Stuff on the Wireless

Stuff on the Wireless

An alarming lot of it


Yes Simon Bates and I went round the world in 1989: we only flew once. Took us 78 days. And yes, we did it for charity (and I'm in the picture so that shutterstock overlay can take a running jump). Outside Broadcasts were a very big thing for my generation of Radio 1. Among others, from HM Submarine 'Osiris' under the Channel; shark diving off San Diego; in a cell inside HM Prison Dorchester; from B-24 Liberator bomber 'Diamond Lil' crossing the Atlantic; on Concorde; in Syria; the whole nine yards.

 This is a curio - Simon and I's trip RTW used quite a lot of new kit. The picture is of the mixer we took (actually quite standard kit, apologies) but the star of the show was the satellite telephone, two suitcase-sized monster containers. The reason I mention it is that the whole set-up was taken into the Science Museum as an archivable exhibit. Of which I am oddly proud. Note, however, how Simon and I have taped over two of the knobs on the mixer to stop our fumble-fingers adjusting the wrong knob at the wrong moment. Now that's the measure of us two broadcasting professionals.
This has been a great gig over the years: tracking down the various speakers on Andrew McGibbon's R4 "I Was..." series.
I went round the world again with BBC Radio 1's Millennium 24 hour party - great work by Eddie Gordon, Carl Cox and the team. Click above for the documentary we made about it.
Radio 4's Excess Baggage, or its precursor, Breakaway. Snowboarding in middle age, queuejumping at Disney, watching AC vs Inter at San Siro. Actually hard work, but no-one believes me.
Radio 1 was pretty frivolous. But as part of it I went to refugee camps in Uganda and Saudi Arabia, and charity projects in India and Guatamala; I also went to the first Gulf War (before it started I hasten to add) and the Falklands.

Reports from the Cannes Film Festival for LBC Radio. I stood next to Barry Norman, to whom I owe my love of films, in a queue at Nice airport and was too shy to say hello. Dang.
One day I found myself producing a live Proclaimers track for the Guinness World Record for the fastest single from recording to being pressed on vinyl. Took two and a half hours, the duration of a show. This in itself probably now qualifies for the record for being the most rapidly technologically antiquated stunt in the book.
On another day, I found myself producing a track with the Pet Shop Boys. It took a long day in the old Maida Vale studios. This lives on as part of their B-side compilation album. In an odd twist I was just synching up the link to the album with the picture on 28th August 2019 and found this on their website as their "On This Day in PSB History" item for that day (God's Honest Truth):

1988 The Pet Shop Boys record 'What Keeps Mankind Alive' for a BBC Radio One show commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the first performance of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera.

Maida Vale is where I recorded sessions by Elvis Costello, Faith No More, Wizzard, literally too many to mention.

Made this with Guy de la Bedoyere in the mid-Nineties. Unbelievably we discovered that you can buy it off Amazon. All we need to do now is to work out how to get paid.
For completeness, really. Still doing long-form radio reporting when I can, a Radio 4 PM programme piece in late 2017 for the centenary of the Battle of Cambrai.



Withnail and I

As a one-off for the R4 Reunion strand, I tracked down and interviewed the original crew on Withnail and I
Share by: