From the second the red light went off and Timmy put on a song there was furious activity to get the next link ready. Every link meant something, every link had some colour, either a joke, a character, a caller or an interview, and every link had a beginning, middle and end—the end being the most important as, if the beginning or middle failed, a good end would always get you out of trouble.
This is just one of the lessons Timmy taught me that I have used on every programme I have ever been involved with to this day.
This golden time was proving to be a master class in broadcasting, an invaluable and unique learning experience available nowhere but right here, right now, but the heat was about to be turned up—the next stage of apprenticeship on Timmy’s show was to be invited ‘on the air’ as a ‘character’.
This was a huge deal and also a make-or-break moment. Helpers only got one or two bites at the on-air character cherry. If they were successful they would become a bit-part player in an award-winning radio show and would become famous in their own right. Listeners would write to them and want to know who they were and what they looked like; they would be asked to do more characters and be given more air time. If they were unsuccessful, however, they would be consigned to the hell of the phone rooms and sending out prizes, probably for ever.
Timmy asked me if he could see me one night after the show.
‘Er, yes hi, well done tonight, I would like you to think about a character for the show, something different, something that you like, ’cos if you like it, the kids’ll like it, something that you can do night in, night out. Anything—it just has to be clever and funny, that’s all.’ He then paused before adding, ‘Oh, and have it ready for tomorrow night. Byeee’ (!) and with that he was off.
See, perfect, why can’t everyone in life be so straight? How much more time would we all have to ourselves if they were? Timmy didn’t want a conversation, he didn’t want to be your friend, but he did want like-minded people to join in his mini radio revolution.
The pressure was on and for me, pressure works: I came up with a character called Nobby N’O’Level.
Nobby had ten N’O’Levels in nothing. He would always ask Timmy a question about an educational fact to which Timmy would be gobsmacked that Nobby didn’t know the answer. Nobby, as a riposte, would then triumphantly announce something that he knew, which of course was also completely wrong. Finally he would mitigate the whole episode by signing off with his catchphrase, ‘Well, what I don’t know…I don’t know.’
Nobby was very Sesame Street and Timmy was taken with him straight away—he could see that the material for the character was fact-based while also being silly enough to be entertaining and sympathetic enough for kids to like. Nobby was a tryer and you had to love him for that.
He was an instant hit and I was on the air.
What I also was, was very tired, very tired indeed, as well as fast becoming a danger to other drivers.
I had begun to stay on after Timmy’s show to work in the studio. Most radio stations have two identical studios with a control room in between. After Timmy went off the air, Cuddly Dave came on from the studio opposite and Timmy’s studio was free for the next three hours. I would spend the next year of my life hanging around and playing with the gear and practising various techniques and ideas until the wee small hours of the next day.
Adrenaline was my friend—it had to be—I would drive home and get in around two o’clock in the morning, still having to get up to open the newspaper shop before five. I remember having to open all the windows in the car and singing all the way home to keep awake. I could tell I was in trouble when I would suddenly stop in the middle of a Beatles chorus for no reason whatsoever—when it all went quiet I knew the next thing that would happen was that I would close my eyes and who knows what after that; I had to keep singing.
Needless to say, when I did get home I had no trouble falling asleep. It’s still the most tired I’ve ever been. I would be panting out of breath as if I’d just sprinted for the bus, purely from the madness of the day. No complaints though, I loved every second of it but something would have to give, and soon.
I was beginning to run on empty.
Top 10 Things a Boss Should Never Do
10 Try to be popular
9 Incentivise as opposed to reward
8 Recount stories of when they were a junior employee and how things used to be
7 Repeatedly state to the year how many years they have been in the business
6 Have their teeth whitened or their hair coloured—OK for girls but really not good at all for blokes
5 Return to work after a boozy ‘lunch’
4 Expect anyone who gets paid less than them to care as much as they do
3 Get drunk at the Christmas party
2 Employ a secretary or assistant that they stand any chance of finding even vaguely attractive
1 Use their position to steamroller over other people, especially the little people
Decisions are so much easier when they are more or less made for you, even if it’s down to circumstances and events beyond your control.
There was no way I could sustain the life I was leading. I was so tired. I was losing my focus at the shop in the day and it was affecting my performance on the show at night, but the show was all I cared about, the shop for me was now purely a means to an end.
The thing was, though I still wasn’t getting paid ‘anything’ for the show (not that I minded, none of the other kids were either and that had always been our deal right from the get go), it was just that I didn’t have any other source of income except my job. So for a while it looked like I was going to have to give up the one thing I loved, the one thing I thought I would never get to do and that I was now doing, the one thing that I thought I could make a life out of—the wonderful world of the wireless.
Not so, however, an archangel was about to swoop down to my rescue in the guise of the grumpy old git of a newsagent. Not Ralph from my first job but my new boss, who took grumpiness to a whole new level.
When I wasn’t on the radio, or at the radio station, on the road or asleep, I would be at work listening to the radio. It was still my link to the outside world during daylight hours when I was stuck in the back of the shop for most of the day.
This shop didn’t have an actual office—so while the shop girls looked after things out front, I had to do all my paperwork in the stockroom, but it wasn’t really a proper stockroom even, it was more like a large cupboard, stacked to the rafters with cartons of fags and boxes of confectionery. It also had a barred-up window, which I thought was kind of appropriate.
I arrived for the evening mark-up one afternoon, breezing through the shop as usual, except this time when I went to say hi to a couple of the girls, normally so cheery and pleasant with me, on this occasion they were barely able to bring themselves to murmur a reply.
‘Strange,’ I thought, they were never like that, they had the air of children about them who know there is something wrong but don’t want to let on in case Mum or Dad find out.
I entered my cell as usual, took off my coat and immediately noticed something wasn’t right, there was something missing, I didn’t know what at first and then it dawned on me…there was silence. My radio wasn’t on. I looked around, not only was it not on, it wasn’t even there. I ran out to the front.
‘Does