story - he tells me loads of amazing, unintelligable stuff!! It's a 40 min int + I couldnt understand a word - AND never got around to broadcasting a jot, & then sadly lose the tape - 2 think they did the Brits - a re-invention seemed pretty unlikely back then
March
I start recording a proper studio version of a dance track I'd written 2 yrs previously with a talented but shy writer from Poole in Dorset called 'Vince'...real name Ian. (liked Vince Clarke apparently). He wrote music - I did the lyrics - The thing is, through my radio show, I've met dance producers and 2 time hitmakers, Oceanic - aka Dave Harry and Frank - they had a big hit with a song called Insanity in 1990. I'm now paying them by the day (or hour) to produce my song to releasable standard - it's called 'Dreamland' - quiet anthemic certainly by the time they finish with it. But it's rather like paying for a plumber to come and unblock yer drain for weeks on end. Sitting in a studio while someone does 'programming' - then, oops, time's up! Tedious and costly. Eventually it's done and Dave H turns round to me and says he wants a share of the publishing on the track...er what publishing?! Coz they produced it, he reckons they wrote significant parts too...yeah right (not) This is exactly what happened to all those bands in the 60's when their songwriting was ripped off by managers, producers and agents who all wanted a slice. So Harry and I fell out!
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1994
Oct
A local group I've featured in a local bands contest comes onto the 3rd Degree to do a session. It's their first radio ever and one of my first groups on the new show. As we chat live and I play their reel-to-reel tape a weird sounds emanates. I look quizzically at the band, they look sheepish, the darn tape is playing something recorded underneath it...it sounds dreadful...the engineer used old tape instead of a new fresh one leading to some 'print-through' - old recording bleeding through new one. I chastise the band, they are demonstrably apologetic, saying they were told it was fine. Abandon session.... the band are...later chart-toppers....Space!
Start phoners each week live on a Sat for the new Live TV cable station in London, with Matt Arnold about what's going on in Liverpool. Matt & I end up working at both HTV and GMTV later...the guy's bloody stalked me for 13 years.
Sept Andy Pearman & I do a big holiday tour of New York, Philly and Florida including some radio features for my show about NY clubbing scene and interview with Curt Smith as Englishman in NY. We successfully dupe ferry officials into thinking we're doing lives for the BBC from Liberty Island using some dodgy BBC passes, queue jumping over 2000 people at Battery Park to get on the next boat... we party in New York with Ted Mason, Hilienne and go to a lot of clubs, including Club USA with Coati Mundi. Head to Philly to see Pam and Laura. Then it's a flight to Florida to stay with some guys who each work at Epcot, MGM, and Disneyworld. We have a blast down there trying out all the parks for free.
Do 9-12am after Snelly's breakfast, until September when I’m moved to evenings— The Third Degree begins and a 4 year period of interviewing / producing UK’s main up and coming indie acts on a Saturday night from 7-10pm. Britpop has begun and so a re-invigorated Liverpool music scene. Cream club is buzzing. I have lots of live elements. The show enters a cult status in Liverpool for years to come drawing a big following.
In one of the very first shows as Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon from China Crisis do a weekly slot called ' the Crisis Helpline' for unsigned acts, I ask what Gary normally does on a Saturday night? His dry, laconic scouse reply: " Well, usually a bottle of wine, pizza - then it's the leather gear! " Lege.
Above - presenting the 3rd Degree on Radio City with Suede dropping by as live guests, an hour before their Royal Court date.
Starting to build a reputation for championing local groups. Produce and interview many of the names of the 90’s in music and help launch the career of the likes of Space, after Jimmy and I have a fight with them in the street outside the Jacaranda—Lennon’s old haunt, where he painted the murals with Stu Sutcliffe.
July - not in Liverpool that long when witness a WPC getting attacked and hit while arresting man on Victoria St for hitting his g/friend. I jump out of car to assist as he runs towards me - rugby tackle him to ground, give chase then cavalry arrives. Merseyside Police commendation letter and the WPC invites me to her wedding. Subsequent Crown Court appearances later, he virtually gets off.
Myself and two lads, Pete and Kevin move into 29 Rodney Street, Liverpool, where we embark on a year as city centre club, party animals. Within two months a businessman type pal of Kev's comes to stay for 2 weeks saying his girlfriend committed suicide. The next morning we knock on his room door where he is in bed with a mystery blond. Not long after, the city starts to get embroiled in gang shootings, and the clubs we frequent are soon targeted. There's also the after-club parties that everyone drives to in places like Southport which go on til sunrise...all the girls are friendly coz they're all on e. We wind up having quite a few people back to ours for the odd party in our giant 40 foot lounge / state room in Rodney Street, that are part of the Rio's club scene on Fleet St. We secretly sub-let a room to Pete's mate Nigel, 10 yrs our senior and who looks like Noel Gallagher, making our rent only 150 a month...bargain. Good scouse business sense. The landlord has no idea for at least 9 months. Bizarrely, our back street garage door and the one next door is used to film a major tv commercial featuring Jon Pertwee, coz it has the words 'Doctor on call' and has a long view of the old Cathedral...Over the next year the video for the first Beatles song since they split, Free As A Bird, is filmed a few streets away in Toxteth.
June - Blur play Glastonbury and I interview Damon by a hedge that he's just pee'd in by the back of the NME stage. I think this is the year that Suede play too and I'm mesmerized by them. Parklife is released and the summer is defined by this and other Brit-pop sounds. The title track becomes something of a theme to which I come on stage on the Radio City roadshows to get the kids going...it works, though feels a little naff thinking of it now...
March - Get job at Radio City after almost 8 months without regular work. Invite myself to meet Tony McKenzie whereupon he auditions me and offers me the morning show. I go from signing on in Somerset every week, living at mum 'n dad's, & wearing trackies 'n trainers ( bad for athlete's foot, I might add..), to lodging in Liverpool. Landlady is Radio City Gold presenter Debbie Jones in Crosby & Blundellsands. The trainers & trackies are a good sartorial preparation for life in Liverpool, haha! Neal Atko is my first mate along with Georgina Bowman who's starting out as newsroom asst. She'll end up as chief news anchor on Radio 1 Newsbeat.
1993
Dec
Get arrested in Taunton while out with Woody for having wrong tax disc on car...what!? Arrested? Taken to cells and finger-printed, photographed...it can be a serious offence apparently. Woody ‘effs off’ and leaves me there...nice. Detained for several hours and cops give me lift back to car, they take pity. So embarrassing. CPS drops case 3 weeks later as I was being naïve and was jobless, and skint .
On a brighter note - on the 9th, I get an audition for presenter of The Big Breakfast at the studios to replace Chris Evans...they rush everyone through after it comes off air. I'm sat waiting in a portacabin with Mark Lamarr, Mark Little, some cocky Irish guy....Mark Little gets the gig. I later learn from Mark Lamarr years on when we're at Shooting Stars, that he was promised the show, and it was all a done deal...a whitewash in his view. Good experience tho.
Work at Trent FM over Christmas— get attacked by poltergeist in studio! I'm told there's an old lady who does things...I leave for a coffee and she leaves a urine smell in the air lock...when I come back and open the mic fader to talk, the mic stand and microphone shake violently.... it's pretty scary alone in the basement of that building...
Nov
As autumn continues - the Stranglers are thinking of leaving their then management - 'the two Rons'... I'm living back with parents, and there is little in the way of radio work coming my way. One eve I get a phone call at home from John Ellis saying he's spoken with Paul & band and would I consider managing the band with Andy Pearman, because we might bring fresh ideas and direction to the group. Managing my favourite band, ever??!! Realising the sheer enormity of this task and my relative 'green-ness' in music management on that scale, I think about it, but politely decline, recommending Sil Willcox as the other option open to them. For a moment tho.....
Sil and Trevor take over - both with tons of tour and band experience - it turns out the Stranglers have accrued about 1/4 million of debts from owning their own record label, costs and wages, and were on the brink of bankruptcy.. Sil has since skillfully turned around their financial fortunes.
Oct
SIS Convention in New Cross - Day into Night - at the Venue, New Cross. I attend and have a stall selling for the 1st time, my cassette talking book, 'Rock n Roll According to the Meninblack - the story of The Stranglers.' Goes like hot cakes.
The band perform and especially memorable is the Jet Black performance of Old Codger, as he's rarely given to vocal performance. Also that day are a quiz from Dave G, a martial arts demo from JJ and a raffle from Paul. I make enough cash to buy a 2nd hand motor and give copies to the band - Jet and I agree to meet for a good ole fry up at Heston services on the M4 as we're heading back west. Jet gives early thumbs up to the doco's veracity and the band now has its first official biography in the band's own words.
Sept
Sit in for Bob McCreadie on Orchard FM's breakfast show for a week or two - do some 'swing' work while sorting myself out. Fun but weird to be back, just chuffed that Phil trusts me with the brekky show.
August
Come home from New York - ring Sunset from Grandpa’s in London to find the station won’t pay me the 1200 quid I’m owed. Drive to Wrexham August bank hol –station closes down - lose job – my home – and girlfriend on same day!
Move back home to Mum & Dads in Somerton, broke, car uninsured and with a few belongings in storage in Wales. V depressed, no work on horizon and worse, I start to wear tracky bottoms and trainers all the time– I look a right scally. Mum & Dad are tremendously supportive throughout as things get steadily tougher to get back into the mainstream. I get a week’s work in September doing Westcountry tv’s ‘Birthday People’ - the slot has replaced the much loved TSW Gus Honeybun. Great ! My career has a reached a new high, I’ve replaced a feckin’ rabbit on telly.
July
Spend the month in New York and Philly hanging with friends and live with a girl called Kim in her NY loft apartment for a couple of weeks. Hang out with friend Marcy in BMG HQ. I'm introduced to the VP of international, I think it was Heinz Henn...
June
Glastonbury
Wander around backstage getting ints / BBC Radio 1 has an OB truck doing all the John Peel shows & I’m working for Orchard and the BBC World Service - so I'm accessing the truck to ring World Service pop unit....end up doing a phone-live for Orchard FM from that truck, pretending I’m a world service guy coz me mobile phone’s died..., with commercial sponsored tags and all! That left a confused looking engineer, Dave Broomfield...(hmmm, BBC don't have ads... )
Do a two week stint as a tour manager for Coati Mundi & Ted Mason around the UK. Coati does a bit of Kid Creole stuff but mainly sounds like Busta Rhymes mixed with Cab Calloway... we have fun on the road apart from when my Ford Granada breaks down. ( the trading standards car from hell - 23 different faults in under a year..) Sunset radio's now not paying staff and some DJ's are on strike, so I use the tour money to go to New York for most of July.
Robert Plant and Stereo MC’s & Jamiroquai play Glastonbury - Shaun Smith introduces me to a man with grey hair and a big camera around his neck at the backstage bar. He’s quiet and shy so I ask him what local newspaper he’s working for. Turns out it’s actually Peter Gabriel I’ve been talking to for 10 mins.
April
It turns out Sunset radio is based in a converted Warehouse in New Mount St, and below us is a cafe & several businesses including the record company Cow with the Inspiral Carpets. Noel Gallagher is their roadie and handles much of the merchandising - so we're all passing in the corridors and cafe, but it's not how I come to befriend Clint and Tom. Funny, Inspirals and I don't meet until Glasto '94.
March
Soul presenter Ray Rose gets me in to Sunset Radio in Manchester from March, saying the gig's fine but cashflow sometimes affects prompt payment of salaries. Yer not kidding. We end up getting wages at gunpoint in Manchester from radio station owner – Hassan, a dodgy Iraqi businessman who’s £26million assets are frozen by Saddam Hussein– I almost feel sorry for him except that he doesn’t pay me on time, and when he does– it’s with a ’moody’ counterfeit £20 note and a threat that he'll have me thrown out of the 8th storey window.... Interview HRH Fergie in Manchester as station struggles to stay on air. Life in Manchester isn't a bed of roses. Funny though, Ray and I give lift back to Chester every evening to Sunset's geeky production boy, Peter Paulton....he goes onto become BamBam in London - he argues a lot in the car with Ray about what makes good radio...they infuriate each other.
Feb -
Paul Mewies, the overall PC of MFM, on the orders of Phil Roberts, out of the blue, sacks me. It's gotta happen in yer career at some point, but with no tangible explanation - my first set of audience figures haven't dropped & I don't know to this day why...(have some suspicions )...too weird. It's useful longterm though...I'm learning fast that communications companies don't communicate!
Do ‘extra’ work for Yorkshire TV on Emmerdale, Heartbeat, and Darling Buds of May. All thanks to Catherine Zeta Jones, who chats to me on set of Darling Buds, recalling our earlier interview a few months back. I'm a voting villager with her and David Jason in Darling Buds in an episode called, Climbing The Greasy Pole. I play a stretcher case opening one episode of Heartbeat, as my bandaged head rams open hospital doors to reveal Nick Berry. Cold, wet, dull and boring, 'extra' work needed Ricky Gervais to make it look vaguely manageable as a past-time...it's death-defyingly miserable and poorly paid. Until... a director called Oliver on Emmerdale likes me after giving me a girlfriend to walk around a lake with, and offers me the chance to audition for a role as a poacher. I decline because I've got such a great gig on local radio in North Wales...!!
Jan
Interview Hugh Cornwell at home in Box for Stranglers doco.
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1992
Dec
17th - Hawarden airfield - the location for the strangest of days. It's MFM charity Operation Christmas Child' s on-air fund raising day. There's a live OB, hundreds of screaming kids for some acts showing up and talk of Michael Jackson doing a phone link up with us. At the end of the day, a hercules transport plane will leave with tons of toys for Zagreb, and the kids suffering because of the civil war in former Yugoslavia.
Most bizarre is Radio 1 DJ Simon Bates who's there on the back of Michael Jackson's charity, Heal The World foundation, and is going to Zagreb in the plane - not any of us - despite my documentary about the day. Phil Roberts ( Bill Boberts..it's a nasal thing ) interviews Bates live on air on MFM, even though Bates' Radio 1 show is going out at the same time....Gary Davies and Steve Wright recorded most segments of their shows too, so bloody Radio 1 was on tape for chunks of the 80's / early 90's.
Bates actually helps with my Bosnia airlift doc for MFM. He introduces me to Olivia Harrison who gives me a great interview about the plight of Romanian orphan children - she’s got a charity with all the other Beatle wives. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson, who's questionable reputation with young boys hasn't gone public yet, phones up from London and does a 'phoner' with the station on the day of the airlift...mad...
The week before Christmas, Simon Bates and producer Fergus Dudley are cool about me going down to London to get the tapes recorded in Zagreb from Radio 1's Egton House. Bump into bossPaul Robinson who's had meetings with me about my career, to no avail, but is impressed to find that I know Bates. Simon's asst / BA Clare Sturgess has done many of the ints. and I get the tape, so the pr bit is done and I return to Wales. Bates will go when Controller Johnny Beerling does in the shake up that occurs over the next year. This was to be my last visit to the old school Radio 1 before joining it in Clipstone St at the start of the next century.
TSW - Plymouth - several of us from Orchard FM, (incl. David Rodgers) go to a staff farewell / closing down party in the bar at the studios at Derry's Cross, as they wave goodbye to the franchise - and a building which housed both TSW and Westward before it. A fairly drunken affair with Judy Spiers, Ruth Langsford, and Ian Stirling all in attendance...I just don't remember exactly when this was coz I was working in Wrexham around this time, but do recall some of the party. Still, 15 years later I'd end up buying the name of the company and its trade mark.
Oct - Keith Holden and I do an joint Marcher Sound/MFM Halloween OB at a haunted pub called the Halfway House at Childer Thornton on the Wirral - the two paranormal investigators, Alan Power & Bob Williams, are old hands at Ghostbusting spooks, so we take it with a pinch of salt...Keith and I don boiler suits and strap old vacuum cleaners to our backs - THAT'S how seriously we're taking it - until lights start going on and off - a beer barrel with fittings shatters in the basement, and Alan Power's eyes start pouring water! There is an entity, a former landlady who lived for that pub, who's poltergeist won't let the new manager get on with things. Weird as hell and we get a bit freaked out - worse, we've agreed to sleep there the night. A couple of weeks later, we go on Granada's Upfront programme with Tony Wilson and Lucy Meacock to recount our experiences, Wilson cynically getting us to tell the tale in 25"!
Start Stranglers doc with the band at Manchester Academy gig in the Oct / Nov. Beginning of a long relationship with band and firm friendship with Paul Roberts.
Sept - Robbie ( Williams ), out of Take That, keeps ringing the office to chat..true! Darren and I often pick up the calls as he rings to speak with DJ Greg Burns– who lost out to Williams at the Take That auditions for manager Nigel Martin Smith. I subsequently interview TT at HMV Chester, having to be helped out the back entrance of the shop due to the 100's of screaming pubescents outside. Robbie and Mark wear name badges with each other's names on...sweet...
Go to Leeds to interview Catherine Zeta Jones - we get on really well and she gives me a name at Yorkshire TV for doing ‘extra’ work. She’s done a single with Jeff Wayne, called 'For All Time' and it's rubbish, but she's lovely and we get a great piccy on the bed in the hotel room! I can later credit Catherine with getting me quite a bit of extra work at Yorkshire and we meet up again on set.
MFM – North Wales
Sign record deal with Rumour records / Klone with fellow MFM DJ, Darren Daley, for our dodgy 'VolKno' dance version of the Mason Williams tune, Classical Gas. I'd been working on this idea with Yeovil producer Jon Sweet since the summer. It gets played on a couple of stations, & Annie Nightingale is heard to play it on Radio 1, berating its existence! It bombs in the charts at around 130...but not before Daley & I do a cringingly awful 'P.A.' at some leisure centre with MFM in Chester!
August 2nd
Leave Orchard FM, 31st July – have a party on the steam train to Minehead - leave home. Geoff Roberts moves my stuff to Wales.
Glastonbury
Wander around backstage getting ints / BBC Radio 1 has an OB truck doing all the John Peel shows & I’m working for Orchard and the BBC World Service - do a phone-live for Orchard from that truck, pretending I’m a world service guy coz me mobile phone’s died..., with sponsored tags and all! That left a confused looking engineer, Dave Broomfield.
May
At a hugely attended Royal Bath and West show, where I do a live OB for my Saturday afternoon show - guests include pin up Maria Whittaker, strong man Geoff Capes and the Wurzels. They give me a live demo & lesson on how to drink cider properly from a flagon - there IS a technique...I've never forgotten it. It's a great show with production support from Darren, (Sparky..) and Phil Easton. We also have a Street step aerobics class come and join in the fun...one of them becomes my g/friend.
Spring
Mum dad and I in Exeter meeting our cousin for the first time in Wet Wet Wet after their show. He’s Graeme Duffin and has been their lead guitarist since they formed in ‘86.
When The Hitman & Her for ITV comes to Taunton without Pete Waterman - I’m a guest and co-host part of the show, doing links from the Kingsdons stage with Michaela Strachan. The hot clubbing 'debate' that eve is, 'should clubs have dress codes?' - heavy stuff. One of the cameramen is Justin Davies, from HTV, with whom I'll work in '99.
Thanks to a dreadful sponsorship deal dreamed for my show by Bowlesy - the programme has to accomodate a sequence of chat on a Friday called Fishkeeping with Stuart Pearcey. A sponsored step too far - & prob as good a reason as any to quit the station at that point anyway - between hot rockin tracks to get u into the weekend, this local laid back guy came on to talk about keeping fish in yer pond! I bloody hated the feature but I liked him, so it was tough to rubbish or take the mickey. Sponsorship meant cold cash so that were that - it just didn't sit well there - now that I'm middle aged & keep lots of fish in Bath, I'd love a local radio station to give me tips for me Orfs 'n Koi's !
Late Feb
Interview one of my main musical heroes, Nile Rodgers, in New York for a doc special on his career, at Skyline studios during B52’s sessions. I think I singularly learned more about music in one hour from this man, than I did in years from various bands I met and interviewed.
Feb 5th
Host a major night for signed / unsigned acts in Taunton’s Kingstons nightclub. Nightlive was the name of the unsigned bit of my Orchard show. Dead Men Don’t, Shawn Thorner’s Reel Life, Studs on Mainstreet, sound mixed by one Hugh Cornwell, (it’s the first time we meet). PJ Harvey is there with her band but not playing, as is Glastonbury festival’s Michael and Jean Eavis. A&R men drink all the free booze but don’t sign anything. I’m learning fast. Great p.r. night tho..hundreds attend and good press. Dave Luckhurst at HTV does a huge piece on our big regional event. A video of that will appear on here soon.
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Not only interview artists for show but new Western Gazette column as well. Do interviews with Cathy Dennis in London where I bump into Paul Weller at what is now Sanctuary in Shepherd's Bush.
Do a Kim Wilde career special at her Knebworth studio - Darren Daley asks to come along - we record a Xmas doco with her Dad popping in now & again.
Am paying occasional visits to Radio 1 to see Paul Robinson, Editor of Mainstream Programming. Phil Easton knows him and opened the door re me getting a foot in there. He seems interested to stay in touch, but you get the feeling there's a lot of people doing the same thing and I don't feel a move to the 'Big 1' is imminent. During one of these meetings, Mark Goodier walks into the office and talks with Paul about how to do a slick competition on air. It's funny coz Goodiers and my paths will cross many yrs later when Ju works at his production company.
We come live from the back of a flat bed farm lorry - bit of a ropey set up - at the Crewkerne Carnival. I'm doing a Saturday afternoon show which is fun. Part of my show is a feature where Darren Daley goes out and about doing as-live feature pieces on a Uher from Somerset events. He then brings them back to edit & feed back into the show, as if we had a live link-up. Never get away with that sort of 'non-live' cheating nowadays...!
Orchard FM OB’s at Royal Bath & West show, Taunton County Show - really getting out and about in the county and the Station is starting to bed in. We're all getting quite well known...It's said it takes 18 months for people to get familiar with you.
Meet Shaun Smith becoming best of mates, at a school music charity project in Yeovil and start going to Bath alot to Moles Club scouting new bands. Get them on my 'Nightlive' Orchard FM unsigned slot. DNA have a hit with the Suzanne Vega song, and the Bristol dance scene is burgeoning. Decide that Bath is where I'd like to live one day.
Pete Waterman is a weekly regular fixture of my show giving his Hitman tip for the top— do Christmas specials in London with him and his artists.
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1990
Dec
Christmas - xmas / boxing night radio and we all have to do our bit on air. Even Aussie sales controller and country music presenter Howard Bowles. He's doing an early eve stint handing over to me - and it's in the days when you could smoke inside...though yer not meant to in on-air studios. Period. But Howard's been puffing away and glugging a bottle of wine. As he finishes his show, he dashes out of the studio, throwing his ciggie stub in the plastic studio bin, unbeknowns to me. As I read the weather and play the first disc, I start to see flames gliding up from underneath the side of the desk. With paper in the bin, it's a full scale fire and could so easily have have taken the studio with it. No time for extinguisher, damp towel - I pick up the bin, race through reception and put it outside the entrance door. The inferno continues as I carry on my show....flames getting hold of the toxic plastic. The plastic melted ring in the tarmac can still be seen to this day....and a sheepish Howard is quite nice to me after that, for a bit...
Go to London to interview Status Quo at their management offices. It's the first time I'm given a chauffeur driven car to Paddington! The interview's good fun...makes a Xmas special for the station.
It may also have been around this time that I went to London to record a Christmas special with Gary Glitter, as he rehearsed for a Leader 2 live show! erm..well in hindsight...there was something a bit odd about him mentioning young girls in the street after we'd finished taping. He kept yelling "Leaderrrrr" to puncuate his answers and my Q's...just seemed a bit of a numpty really.
Nov
Orchard FM OB 1990, Glastonbury carnival - Palmer snell window on high st, Phil Easton producing, Darren Daley driving desk some of show and Helen Chamberlain, yes, her off Sky's footy show, filming some video of us on-air…her and I being good mates and DJ partners double-billing in clubs in Somerton and Torquay...and then some...
Learning dressing room party piece from Ian Gillan at Orchard FM’s 1st bthday party at Howley Tavern, Devon – rolling a broadsheet newspaper longways – inserting one end between arse cheeks, then lighting the other with a match. The one who does most laps around bars stools spaced 8 feet apart, wins. Practising a year later at a garden party and setting best mate’s arse on fire – when someone called ’Sparky’ secretly doused newspaper in petrol before lighting.
Do 25 years of Status Quo special and most of Orchard FM goes to the party at Butlins, Minehead, where they first met. The celebrations at Butlin's in Minehead became the global media event of the year. Over 300 press, radio and TV representatives team up with holidaymakers to see QUO perform a special show in the Butlin's ballroom! I recall seeing the tattooed Glaswegian who'd travelled down and had changed his name by deed poll, to...Mr Status Quo...During the day, it's so mad I miss out on an interview in the frenzy, so the management agrees to bring me to London to do a Christmas special.
At the party, where Phil Easton does the DJing,are Chris Tarrant and Alan ‘fluff’ Freeman, Vicki Michelle out of Allo Allo..wha?...( here’s a pic showing Judi Spiers dancing on a chair as Rodgers and Phil look on.)
Getting into slightly late night riotous behaviour in Taunton at weekends with a certain character called Daley - after one such v late night clubbing / early morning - with a Saturday breakfast show to do - I end up sleeping in the record library at the station after a skinful, post kebab. Darren manages to wake me with 15 mins to go before 'on air'...it's black coffee and a voice that sounds like James Earl Jones on 'crack' - it's not a good show. The weirdest thing I remember is I'd only had 15 mins sleep...why do that?! A call came on the X-dir line from Mr R, who was always listening when something was going badly - not a happy boss!
September
Drive to Wembley Stadium - take Darren Daley & again blag our way backstage to hand John Courage a copy of my radio doco which I got networked by Capital Radio. We'd colour-photocopied the AAA passes which are promptly removed and swapped for after-show party ones. End up baskstage at Wembley Stadium following a superb greatest hits set. Bump some guy in a crap jumper at the bar at the Fleetwood Mac after show party- turns out to be Prince Edward! Sam Fox is there fooling around, tho after her & Mick's 'memorable' Brits hosting in '88 - Mick looks 'wired' and doesn't really say much...mmm...John McVie shows me his teddy! ( see Gallery for pix)
June 10th
Scoop a Fleetwood Mac interview in Las Vegas with Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Billy Burnette at the Aladdin Casino Hotel. John Courage, the tour manager, takes some convincing but I blag my way & get some great material, enough for a doco. See the show after, which is mesmerizing, and Squeeze are the support. I get a lot of old stories and find John McVie an utter gent with an avuncular honesty. It draws me into researching the most OTT crazy world of that band and have been a fan ever since.
Cutting my teeth in rock documentary making, I work hard to make an hour special which winds up being networked across UK commercial stations by Capital Radio. Orchard puts at out as a bank holiday special and Mr Rodgers lauds the production in a corporate sales video. Just as well I got the interview in America, I'd narrowly avoided being sacked / suspended by Rodgers a couple of weeks before for some youthful misdemeanour...ie not doing what I was told.
It's the tail end of the Madchester 'baggy' dance scene, which has left a mark on Bristol, despite there being a cool new music scene there anyway. 2 fringe groups cause me a nightmare - The Blue Aeroplanes, who turn up in a van so drunk they career around Orchard with a bottle of brandy & can barely do the live session, which turns out to be crap. We put in a complaint to Chrysalis their label...years later I meet the singer at a party & he recalls the fallout from the label....the other incident involves a 'spaced-out', I suspect drugged-out band called The Moon...somethings, doing a signing in Broadmead HMV, Bristol - when i interview them, they get permanent marker pens and try to draw flowers on my face ! I go back to Taunton looking like i've survived an explosion in an ink factory... not a happy....monday!
While doing a Sunday morning show - a herd of cows breaks from a nearby field into the Orchard grounds - it really is Orchard FarM! Takes a while to round em up before the farmer arrives, narrowly avoiding wrecking our vital satellite dish for news feeds.
March
Princess Anne opens Orchard FM studios officially and gets interviewed live on-air.
Give PJ Harvey first airplay as part of a Yeovil band 'Automatic Dlamini' - named after an African child. I send them to the studio of Jethro Tull bass player Martin Barre, to record their session in Devon, comprising John Parrish and Rob Ellis ( I was at school with his sister ). Polly goes solo and does first session for me, never mind Peely, who goes on to break her nationally. I still have her original solo demo cassette...
Jan / Feb
Bob Mcreadie takes over from temp Jon Carter on brekky, following the Bernie debacle. Station settles into a steady growth period with a great pres at the helm.
1989
Dec -3 weeks into the launch, Orchard FM's first breakfast show presenter, an actor called Mike Burnside, doesn't turn up for his scheduled live OB in Yeovil's Quedam centre. Instead of parking the car, he drives off to London, never to be seen again... he wasn't taking to the earlies and the job of having to learn to 'drive' a radio desk. Apparently he got the idea from colleague Phil Easton who'd quit Radio City by famously leaving a record playing while moving his car , then not returning to the studio... Burnside is replaced by Bob McCreadie. Orchard lives on...
Do first evening show O.B. at Weston Super Mare college- I abseil down the outside of the building to open the show, 'as-live'. What a wacky radio DJ I am… only I had a bloody giant ‘Uher’ reel-to-reel tape machine strapped to my body. The show goes well until I'm encouraged to discard my trendy 80's clothes to try out the facial and beauty therapies on offer from the students. I do the links, someone's playing in the records for me - a Polydor band called 'Seven' mime a few tracks, and then I try to change back into my clothes...which have all gone! Nicked! Spend the rest of the show in just underpants, dressed in a borrowed giant Victorian hooped dress...( "I'm a lay-dee.."), thereby inventing Emily Howard 15 yrs before David Walliams!
November 26th 10am
First voice on air to launch Orchard FM - then travel around Somerset in a Bell jet-ranger helicopter picking up listeners to bring to a special launch lunch - also doing 'lives' on a huge mobile phone. Phil Easton, Mike Burnside and Alison Burnett host the opening show, while The Bill's Jon Iles and Richard Keys are celeb guests...for those days...
Click here for previously unseen Orchard FM launch pictures
October -
Leave council job to join Orchard FM - (13th) hired by Phil Easton & David Rodgers, who's left tely to run the station as MD. We’re based in portakabins on Ewen Cameron’s Dillington Estate Farm. Help plan the launch and the helicopter landings while planning what my new evening show will be like.
August - Interview Kylie Minogue at Simon Mayo’s Radio 1 Roadshow...we have brekky at the Royal Beacon Hotel, where all the crew stay..she’s an absolute charmer and we hit it off straight away - now this is a funny day, make a lifelong friend by meeting Andy Pearman for first time during Roadshow, end up doing Mayo’s ‘bits and pieces’ game on-air, and I’m a local radio presenter in the region…Rod McKenzie's part of Mayo's team and will end up my boss at Newsbeat - Kylie's the only one I've not had much to do with since...!
Go to Canada in the summer—interviewed on Canadian local radio. Broadcasting for DevonAir and going to summer shows, ie, Devon County Show - travel in RAF Hercules over Devon Air tattoo, which is fun.
DJ wise - I do double-headers at Somerton's Red Lion for Fred Latcham with Helen Chamberlain, ( now Sky's Soccer AM ), we make pretty good team - into 1990 I'm also gonna be out at 'Boxers' - a dodgy little club at Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet, as well as all the Taunton clubs, Nightowls, Kingstons, and the Ivory Club. In Cullompton, Devon at the Verbier Manor hotel, and Vaults in Exeter.
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1988
Youngest person to go to interview to win a radio franchise. 19 years old when we go to IBA in London to apply for the Orchard FM license. Give the point of view to the IBA board on behalf of what the ‘youth’ want from their commercial radio station. Also present are Ewen Cameron, David Cousins, MEP Margaret Daly, Charles Clive Ponsonby-Fane, the future board. As our
While standing in on late show on DevonAir, listener calls in and says taken overdose..call Glenn Richards (now CJ the DJ), in Torquay studio and try to keep listener on line until ambulance called.
Spend summer DJing across entire span of the West, from Cheddar to Torquay - at the Quaywest complex. Also win a dodgy south west DJ contest at Taunton's Steamrock Cafe....I also work across the 3 key clubs in Taunton; NightOwls, Kingstons & Ivory Club. In Yeovil, The Gardens, Electric Studio, and Dukes.
Do evening and hard rock show— 'Level 2' - accidentally play Napalm Death track featuring about 20 ‘f’ words, it's all Guns N Roses.
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Nov - Have to ‘commentate’ with DJ Gordon Somerville at a fireworks display in front of 10,000 at Newton Abbot racecourse - he is heard to say; “er, there goes a green one…”
Sept/Oct I'm trained in driving an ILR desk by John Pierce over 3 Saturday mornings - it's hell and he's a tough task master, but I learn quickly.
Dave Cousins, MD of DevonAir, singer with The Strawbs and my new mentor, takes me under his wing, co-opting me onto consortium group he's putting together to apply for the Somerset ILR franchise. In turn, I get contacts of mine from my college principal to business folk involved. We merge with Ewan Cameron's Somersound team and all throw our £1 coins across the County Hotel boardroom table to form a company as shareholders. Who the heck would've thought in 12 years these coins would be worth £25 million - wish I'd bought up a few more shares at inception... interesting mixing with such heavyweight people.
July
Somerset features for ‘Weekend West’, Sat am on BBC Radio Bristol with Ged Clapson.
Get a call out of the blue from Nicky Ezer while in my council job, saying Dave Cousins wants to meet me. He’s the MD of DevonAir and a member of 70’s hippy band, The Strawbs. He wants me on board to start a consortium bid for the upcoming Somerset radio franchise. I begin DJ’ing for the first time on local radio—I quit Radio Bristol to have my own show on DevonAir, Exeter, a show called Then & Now & Bubbling Under
1986
Oct
Princess Diana visits Taunton projects for the disabled and I cover it on the Royal press rota - future mate / colleague Bob Crampton's the HTV reporter there...my first of many future such royal coverage only this is for Taunton Hospital Radio...
Hospital radio efforts not making much of an in-road - my Devonair stuff goes quiet coz I can't get to Exeter... It all changes when I pass my driving test first time and buy my first car, a Vauxhall Viva for 300 quid. Doesn't help that a few of my 'mates' decide to loosen the wheel nuts just prior to me driving down to Exeter the next year but the car does months of pretty reliable motoring before I roll it over in the snow of 1987...! It goes on for another 18 months with a few dents.
During an over 18's disco at the Red Lion in Somerton, the DJ and Fred Latchem give me my first shot at DJing for an hour...so it goes.
Meanwhile I'm working as an admin asst. for Somerset County Council, going to day release college, and biding my time before I can go off and fulfil my ambition. It's mind numbing work, but part of a training scheme so a good start in work.
1985
August
First feature on local radio. Manage to get a feature about the filming of BBCtv’s Monocled Mutineer in my home town Somerton on Nicky Ezer’s Street Level, on DevonAir. Features an interview with its star, Paul McGann. August, work with DevonAir getting vox-pops at Sidmouth Folk Festival for Street Level.
June 20th
Leave school at lunchtime after I do my last exam for RE - immediately sign up with the BBC in the afternoon as an 'extra' in The Monocled Mutineer - a quite renowned drama featuring Paul McGann & Timothy West about the mutiny of First World War soldier, Percy Toplis, in Etaples, France in 1917. I play a New Zealand soldier and we sit all night around Somerton's Market Cross as McGann does a scene. Several of my mates are in it too. The filming goes on until July and I try to make the most of the opportunities it throws up...it kick starts my radio career in a way...
1984
Aug 15th
My ever obliging, encouraging grandfather takes me down to Plymouth to TSW where reporter Rod Holmes shows me around the studios for an hour. It's the first time I've been in a tv newsroom and it's mainly typewriters and teleprinter copy- hardly any computers. TSW is only now updating its newsgathering from 16mm film to ENG cameras. As we walk down a corridor, David Rodgers heads towards us and says hi - within a few years he'll be my mate at DevonAir Radio / boss at Orchard / then mate again! And one day...TSW will be mine...mwaahahahaha!
John Sugar - the man who first gave me some experience helping out on a radio OB aged 15
Aug 8th
Cycle to Sidmouth Folk Festival, to DevonAir OB. Meet John Sugar who’s producing at the station but not getting paid. John takes me around Sidmouth pubs A & R’ing folk groups to come and play on the live OB. 20 years later, he’ll hire me to read news on BBC 6 Music.
1982
Jan 27th
Day off school aged 13 to visit HTV studios for Jobline. Sit on the news set - shown here in the picture grab, during the recording.
Meet Richard Wyatt for the first time - Dad's been working with him for years on Jobline. My mind is made up, this is what I want to do. It'll strangely be 17 years to the day that I'll walk into the canteen at HTV to find Richard there on my first day as a presenter...woah! 
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1980
Aug 30th
Go to first proper Radio 1 Roadshow of many, with Tony Blackburn at Exmouth, Devon - he’ll end up at GMTV too!
1979
Oct 13th
Swap Shop’s Swaporama with Cheggers comes to Long Sutton– I found out
coz my mate’s dad does the GPO landlines for the OB link. Get some Dr Who books and a Swap Shop hat. Will
produce Cheggers at GMTV in 25 years!
1977
Jubilee year - sort of meet the Queen in Exeter on her walkabout - vivid recollection. Favourite fantasy adventure series 'The Fantastic Journey' is first shown on tv - why they hardly repeated this I'll never know - it was wonderfully cheesy, and a visionary look at alternative dimensions all caught up in the Bermuda Triangle. I've been scared of green clouds ever since. Katie Saylor was the babe in a short dress - she was never seen again after the series, so is presumably still trapped in a green cloud in 1977. It starred Jared Martin as Varian, Ike Eisenmann as Scott Jordan, Carl Franklin as Fred Walters, Katie Saylor as Liana, Roddy McDowall as Dr Jonathan Willoway.
1976
May/June
Very 'ickle, taken to Bath & West Show - mesmerised by tv cameras at the
HTV stand. If you stand in front of a camera you see yourself on loads of screens. Wandering around show
with my Mum, there’s a load of people sitting in front of a caravan listening to music –it’s the Radio 1
Roadshow at the same event. Beardy bloke is the DJ, ( possibly 70’s Paul Gambaccini / Peel ), buy a Radio 1
sticker from a ‘goody’ vehicle. Almost 25 year later, I’d have worked at both HTV & Radio 1.
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