Relaxing Before The Rush

In spite of my views of radio and podcasting and how the two don't necesarrily mix, I do like to have a search on Itunes and there are some very good ones from a variety of subjects and genres.

One of which that has took my fancy was produced by our very own Dan P throughout the summer for Jamie Oliver's website where the first in the series is now online, and I'm probably biased as the subject in focus is pasta. A really lively atmosphere is present and it's actually inspired me to see if I can actually make my own pasta from scratch. I wonder if dad still has his pasta machine which he got as a Christmas present many moons ago?

Another which I haven't yet got round to listening to but has potential is from Australian radio station Triple J featuring Ross and Terrie. Ross happens to be none other than British comedian Ross Noble who's done superbly all over the world and it should be interesting to hear how he fares on the many offerings from this station. I haven't actually seen Ross perform live (not counting his DVD containing a hilarious performance from the open air theatre in Regent's Park) but I did see him as one of the contestants on BBC Radio 4's "Just A Minute" when they came to Canterbury to record a few shows back in 2002.

What made it even more interesting was that there were television cameras filming for a documentary for BBC 2's Arena about the shows 35th anniversary. I seem to remember the contestants including Paul Merton and the late Linda Smith being told not to refer to the cameras on air by the producer before the show, but judging by the irreverent attitude of the show they didn't necesarrily stick they were told! A case of deviation maybe in the rules of Just A Minute?

Tonight I'm having it easy before leaving at around 9am tomorrow morning to get to Canterbury where the rest of my family will be heading up to Yorkshire. It will be pretty hard putting my personal angsts to one side but it can be done. Especially as it may be my only venture up North this year.

Impossible Tasks

One of which being to give a 300 word analysis on a radio feature or documentary which Matthew has asked us to do for next week. I decided to go with "The Roots Of Homophobia"; a half hour documentary broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2001 looking at the Jamaican attitude to race and homosexuality in their popular music. I never realised that Jamaican's had strong views on these issues and how they could be so graphic in their songs condoning the burning, shooting and overall hatred of gay people.

I think I managed to end up writing over 500 words and could have ended up writing more as it was a 35 minute programme and I'm sure Matthew would have prefer it if I wrote an analysis on one of the shorter features included on the discs that he gave us. Then again I'm sure those who write over the word limit won't be bollocked in such a way as those writing under.
However it's not the writing of the report I'm worried about but printing it out, as I have a £15 overdraft on my printing account in the Harrow library and I may go and ask in order to find out why the hell that has come about. I suppose the next task is to get hold of fifteen pound coins, or sixteen just so I can actually print the report out!

I'm actually starting to get more nervous about what my 7-10 minute feature should be based upon as I get the idea that they are looking for something amazing and original looking at topics that have some sort of detailed aim. I may see if I can get an appointment with the C and A department on campus as they have been very helpful in the past with my struggles with these tasks, but for someone with very limited inspiration or interests I really don't know how they'll be able to cope.

Radio features in a practical sense have never been my key interest within the medium but I really want to get something out of this and not piss anyone off in such a way, which it seems that I'm on the right road to doing. Maybe it's best to take one thing down at a time.

Had To Happen Eventually

Just before 7pm the fire alarms went off in halls. Luckily it was only for two minutes and the actual noise of the alarm in my room is different to that one the other flats on campus. Apparently the reason they haven't been going off as often as last year is because they've finally found sense into reducing the heat sensitivity within halls.

The flatmates are certainly nowhere near as disruptive as last years were and Hariet brought a friend in yesterday who happens to be a first year radio student! I told her that the first six or so weeks of this semester are a nightmare but things start to get better there onwards once you've completed the assignment in which you have to plan a television documentary that results in you spending more than the given budget!

Unfortunatley one thing that hasn't changed about living in halls are the illnesses that pop up now and again. I'm currently struggling with an irritating cold which is probably a result of this changeable wet weather! Maybe I will buy some Strepsils tomorrow to make a pleasant change from the licorice tasting Throaties I'm in posession of!

"Down By The Riverside"

Well Richmond wasn't as lovely as I expected it to be but it made a change from the rather cramped up settings of RP2 where most of yesterday was spent. It's quite odd why we'd needed to go to all the way to the other side of London for this exercise, but despite that I thought it was a day well spent.

I arrived at the station just after 10:30 but luckily there weren't that many people who had arrived before me. Beforehand I managed to bump into Ross Powell at Northwick Park station who told me that there was a quicker way to get to Richmond by changing for the Picadilly line after a couple of stops past Harrow on The Hill. However I'd already bought a ticket going between zones 1 and 4 but luckily for me I arrived before Ross as a result of travelling via Earl's Court on the District Line.

The day itself went pretty well and luckily enough I was paired up with Jo who unlike me, is brilliant at approaching people and didn't get discouraged when people refused to be interviewed and there were quite a lot who were microphone shy! However we managed to get a quite a good amount of people to tell us about "their Friday night" including a vicar who was more interested in what we were doing as part of our radio course!

We stopped off after around 2 or 3 hours at the White Cross pub, our unofficial stop off point where we managed to hear about the more interesting subjects other pairs managed to get hold of, particuarly Steve getting to interview a few veteran rugby players from the area who had played for London Welsh. However, I'm happy with what we managed to get overall and I'm sure we'll be able to put it to good use next week when editing on the monster that is SADiE!

After saying goodbye to Jo at Baker Street station I intially thought to go up to the Finchley Road shopping center to get a few things from Sainsburys but I started to realise that whilst Sainsbury's is readily available when needed, the Undergraduate office isn't. With that in mind I managed to head up there half an hour before it shut down, and get my chosen modules confirmed so there's no more confusion for this semester at least.

Let's hope things won't be as tangled at the start of this years second semester.

"Beyond A Joke"

Having just seen the latest episode of Ricky Gervais's "Extras" I'm starting to think whether he is just using the series as an excuse to make fun of people of different minorities or disablilities.
It was kind of forgivable in "The Office" to start with but with these areas continuing to be looked at in "Extras" I'm starting to think whether he actually just bases his comedy on this sort of rather abusive humour.

Of course he gets comeuppance in the end (most of the time) but the aim of tonights episode involving a misunderstanding with a man with Down's Syndrome, may have been to send up how the press take incidents out of proportion to build bigger circulation.
The other flaw with the series is that the celebrities who make guest appearances are always talking in the same manner of Ricky himself bringing up taboo subjects at innapropriate times. It can be amusing in places but for me it's starting to get very repetetive.

I'm not sure whether I can say this as for a long time I have been a fan of the comedian Bernard Manning who pokes fun at similar targets, but he comes across as a jolly man loved by his audience and even people within these minorities go to his performances who normally enjoy it more than anyone else. Partly because they know what will be thrown at them. However disabled people aren't picked on in Bernard's repertoire apparently because of his work for his favorite charity, The Variety Club. At least he has sense in some areas that several contemporary comedians seem to tread on consistently.

Luckily Bernard's probably the only non-PC comedian I've warmed to, and I certainly won't end up developing a taste for the likes of Jim Davidson who's in enough deep water and shallow income as it is!

"Make Sure Your Buttons Are Extended"

One of the instructions given to us by lecturer Dave Sharp whilst explaining how to use the new Marantz digital audio recorders. They're pretty straightforward to use once you get the hang of things but I bet they are going to be a nightmare to carry around.

Which brings us to the field trip taking place in Richmond tomorrow where we are being put in pairs to record interviews around the town with the many characters that are believed to exist within the area. I've no idea what I want to base the feature around or who I'll be paired with but hopefully it won't be too much bother.

We'll be travelling by train/tube tomorrow but Matthew will refund us from the price of the journey which means I can't use my Oyster card as there's no way of showing evidence of travelling from it! I prefer it however to being taken there on a minibus which is what Tim's year did a couple of years earlier in where one of the fellow students was rather hungover from the previous night!

For now though I just want to relax which is something I've rarely had the chance to do since arriving back here in London!

Not Such A Nervous Start

So I'm halfway through the first day of radio lectures where we have had a guest visitor. She's a really lovely woman who's produced features of many topics for all of the BBC's national radio stations. Some of the material we've heard has been pretty traumatic in spoken content but I always tend to look at things from a technical angle i.e. how music is used, when speech is inserted at the right time etc.

She also asked each one of us about if there was anything that we'd done over the summer that would constitute a radio feature and some of the people who were in denial about doing anything interesting actually would work really well such as one member being involved in the hooligan riots during the outdoor screenings of this year's World Cup. It was also interesting to learn that it terms of editing, it's not just a case of cutting out large amounts of ums and ers but also cutting out repetitions of words such as "like" "innit" and even the f-word due to the changes in how members of the public talk nowadays.

I've decided to relax in my flat at the halfway stage whilst everyone else is trying to get hold of the Marrantz?; digital recorders which seem to have annoyed Ross T after spending so much money on a new MD recorder! Apparently Matthew's sorting out who I'll be paired up with for tomorrow's "field trip" and has decided that rather than editing on Pro-Tools I would be better off with SADiE for the assignment. I'm a tiny bit gutted about that but fellow lecturer Dave who oversaw the SADiE assignment last time round thought that my Heavy Beatings feature worked well on there so it's probably best to stick to tried and tested regimes.

We've also been given a dummy critical report (or "crit" as Matthew refers to them and I may end up using that abbreviation before long) on any radio feature within 300 words by next week which is doable as we've been given a DVD-R with a wide selection of radio features to listen to. It also appears that I'm not the only one who wasn't keen on Colin Murray's documentary last night as Andy B was rather critical about how it was done but then again he's never been a fan of the presenter either. Still it's all very useful input!

"Please Keep Listening..."

I'm currently listening back to last nights Colin Murray show on Radio 1 as my attention span is pretty much dead at 10pm at night. After accidentally firing off the wrong line up promo and playing the correct one for another 90 seconds, Colin annouced the Wednesday show as "Documentary Night" desperatley trying to keep people listening by mentioning that tonight's would be about illegal raves and would include music by Primal Scream and the Orbital.

It's understandable that radio listening these days isn't as loyal as it was 25 years ago but I never thought they would act this desperate in order to get listeners and try this hard to redefine documentaries; "What documentary would you hear starting off with the full version of Primal Scream's 'Loaded' ".

In all fairness the feature itself didn't sound too obscure and out of place, in fact I was quite flattered to hear an excerpt with a clubber mentioning different genres represented by a snippet of music from each one, particuarly with disco using Dayton's "The Sound Of Music"!

Having said that I'm not feeling to nervous about lectures this morning although by 5pm it may be a different story with regards to the module. I'll try and relax aftewards with a delicious chilli in an attempt to use up all the dodgy Italian rice that's still in my cupboard!

Too Much Preparation

Most of today was spent trying to prepare for Smoke International. However with so many new features and so little time we decided to take things steadily and put them on hold for another week or so and try to make firm arrangements on what the guys from the show want the show to sound like and getting the right voiceover people etc. Provided they're not too steep.
I on the other hand managed to compromise with my travel arrangements by sorting out my return journey online and should go to the Fast Ticket dispenser at Kings Cross station either tomorrow or Friday to get the tickets in my hands.

Tomorrow sees the start of my first radio lecture where we'll recieve a visit from a producer at BBC Radio 1 talking to us about how radio features are made.
Now, we've been pointed in the direction of Colin Murray's show on Radio 1 where tonight they'll be featuring two 10 minute features. Either they'll give me ideas for my feature I need to produce by the end of next month or just make me feel even more daunted about the whole thing.

It's always ideas that have been my weakness in these sort of situations and I really need to build confidence in these areas. The whole thing can be very rewarding at the end however and it shouldn't be looked at as a dangerous obstacle to overcome.
After all it's what lot's of people do in radio all the time and not all of their efforts get put to air in these tight situations.

Delightful Findings

An interesting surpise was in my Myspace friend requests folder from Eloise, a girl who did the AVCE media course I was on five years ago who I had a bit of a soft spot for towards the end. I'll admit that her absence was partly why I found the first few months of the HND media course a struggle as she was in Surrey studying for a degree in TV Drama, whilst I was still in Canterbury where it was a constant downpour.

I wouldn't want to go back to late 2003 and change things however as I'm quite happy how things are now and I'm pleased to hear she's doing well and now settled in at a new house in Clapham.

As for this weekend I may get the train back to Canterbury on the Sunday and travel up to Yorkshire with the rest of my family the same day. Not only will it save money but will also give me the opportunity to get a few things to bring back to London including my DVDs of The Simpsons seasons 1-7 and my CD-R back catalogues of my other indulgences such as Adam & Joe, Lee And Herring and Victor Lewis Smith. Not forgetting the 12" promotional copy of Incognito's "Everyday" which contains instrumental versions by Masters at Work!

You can really hear how much effort and work has been put into that song without the vocals by hearing the lovely Bacharach style horns on the chorus to the melody of the line "everyday in every way" and the superb string arrangements.
If only more composers and performers would let us here some of their masterpieces or with todays technology release all the tracks from the master seperatley!

Kaput To Caporeira

On returning from Kings Cross station to check train times and prices for Yorkshire, I noticed an article in Metro about the new BBC 1 idents set to launch a week on Saturday. These were brought to my attention yesterday by Stephen when he directed me to a video of the one with the cyclists.

All of these idents are based around the theme of circles which could be a subtle hark back to the days of the much missed globe, but the concept reminds me of ITV's Hearts idents from the late 90s/early 2000s in which certain objects were shot at a perspective that made them look as if they were forming the shape of a heart.

I never realised that there was a popularity for television idents until just under 10 years ago when I became addicted to the many sites based around this obesession. But certainly in the last 5 or so years television identification symbols are a popular subject with the ordinary viewers who actually care about the branding of television channels and will certainly make make themselves heard if they don't like what they are seeing. The recylcling of BBC 1's 2002 Christmas ident in 2003 being one such example.

However it's very difficult to try and make a logo succesfull and memorable these days to the extent of Thames's river ident from the 70s and 80s and the original colourful Channel 4 ident used for 15 years from it's launch. Many generations can still remember these idents and brand names and even still believe that the defunct companies still exist. I believe Tim Pryor's dad up in North Devon still refers to ITV1 as Westward!

"No One Said It Would Be Easy"

I attended my first theory lecture, or should that be my first lecture overall this year which was Propoganda. Plenty of familiar faces including a few I haven't yet seen this semester including, Jon, Nina and Paul from my radio class. Even Jacko from the third year is in our group and was only too happy to notice my presence! Then again I never take him too seriously as he mucks about with everyone.

This module is of a very similar structure to the PR theory module I did last year consisting of a seminar and a case study both based on two seperate areas of propganda. The seminar I've chosen to do is the popular subject area of propoganda with advertising although those who voluteered to take the least popular subjects instead of crowding the popular ones certainly have courage.

With Simon still lecturing it should be enjoyable and I'm pleased that he's put a strict "no more than 5 minutes" rule for the seminars as I remember him getting rather intimidated with those who overran. However the fire exit door of the lecture theatre was left open for quite a bit of the lecture until what sounded like a giant vibrator started making rather amusing noises from outside! However I don't think there will be any major problems completing this module.

Straight afterwards I headed up to what has to be my second home on campus, RP1 where Fabian and the team were planning their show for tomorrow. They're trying to introduce new features and want new imaging to complement it although they're a bit thrown back by the fact that it costs money to make things sound really slick and to get the right voice to symbolise the show. All should be sorted tomorrow however and it looks as if the show will be good fun.

However this reassurance didn't last too long as I received a phone call from home telling me that Grandad's funeral will be taking place a week on Monday morning. This means that early tomorrow morning I will be heading off to book a train to go to Yorkshire on Sunday and to return on Monday afternoon. I know it would be easier to get a train back to Canterbury and travel in the car with the rest of my family but I'd rather part with money than my confidence to continue my time at Uni this semester. And partly because I want to try and attend my first Media Consumption lecture which starts an hour after my train is meant to arrive back at Kings Cross.

I know that you shouldn't really be selfish during traumatic times but I have been through a hell of a lot in the last couple of days and right now I just want to relax and try be more at ease with things.

So Much In So Short Time!

I really need to take a break and relax a bit more after all the hoo-hah with modules etc. Especially about after how I've found out how others are being thrown in at the deep end from the first lectures. One in particular was Joey who's really being made to work hard alongside the 3rd year BAMS radio students as they have to get their "Advanced" project underway immediately with the dummy broadcast taking place in two weeks and the first of three live ones the week after.

No disrespect to anyone in that same position as Joey, but I decided to live it up on the green grass outside Harrow Halls in this lovely sunshine. That is until realising that I hadn't collected my washing from the dryer from two hours ago. However all that's sorted now and I'm relaxed in my flat with a bowl of Granny Smith apples! The only problem is that while my toothache seems to be disapearing I'm getting a headache now! Ooh, why does it have to be a bumpy ride from the start?!

Small World (Or Strong Ties)

This morning I have been trying to sort out all sorts of things such as why Messenger has stopped loading in halls again and to find a dentist in Harrow. I haven't had much luck so far so I may head over to the Northwick Park Surgery to say if they can tell me where exactly I need to go.

I went to the Undergrad office an hour early in order to avoid waiting in the long line although I found out that you could just put module forms into the file with all the others. No time was wasted however as I had an interesting chat to a few students who are studying abroad from UTS in Australia nonetheless. One of them from Germany happened to share a flat with Atilla last year whilst he was in Oz! It's trickier for us in the UK to head abroad as the only chance we get to do it is in the second year as the third year is vital for completing the dissertation.

I've never been that interested in the study abroad scheme, because although I'd love to visit these places, I came here specifically to do a radio course and it would sadden me to have to miss out on practical modules mainly those involving studio work that I'm really looking forward to taking.

I've set up a GotomyPC trial for my laptop and trying it out on campus following the problems and confusion I've been having with Digital Village. However I'm not sure if I'll want to use it in the long term as it's taking a hell of a long time to transfer a 10 meg file over and I may be better off using my external hard drive in future for storage. I've never been that reliable with modern technology.

Uncomfortable Living Conditions (Again)

Last night as expected was really rough. It started off at what will be my final visit to Nando's in Harrow as it's not the nicest restuarant in the town to visit, and too spicy for my liking. I ordered a medium spiced half chicken with rice and as it was difficult to get to the drinks machine, Tom (Levinge) very kindly got me a glass of Fanta when I couldn't take the intense flavour. I can still taste it now to some extent.

Others there included, Ricky, Ross G, Steve and "Lords And Ladies" Lawrens most of whom headed down the undies for Pound A Pint straight after. Really good turn out as always where I said hello to Pippa and Holly, Lizzie and Baps (Hetal) and Pippa (Chapman) and Lucy who were celebrating a friends birthday. I had no idea that Pippa was also from her boyfriend's hometown of York and I also found out that some of her cousins lived around Haworth where my dad comes from. That was one of the random subjects that came up in between the many photos taken of a similar nature.

The big problem of the night was resisting the urge to drink as I was offered a bottle of tropical VK when it was brought along to us but I struggled poorly to avoid taking sips. Lucy then decided to buy me a glass of water which was an improvement but I was completetly wasted and decided to head back to the flat and put up with another dreadful night in halls.

I kept waking up at what seemed like every single hour whilst everyone was still at the Undies thinking that Ricky and Pippa where in the kitchen next door trying to record material for the radio! Yes my obsessive nature really gets me in the middle of the night. A more comfortable matress would be a possible solution as I keep moving about in my bed resulting in the sheets coming off. Superglue would be an idea but certainly not reccomended following the side effects of too much booze. I ended up with one or two stains as a result last year so I'm trying to be a bit more careful this year!

Surely though there are other ways of having a good night out without resorting to booze? Any suggestions of the "Free and Easy" variety?

Ridiculous Lack Of Organisation

I really am at my wits end. I've just received an e-mail telling me that the News And Public Opinion module actually takes place in semester 2 which has made me understand how fucked up the organisation of these theory modules are. I now have absolutely no idea where to go from this and I may consider boycotting the theory lectures this semester just to give them a taste of their own medicine.

My final hope is the module called "Contemporary Issues In Media Policy" which takes place on Wednesday mornings in semester 1. I've no idea what it involves but I am very sure it does not involve an exam, unlike Media Law and Ethics. Unfortunatley the e-mail containing the list of modules doesn't even contain the bleeding course codes!

As far as radio practice modules are concerned I'll still be attending them despite my nerves about them and I just want to get this stress over with. It's not being made any better due to the fact that I have toothache and I may head to Boots tomorrow to get some tablets. I really wish I'd gone now as I'm certain it will be a really dreadful night in bed.

Undergrad? Underprepared!

I've spent the last two hours queing to with many others in line at the Undergraduate office in an attempt to sort out my muddles with my chosen theory modules.

Now apparently I'm enroled in all but one module that's missing and that's the infamous Broadcasting And Society In The 20th Century. Apparently I've been told to take that in the next semester but am already enrolled on the Media Technology module taking place in exactly the same timeslot. As far as I'm concerned I'll be sticking with what's written down as I'm really tired of being fucked about for no apparent reason.

I was given a form to enrol for the News And Public Opinion module that I want to fill the gap for this semester with but I don't know the course code so hopefully those in the know will point me in the right direction sooner or later. I was also given a new ID card but the "ever helpful" security guards refuse to let me use it until it's activated for the turnstiles in 24 hours so I have to enter Uni through the Underpants bar corridor.

I guess it's not just the students at Westminster that need to pull their fingers out!

Getting Back On Track

I woke up feeling really rough once again after the activities of last night. It's ridiculous of me vowing to try and cut down on booze as I'm never going to succeed and although it costs money it's a great confidence booster despite waking up feeling really shit the next morning.

Despite that I headed into the studios to catch up on what I missed over Freshers Week in terms of specialist shows to preserve them in our potential SRA nominations library! And what better to start off with Tudor Rock hosted by Edward Burke basically picking up from where he left off on his debut show in May. Highlights for me included "Easter" by the popular Scottish band Marillion, and Blind Guardian with "Fly". The end of the show featured a tribute to the late Sid Barrett from Pink Floyd featuring the tracks "Wish You Were Here" and "Jugband Blues" which with it's weird stereo effects caught me off guard and made me feel even more uncomfortable than when I got up this morning!

I may go up into the studios after 5 when lectures finish to see what other people have had to offer from last week prior to Nando's if that's still going ahead. However my main aim is to make sure I enrol on the News and Public Opinion module and sort out the problems with my Uni ID card as there is no fething way (a Tudorism there) I am going to miss Pound a Pint night this week just because of a typo on my ID card.

To Hell And Back

The last 10 minutes have put me into complete fear as I was unable to get online due to myself mistyping my Digital Village login code. After indulging in a half arsed attempt at a curry with Italian style rice it managed to sort itself out and I am starting to feel determined never to bring this laptop out of Flat 14B again. Which kind of makes sense really as everything is stored on my external hard drive which is a prized possession.

The reason for the laptop absence was because I needed it to play the music cues for Deal Or No Deal at the Undercroft last night with Ross Goodlass at the helm. As expected a lot of it was rigged with me "randomly chosen" to go up as the first contestant. I was keen to play the game but under the influence of several Vodka Kicks my competetive streak was lacking. Not that comptetiveness is vital in DOND. I managed to bag £20 in the end so it makes me feel a bit better about my financial situation.

Myself, Ricky, and Ross G were unsure about the turnout on arrival but it started to pick up with Steve, Chris, and the two loveliest CMP students Pippa (Chapman) and Lucy arrived soon after which added confidence. Even Rosie was here and she's no longer a student at Westminster! For some reason most of those attendees legged it after my round of DOND but I was determined to stay on for all the games played including one breaking the traditional rules of the game by bringing back Marc Richardson to the contestants chair. This time however he wasn't so lucky losing the "Power 3" well early into the game.

How this fixture will continue throughout the year I have no idea, but I'm sure my crazy activities will continue as I may be making a visit to Nando's with a few of last nights attendees tomorrow night in Harrow. It should be a great night as I went there just before the end of my first semester with Steve and Ali and got a lot of pleasure from the ice dispenser! That won't be before my visit to the Undergrad office to tie up those lose ends!

"The Show Must Go On"

Freddie Mercury's words are ringing true tonight with DOND going ahead tonight as expected.

However for me it's been a tiny bit difficult as I recieved a phone call from Yorkshire this morning telling me that my Grandfather had died on Friday from his illness and I'm rather nervous on how and if I'll be able to make the journey up to Haworth in Yorkshire for his funeral. I'm sure everyone at Uni will be understanding and those who I've been speaking to today have been very consoleling.

Overall, Albert to call him by his name would have wanted me to be happy and enjoy myself which is exactly what I'll be doing tonight. Hopefully this will be the first of many succesfull Sunday nights at the Undercroft and I hear rumours that they may be bringing other game shows to the Underpants such as "The Price Is Right" and even "The Crystal Maze"!. It's good to have inside knowledge from the likes of Dan P and the lovely Eleri!

I'd best make a start on sorting everything out for tonight.

The Hidden Side Of Harrow: Part 2

Due to a large amount of text messages and a lack of CD-Rs I have been back and forth in Harrow getting recordable discs to give various presenters and Smoke staff copies of their shows for reference purposes. However on returning back to the flat I decided to take an alternative route and ended up going over that very hill mentioned in the Underground station near Harrow Town Center.

This part of the town is nothing like what's down below, it feels more like a really nice English village with pubs and tea shops, similar to the the village in the Hovis adverts. It would be really nice to go down there one afternoon especially in the warmer months for a few drinks, so I may see if anyone else shares the same enthusiasm in visiting the hill although I doubt these high temperatures are going to stay here for too long.

Right now though I'm just really tired but luckily for me there hasn't been anything confirmed yet about whether DOND is taking place at the Undercroft tonight. Probably an extended lie in tomorrow before consulting the Undergraduate Office.

"No! I Do The 1-2-3-4s!"

Another piece of nostalgia from the well preserved guys at MHP, this time from BBC 1 in 1985 coming out of Thursday's Eastenders and into Top Of The Pops. Notice that Ceefax subtitles were available on page 170 and not 888.

The part that interests me the most is where the annoucer previews what has to be one of my favourite episodes of Only Fools and Horses (as many people I've bored to death will know) where Rodney's in a band, lead by a fella called "Mental Mickey" who when rehearsing gets really annoyed with Rodney for counting them in despite being the drummer. The band actually end up performing sans Rodney on Top Of The Pops introduced by presenter Mike Read as "A Bunch Of Wallies".

However I think the wallies in this clip have to be TOTP presenters Mike Smith and the perma-tanned Gary Davies introducing the fantastic Go West. Peter Cox is such an underrated vocalist who I believe is still performing with other contemporaries such as Tony Hadley and ABC. Maybe if they do a few nights in London I'll be sure enough to let my hair down!

Now Playing: Solar Radio - Sandra C-The Citizen's Soul Show

Destination: Undergrad Office!

That's where I'll be heading on Monday to sort out my theory modules and to change the 6 to an 8 on my Uni pass. I'll probably have to give the Media Technology module a miss this year as it's the same time as Broadcasting and Society in the second semester. I think I'll go for News and Public Opinion as my in it's place this semester but I really hope I don't end up doing Media Law and Ethics because it's got an exam!

It's been really nice today in halls, possibly because of the disciplinary measures from the halls staff that has reduced the antisocial behaviour. I had a nice chat to Hariet one of my flatmates who's doing CMP, and is probably on her way to the foam night at Area as I type. I'd love to be there but I'm probably too knackered to head out tonight after partying for four nights in a row.

However she's a fan of Deal Or No Deal and tomorrow night the game will be returning to the Undercroft with Ross Goodlass once again in charge of proceedings. I'll have to give him and Ricky a few things just to make sure the game runs properly with the Powerpoint graphics!

A Lazy Weekend

It was when finding out that I hadn't brought a copy of the Radio Times whilst shopping in Sainsbury's that I realised that I have been working non-stop in the last 7 days from the moment I'd got my room sorted in halls. That said I'm going to have plenty of quality downtime this weekend although downtime in terms of internet access seems to be out of the question for now and this makes things even better.
My time in the halls in spite of computer problems has been pretty good and I hope to get to know a few of the flatmates a bit better as they seem like really nice people.

Unfortunatley there is another issue that has reared it's ugly head in terms of making me agitated and that's the fact that the theory modules for the second and third year BAMS have been messed about with and had their times changed at such short notice. I was meant to be doing Broadcasting and Society in the 20th Century but that's been moved to the second semester clashing with my chosen module Media Technology.

I really have no idea on how to go about this and decide what module I want to take in it's place and if I will be admitted onto it. However I'm sure the ever helpful Maria will be able to put me back on track and make things a bit more understandable. I know it will turn out OK in the end.

Now Playing: BBC London 94.9 - Tony Blackburn (Interrupted on FM by the irritating pirates but it's on Listen Again now!)

I'm Online In Halls! (Well Almost)

There's no better time than in the drunken state I'm in now to give an autobiographical look at todays highlights!

I think that the catchphrase of Smoke Radio since Ricky taking over as the programming editor has to be "Pull Your Finger Out" which was shouted so many times by the man himself and Mr Justice himself Ross Goodlass. Partly because they were struggling to get their set ready with a lack of time and CDs which resulted in sending the Tudor Gent to Sainsbury's to buy a pack for the duo. Whilst all this chaos was taking place I sat in on the return of the longest serving Smoke Radio duo , Mr Tom and Ms (soon to be Mrs) Maz who despite their absence gave a great performance sounding slicker than ever. Maz has obviously fallen into the goings on of Watford's Mercury FM and even adapted her persona from the station into her links rather than sounding like the dizzy blonde we've all grown to love!

Maz actually arrived late having being involved in an accident with a Black Thunder nontheless but she arrived in the studio on time preventing Tom from making any derogratory jokes. The fast paced and irrevenrent show resulted in Tom accidentally uttering one or two four letter words but I doubt anyone noticed!

Moving on swiftly we headed to the Undies for our Smoke Radio Fresher's finale where the inevitable happened. The bouncers didn't take too kindly to the fact that my ID card expired in August of this year so it took the star that is bar manager Chris to pull a few strings.

This lead to all sorts of nosense including discussions with Tudor on how good I thought Keff McCulloch's version of the Doctor Who theme was with Sylvester McCoy playing the role of the timelord to Joey mentioning about his obsession with 24 and having the countdown sound effect from the series as his ringtone.
After several VK bottles I bumped into Lizzie and the lovely Hetal who was present. We ended up getting a bit too enthusiastic and singing Omar's "There's Nothing Like This" in the most unpleasant manner known! Hetal likes her slow soul jams by the way.

At around midnight the unexpected happened, we were all asked to leave the Undercroft and for the first time, Smoke Radio had it's long awaited set at Area 51! The club was filled with Smoke members and honouray Smoke Memebers as I like to refer to them with some fantastic DJ sets including Jacko who started off with Bros, and Joey who encouraged everyone to do the Timewarp! I was really tipsy by then and managed to get into Area for free without queing by hollering "Smoke Staff!" when approaching the building!

Oh so much has happened in the last few hours and it has to be the perfect ending to my first proper Fresher's Week. Now if I can get MSN messenger working in my room I would be even happier!

Sombrero Stupidity

I managed to get thrown out of the studios by 10pm last night when the security guard came up to RP1 without any acknowledgement of the fact I had a lot of fragile equipment to take down with me. I managed to bump into Eleri, Penny and a few others on the way back to halls so I decided to pop down the Undies after I'd unloaded my stuff in my room.

It was Mexican night so there was a special offer with a free sombrero if you bought 6 Sol Tequilas. Eleri decided to go for broke although I'm not sure if she managed to get all those drinks down her by the end of the night! Also present was Martin who has a shocking knowledge of kids TV past and present. These include shows that I'd prefer to forget, such as "Wizadora" and "The Hurricanes". The latter being an animation about an American soccer team although it did have a rather good theme tune!

We also spoke about DBP even further with Martin mentioning how for a brief time on the show they had an item called "The Forfeit Furnace" in which the losing team had to sacrifice a treasured item into a furnace. This came to a head when a girl had her teddy bear incinerated which resulted in an apology broadcast before the next show and the furnace item being edited out of the other shows in the series and the repeats. The ironic thing about that was that the name of the teddy bear was Robin! But although I wasn't a fan of the furnace I certainly wasn't one of the many viewers who wrote in to complain!

I'm feeling a bit lonely and left out now to be honest as just about everyone's gone to Regent's to prepare for our Danny Wallace interview later this afternoon. I'd really love to meet this Westminster icon and Smoke Radio patron and I may buy a few of his books this weekend if the LAN in halls is still naffed up. I'm stuck on my own in RP1 with Smoke playing in the background with what seems like one Beatles track after another. I'm also quite liking Jose Gonazale's genius cover of "Hand On Your Heart" by Kylie Minogue!

Where Do I Start?

The audio let out by Smoke Radio today has to be some of the best that has ever been done in the last 18 months of broadcasting. After minutes of nervous waiting Dave Benson Phillips arrived with his wife all the way from Worthing wearing an extremley loud Hawaiian shirt! Goodlass and Marshall gave an absolutely fantastic interview asking questions about his gungy career presenting on Get Your Own Back and his antics with the Why Bird and co on Playdays but I was really pleased that there was a serious edge to it with Dave giving advice on how to get into television and entertaining overall. Just a great guest and a lovely chap as well!

I opened my show by asking him to give an impromotu performance of "Jelly On The Plate" which was brilliant but I felt as if I really did want to hear it badly when asking him so Dave if your reading this I apologise and you can give me a well deserved gunging! He chatted to the Smoke crew for at least half an hour into my show but I didn't let that or the problems with the computer audio disrupt the show and concentrated on the great music that I had to offer.

Including of course the new Incognito album which surprised me because my favourite track on their was their cover of "That's The Way Of The World" and Earth Wind and Fire classic. Just brilliant I don't know how to describe it, and it got a great reaction in the studio and on MSN. The covers of "Always There" and "Everyday" were rather mellow but very original and gave a new twist to the tunes. Hopefully the band will perform the normal uptempo versions at their Jazz Cafe gig in a few weeks or maybe fuse them together with the new ones eh? Go on Bluey, surprise us!

Twice To Central

I have been all over the place in the last day or so I've barely had time to blog. Which is pretty ridiculous as the average blogger only updates every couple of days but for me it's an addiction and I really don't care what people say about my blogging habits! However this is also partly because the LAN in my room is still being a pain and is a pretty unwelcoming experience for those who have moved in.

Intermission last night was brilliant, it's a fantastic venue adding colour to the otherwise unispiring looking Marylebone Campus with it's bright lights and really fancy furniture. My personal highlight was when Jacko was forced by Dan P into doing the Macarena towards the end of Joey's DJ set!
I didn't stay the whole course of the night as while everyone else went to the Cheapskates club in Central after Intermission closed at 11pm, I went back to Harrow to get some well deserved shut eye.

I had an interesting chat with Joey on the tube about all sorts of things including him helping out as an assistant for Courtney Pine's jazz show on BBC Radio 2. One of the guests on the show was saxophonist Soweto Kinch which brought to mind his nomination for the 2003 Mercury Music Prize. Heat magazine around the time had a review of all the nominations and they dismissed Soweto's entry by saying "who really cares about jazz" Now Soweto's rather traditional for my tastes but I can't stand cynical dismissal of individual musical genres. Especially as there are quite a few jazz fans on campus including Joey himself!

Today I've been into Central to get a few things needed for tonight's show and I managed to bump into none other than Lizzie, a third year radio student cum aboslute nutter. She's been doing pretty well helping out at BBC Radio Berkshire in her hometown of Reading working alongside the likes of Maggie Philbin who's more than lovely off air as she is on air according to Lizzie. I wonder if Stephen or any of his colleagues have bumped into her, as BBC Monitoring is based in the same building and you really can't miss her when she's in sight!

Speaking of Reading a Henley resident is our special guest on Smoke Signal. None other than Paul Daniels! Everyone's really impressed by the interview which is going out as I type but it gets even better with Dave Benson Phillips visiting the studios at 5pm! I really don't know how I'm going to follow from this but hopefully I will get him to do a few liners for me in the voice of his glove puppet Chester!

Awaiting Intermission

Just one hour to go and I will be heading for what I hope will be the first of many visits to the new Intermission bar on the Marylebone Campus.

What hasn't happened today?! I had to help get Ricky and Ross' set ready in such a short amount of time although the CD burners didn't take kindly to us. Also the big part of today was Fresher's Blind Date taking place in Flat 59 on Halls in a first for Smoke Radio! From what I've heard it seems that things are getting serious between the new couple! I actually may put the preparation for my own show as the priority especially as my CD drive is acting funny and the CD burners in RP1 are not to be trusted.

Speaking of halls it hasn't been the most convinient of times for me although there should be a few improvements. My computer has managed to recognise the LAN connection, it's just being too slow to load any pages. I'm also irritated to find that the oven doesn't have any tray inside it. What the hell is that about? I may have to live my halls life on ready meals or stew dishes for the next few days!

All this excitement resulted in me losing my keys and nearly having to pay 20 quid for the replacement. However little Ali managed to find them in RP1 near a disused Mac and I can relax now. Well not for much longer before heading to Intermission!

Freshers Frenzy!

Once again, I'm heavilly in demand, just making the finishing touches to the latest Smoke podcast and am just about to head over to Flat 59 to help Dan prepare for his Freshers Blind Date! Rayhan's in the building plugging the new well recieved Smoke Newspaper and I'm really impressed by our promotion although apparently I'm one of the people DJing at Intermission tonight! I'll be pretty exhausted by then to be honest.

Everyone's in a good mood, It made me smile to hear Jo Cave singing along to the chorus of Jamiroquai's "Too Young To Die" whilst preparing for the show! Maybe I converted her succesfully after having her co-present Soul Expression when we were last on air. Hopefully the same will happen to Pippa tomorrow night.

"Fetch Blammy A Bucket"

I am just really terrible for the upteenth time at the start of our third day of broadcasting. I've barely been able to sleep as I crashed at around 10pm last night and was woken up by the radio with Janice Long being interupted by put-putting noises. Yes, it appears my mobile phone is working OK now and I'll try and take a bit of extra care with it and not get it knocked about whatever the consequences.

I hope Tilley's OK this morning as he still appeared to be awake and busy with preparations after texting him at 2am! We've got to prepare OBs from the Harrow Freshers Fayre and Flat 59, which is where Dan P plans to host Fresher's Blind Date from! Then later tonight it will be my first visit to the new Intermission Bar on Marylebone campus which I can't wait to see inside of. I've been hearing great things about it and hopefully I won't have an upset inside system by the end of the night.

Not Such A Mature Student

And never will be if today is anything to go by.
Much of today was spent taking Smoke Radio outside the surroundings of Studio M, starting off with helping Tom recording the latest round of "Flatmates" with my very own nonethless. Tom didn't even bring headphones with his MD recorder so I was very impressed by the audio quality on hearing it back despite the acoustics in the kitchen and the Underground trains passing outside.

I finally got to meet some Freshers outside my flat at the Smoke Radio Welcome Party at the Undies this afternoon and are very knowledgable and keen to join. Goodlass and Marshall even broadcast their show from the venue via Scoopy although it was very complicated with the RCS studio playout being run via Tilley's super laptop.

I couldn't get back from the bar into Uni as Ricky had borrowed my pass after leaving his in the studio! I had to wait ten minutes at reception after their show had finished until the fire alarms went off disarming the turnstiles and I ran inside immediately! The alarms had switched off as soon as I'd arrived back but I very much doubt I've been this tipsy so early in the evening! For some reason I feel more motivated to work in these conditions so I agreed to help out on even more ambitious activities taking place tomorrow which you will hear about soon enough.

However I'm in a bit of a daze as I appear to have bust my mobile in all this excitement and am really not sure how to go about this. Everyone's being supportive and very helpful despite the pressures and that's what's important. Oh, and I understand Matthew, the senior radio lecturer and loyal Smoke supporter is a reader of this blog so hello! I wonder if his moggy Mavis is a reader too?

I'll leg it back to the flat now, it's been a long day.

Fresher Pressure!

I'm really not good at all this morning. I'm coping after what happened or should that be "what happened?" at the Undercroft last night. It felt really disconcerting as the place was packed and I didn't know exactly what to say to anyone or start a proper conversation with the noise there. If I'm being honest I'm only there to attempt to dance when the lights go down and the florescent purple light comes on amongst the mid 90s dance tracks blaring out.

All the chaos from yesterday and the lack of internet access in halls resulted in all sorts of things including me losing the dry audio for a promo I had to produce for one of tonights shows, but I'll try not to get too downhearted. I hope today will be a hell of a lot easier and we know roughly what we're meant to be doing now!

The Radio Asylum

That's what today's been like here at Smoke Radio without the presence of Joey and Jacko looking after things. It's all good however as although things can be stressfull it all pays off in the end. It felt really good pressing the first button on our live output by helping to desk op on Smoke Signal although I may want to share the role out as I have now idea on how to operate the Scoop for our live OBs and there's all sorts of things to do to make sure things run smoothly.

I've barely had time to speak to people with all this chaos but Joey should be arriving pretty soon to present his ever popular music show and I can't wait to hear how he's gotten on over the summer and his ever blossoming lifestyle! After that drinks a plenty!

Nervously Waiting

I've been up since around 4am today partly because I stayed in last night and there's just so much bugging me in my head. One of these being the fact that my LAN still hasn't been switched on in my flat despite the fact that they've started selling cables in Harrow Halls. Even the room next door isn't working so if it isn't sorted out by tonight I will see if I can pull a few strings.

However more importantly we're going live on air today and although I'm not actually presenting until Thursday, I will be giving a hand with one or two of the shows with that are more complicated to produce so I'm still keen to get going. And it will all be rounded off tonight with the first Pound a Pint of the year!

Far From A Lazy Sunday

Pretty exhaustive today with a lot of people coming in to record and prepare for their shows next week. Pip and Chris came in to do their show for tomorrow and I was really impressed when they featured a track by The Roches from the album "Keep On Doing" called "Want Not Want Not".

Now the Roches were a vocal group who I was brought up on many years ago due to my dad owning their back catalogue up to 1990 but I had no idea until recently that ex Radio 1 DJ Gary Davies used to use their version of the Hallelujah Chorus as a jingle denoting a correct answer in his Day To Day Challenge!

It's been so nice outside I'm gutted that I've not had as much time to relax away from the studios. I even haven't been able to do any shopping and judging by the amount of time left until Sainsbury's is closed I may not be able to do so until tomorrow morning. I may have that chilli that mum gave me to bring from Canterbury tonight, have some more drinks at the Undies as I know it cannot harm and only enforce my passion to get things done for tomorrow! I also need to get my haircut tomorrow too, Ross Goodlass said that I looked rather emo on arrival yesterday!

Inconvinient Consequences

It's rather weird, as my room in halls is currently deprived of internet access (it won't even recognise an LAN connection) I have ended up setting base in the street of the Harrow Campus for internet access until they open the radio rooms this morning. I really hope that this isn't the case for too long but at the same time that's exactly what all the others in my flat may be thinking to be fair.

They're quite a few nice people in my flat, there's a girl who's doing CMP and another who's from Dorset. Yes that's where they all seem to be coming from at this campus. I hope to get to know them a bit better as well as I've been caught up in so much stuff since coming back and it shows no sign of ending until early Saturday morning.

However this doesn't mean I'm going to lay down on the booze as proved last night at the newly redesigned Undercroft with more seating areas and the leopardskin material being replaced with imitation leather. There are also quite a few witty images on the toilet doors too! It was really nice to see so many people such as Eleri, Penny, Chris Jones and Ricky's girlfriend Pippa amongst others. I also saw Jo Cave who's rather nervous about co-presenting Smoke Signal from Monday as she may be sent into Central London on Friday to interview our old mate and former Westminster Student Danny Wallace!

Now show producer Ross Tilley has asked me to drive the desk for that show this week and I'm well up for the challenge but I doubt I'll manage to do as good a job as Jacko wh until recently had the same role since the very first Smoke broadcast. Then again I very much doubt he's too bothered about how I get on really!

All Rather Hectic!

OK, so the radio rooms shut down at 5pm and I've got no internet access in my room til Monday so I'd best blog now while I've got the chance. This afternoon was spent recording all sorts of things in preparation for next week. Dan P came in to say hello and dub off a promo for his dance show next week. He also did a few things for my show on Thursday and I did a few things which will be used in his daily show. In particular an attempt to do a voiceover intro for his "Blind Date" feature that will be on the show and although I've given it my best shot it will never be as good as "Our Graham".

I don't know what I'm up to tonight, maybe a few drinks in Harrow, or a few pints down the Undies where Dan's working tonight. Whatever I'm sure they'll be something now I now the area better than this time last year.

Get To Work And Step To It!

I managed to get back to Harrow Halls in good time and after sorting out all my stuff for my new room in flat 14, I have been immediately been off my feet helping out with the Smoke Radio stall in halls going back and forth between there and the newly redesigned RP1. Everyone is in a really good mood and I look forward to seeing even more people back in this wonderful place!

So far apart from the key radio staff I bumped into Fabian's old housemate Richard back in halls for his third year doing Television Production and as a residential assistant in halls. I hope to meet more new faces throughout the week and enjoy living in the relaxed rooms (most of the time) of Harrow Halls.
I probably won't feel to bad about returning to Canterbury at the end of the year as I have ultimately found out today that there's nothing better than the feeling of returning here after such a long time!

An "Interesting Summer" In Canterbury

Well I've just about sorted out everything I want to take back to London tomorrow and I'll be setting off pretty early to make sure I can get on with preparations for Freshers. Despite me being pretty negative at times whilst back here, it's certainly sped by since I got back here nearly 4 months ago, blimey is it really that long?

I've certainly become a bit more confident in what I want to achieve from University but I'm really going to have to pull my finger out and started trying to sell myself vocation wise. However I should keep in mind that there is nothing to lose and I aim to keep confident and avoid the idiots who try to put me down. They're really not worth getting irritated about as there's so much good stuff ahead in the next few weeks and throughout the next year in London too. But overall it's been nice to have somewhere to return to throughout the summer and get some extra bob at the same time.

As for today I won't bore you with the details of what I've been doing as there is a lot to get done production wise. However I managed to hear show 103 of Grooveline on Blast earlier today which should have gone out last week but contained a great interview with Frank McComb who I'd love to see live sometime. This guy will go at great lengths to get people to hear his music and it really is worth the listen if you're into modern vocal soul.

I've also tried to get over the excitement of the new Incognito album by digging out their 1992 release "Tribes, Vibes And Scribes". The record contains their top 20 cover of Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" but also features some other superb cuts some of which fitting well into the category "Elevator Jazz". They do contain a few synth instruments such as synth pan pipes and whilst they may sound dated today I really adore that loungey sound associated with trendy wine bars and departure lounges.

Ooh, there's so much stuff I'm longing to play when I get back on the radio!

Yet Another Radio Tangent...

But this one has quite a moral message to it as it proves that you can hit the big time from just about anywhere.
I've noticed a Myspace bulletin mentioning that Jon Holmes star of radio comedies such as 'The Now Show' and 'The Day The Music Died' is being given his own show on BBC 6 Music tomorrow afternoon with features such as "The Old Gay Whistle Test" and a cunning twist on Popmaster called "KenBruceMaster".

Now Jon along with partner Andy Hurst started off his career at what was known back then as 106 CTFM in Canterbury just after it launched in 1997. They won a CPMG award and were nominated for a Sony award during their time on air but they were sacked in 1999 for making jokes about the Ground Forces sent to Kosovo and that they included Alan Tichmarsh and Charlie Dimmock. Thankfully they have progressed to better things since in radio and on television and it proves that Kent does have talent hidden within.

Apparently Karl Pilkington in spite of his Northern roots used to work as a producer at Invicta FM before acheiving notoreity with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant with his "MONKEY NEWS"! Then again it seems you have to get sacked from several stations before getting to reach your desired goal if you want to bend the rules.

"Something's In The Aire"

The 25th anniversary celebrations of Leeds based station Radio Aire are the key talking point of ex presenter Martin Kelner's latest "Piss Poor Podcast". This features interviews with some of it's better known presenters who've progressed since including Peter Levy from BBC Look North and a surprise appearance from the one and only Chris Moyles!
The highlight however has to be at 13:23 when the attendees are played a recorded message from James Whale (now at Talksport) and if you're familar with his style, it is absolutley hilarious!

I was interested to find out that other Aire alumni included Mark Mardell now the BBC's Europe Editor and well respected music broadcaster Andy Kershaw. I saw him two years ago at WOMAD with quite a few people at the BBC Radio 3 stage where they were playing the Archers Omnibus on Radio 4 on the PA! I never actually spoke to him though but to be honest I'd be lost for words.

Now I'm not an Archers addict or anarchist but due to my parents commitment to the soap, it's been part of my life for many years. My dad seems to think that character Matt Crawford's voice is very similar to that of Roland Rat! Actually they had the rodent's single 'Rat Rapping' as a question on Ken Bruce's Popmaster earlier this morning and also featured Light Of The World's cover of "I Shot The Sherrif" as a bonus question! Unsurprisingly the caller didn't know the name of the band!

"Now We're Starting!"

I've managed to begin sorting my wares and utensils to bring with me to London on Saturday. I have been delayed slightly however as Jo's having a book group meeting in the front room and there isn't too much in the hallway just to make it more welcoming for her guests.
Aside that I've been on the phone and on Messenger sorting things out and trying to get people to record various inserts and random stuff in preparation for next week. Some of these people involved I haven't even met before but I know that they will be able to deliver the goods if they turn up.

Extras had a very strong and well observed first episode tonight, particularly loved the scene with Andy directing Keith Chegwin walking through the door on the set of his new sitcom resulting in Andy getting irritated at his smile and looking directly into the camera! I'm not sure how they will carry it off throughout the series but I like the fact that it still has the element of division between the actors and 'supporting roles' by showing us how Maggie is getting on, this episode acting alongside Orlando Bloom.

And the cutaway to the audience wearing t-shirts with catchphrases such as "Am I Bovvered" and "It's Chico Time" could be a further indication that there will soon be t-shirts with "You're 'Avin A Laugh!" on them before long.

Now Playing: Alisha's Attic - I Am I Feel

Extra Supplies (And "Extras" Overall)

Haven't really been up to as much so far so I decided to have a bit of a lie down in bed for some of this afternoon, probably the last time I'll get the chance for any more narcoleptic moments in Canterbury this summer.

Last time I was on air I attempted to give away a toy dog that barked and flipped over like the one that used to appear in the BBC 2 ident in the mid 90s. The only problem was that I'd not realised that there weren't any batteries inside and it needed to be opened by a screwdriver. Well, that's not exactly what I said out loud on finding out in the studio!
I decided to go into "Third Eye" a shop selling punk, goth (and possibly Emo?) t-shirts in Canterbury and they also sell a few novelty and naughty toys.

I thought that I'd go even further and buy a 'humping dog' to give away as one of the prizes next week but I managed to discover something cheaper but even funnier and what I'd describe as the perfect stress reliever. It's called 'Choke-A-Duck' and you'll be able to hear for yourself on the my show next week as it contains batteries!

I'm hoping to have a bit more of a relaxed night in preparation for tomorrow as it's the new series of "Extras" tonight and whilst it's anticipation hasn't been as large as "The Office" it ceratainly sounds as if it has a lot to offer with Andy Millman getting to make his proposed sitcom from the end of the last series. Even if tonight episode isn't great I'm confident that it will get funnier as the series goes on like all of Ricky Gervais's sitcoms. Normally episode 4 tends to be the funniest in these cases, in that of Extras the one with Les Dennis.

"I Derrnt Rearly Nooooo!"

I Must Start Packing!

I've been caught up with all the excitment of Freshers Week that I've barely had time to start packing! Today was spent sorting out the promos for the events including our Undercroft Night, our welcome party, and Intermission! Really looking forward to seeing what it's like inside there.

Once again I'm very impressed with the work that's been taking place so far this week and it appears I'm not the only one as all the station editors recived complements from the very first voice on the station, Tim Pryor! We'll get him back on the station sometime this year. Also both Ricky and Ross managed to get hold of some great guests for next week! I won't say who they are just yet, but as they are booked for Thursday, I'm going to have a tough job following on from them with my show!

Right, what's there to be done production wise, get the Music IDs together, start planning the launch sequnce....

"My Joy Is Growing Wilder"

Just when things couldn't get any better, I can reveal that I've managed to get my hands on the new Incognito album, "Bees + Things + Flowers". Where I got it from I'm sworn to secrecy but I can guarantee that it will be featured on my first Soul Expression of the academic year a week on Thursday!

However I really don't want to act all smug about this like other DJs of this genre, so I'm going to leave it to the listeners and cog-heads to decide what tracks I play from the album and I am forbidding myself to listen to any of the tracks until the show! I'm pretty sure that a certain Mr Howie will want to hear the bands cover of 'Earth, Wind and Fire's 'That's The Way Of The World' and whilst that's not really one of my favourite EWF tracks I will be interested to hear how Bluey and the band manage to pull it off.

So much to cram into next week I really don't know how I'm going to do it all! I'd best get speaking to Tilley on updating my page on the site.

Exhausted

And I've barely left my bedroom today! This is because I had to produce three promos within two hours for Freshers Week on Smoke Radio featuring key members of our on air talent. You can listen to one of them here although I really think that Ricky Marshall when saying the line "are you ready? we are" sounds very similar to Trev and Simon on Going Live when they used to perform as "The Singing Corner".
Swing your pants!

It was a bit more humid today then yesterday but it is still really hot and think I'd be better off with a desk fan in my new room in halls if it continues this way. I just wish they'd be able to provide something similar on the London Underground as that has to be the worst place to be in these sorts of conditions!

Making Progress

It is absolutley baking as I type with the odour of a bonfire outside adding to the atmosphere. I really hope that my return to Harrow Halls will have a few outdoor parties and maybe a few barbeques from the new occupants.

The way things have been going however, I feel like I'm already back in London after speaking to the three editors at Smoke Radio via Tilley's webcam to get a number of things sorted i.e. voiceover availibilty, specialist shows wanting to be extended etc. With a few choruses of "I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker" in between!
Actually speaking of specialist shows, the funniest opening link I have ever heard on Smoke Radio has to be from The Big Broadcast Bonanza back in May and Chris Belson's Jazz Hour.
This ultimately proves that the best way to get to grips with radio is to be yourself and be honest!

I'm looking forward to seeing him and Pippa when they return to London.

Very Nervous

I'm rather intimdated as I've been asked to get some extra liners for Fresher's Week recorded by or female station voice and I haven't heard any response with regards to pricing and whether they can be done. I'll need to ring Ricky about this tomorrow although I hope that we'll be able to sort something out as time is running short.

Despite that it's been another nice day in Canterbury where I spent lunchtime at Concha's house where she was having a barbecue with a few friends in her garden. One of them told us about a wedding which took place in an Irish health center of all places, full of nurses in uniform as the ceremony took place! It can get very peculiar in those sort of places.

So there's now only five days until I'm back in London and it will be good to revert back to my preferred living conditions. Well it would be better without the fire alarms going off at innapropriate times but I hope the fining rule will still apply. It's not the most dangerous place in the world is it?

Reminiscin'...

This made me laugh earlier, a finding on youtube from the days when ITV could actually be bothered to run a children's department featuring the puppet wolves from the Saturday morning show "What's Up Doc" introducing "Grotbags". Of course they don't use the actual programme name, in favour of that of a then Conservative MP. Yet another piece of evidence showcasing how children's programmes could be entertaining for the older viewer back then and why broadcasters these days are afraid to tread the lines.

Of course it has to be done subtley unlike the recently dropped duo Dick And Dom who attempted to do send ups of a similar type but instead falling flat on their faces due to the children in the studio not having the faintest idea of what's going on and the fact that it all looked very forced. Maybe broadcasters are trying too hard these days with all these distractions from the goggle box. Thankfully for me I've come to realise since starting Uni that I prefer the distractions.

A friend of my younger brother's actually got to meet Grotbags at a birthday party around the same time as she still appeared to be popular with the youngsters despite Rod Hull being sacked by Central Television around 4 years earlier. Although like Orville the Duck, he still existed along with a fully grown Emu in an animated form.
Actually I've just realised that the name of the episode of Grotbags introduced in that clip is called "The Teddington Yeti". A possible reference to the studios where Thames Television was based?

There was another interesting find that like most things I like, may be obscure to some but was featured heavilly on Tony Robinson's cartoon series "Stay Tooned" in the early 90s. A Canadian short called "The Cat Came Back". For some reason I don't really get the same buzz watching this as I did 15 years ago, but it's good for nostalgic reasons especially with the synth bells being added to the song when the male character is sent to heaven. Maybe it's the repetition of the songs chorus that did it for me when I was more vulnerable.

The Brit Funk Reunion

Rather mundane sort of day really. The morning was spent listening to the usual daily dose of wireless including Suse's "Back In The Day" on Lantern FM and Ken Bruce's "Popmaster" on Radio 2. Surprisingly enough I've never actually tried entering the competition itself but is it really worth it to win a DAB radio? Aparrently Ken's been rather upset that a few of the winners have put their radios for sale on Ebay but at the end of the day it's being able to show a fantastic musical knowledge to several listeners! Not always the case however as I was rather irritated to hear a contestant fail to name 3 songs by The Beach Boys in 10 seconds!

I attempted to listen to Grooveline on Blast 1386 this afternoon only to find that last weeks show was played out by accident. This is pretty appalling considering the amount of time Stephen took to pre-rec the shows before heading off to Ibiza and that it included an interview with Frank McComb recorded last October. Still things aren't too bad as I managed to book tickets to the Brit Funk reunion at the Jazz Cafe, which I mentioned a few weeks ago. Now this is taking place on the 7th of October which is when I imagine I would have handed in my radio feature proposal.

At least it will be some sort of reward and also a warm up to the Incognito gig three days later! It will be really interesting to see a few former band members performing at the Jazz Funk reunion actually, and I'm sure that they won't have lost their charm.

Publicity In Harrow Halls!

It appears that I'll be straight into work as soon as I've arrived back at Harrow Halls as I've been asked to help out with a stall for Smoke Radio in the halls common room on my day of arrival. Of course I'll have to get everything sorted out for my own room in halls first of all, but it's a great opportunity to get people especially those with an interest in radio involved and as Ross Tilley our News/Online editor says "break the barrier between first and second year students".

This is very important as although I got to know the second (and third) years really well in the first year (with a bit of help from the senior radio lecturer) I got the idea on arrival that the second year students thought that they were superior to the new intake and this made me feel a bit uncomfortable.
This is absolutley not what I want to happen for those arriving to Westminster for the first time, as I'm very keen to see what they've got to offer and they may end up bringing new ideas to the station that have never been done before.

For me Smoke Radio has been more than "just another student radio station" as it has helped me and plenty of others get to know a lot of people from different courses and different years of study and more importantly stay in touch with them outside Uni. And the fact that some of the most talented people on the station aren't even studying radio, proves that anyone can give it a shot. Maybe we'll even get some of the new intake lathered with the amount of events we're planning for Freshers so I'm not the only one!

Not Such A Perfect Day

I managed to find a rather amusing message in my inbox this morning, a video sending up the 1997 chart topper 'Perfect Day' produced by Chapple at Lantern FM and featuring many random North Devon residents including a certain Tim Pryor! Tim actually does pretty well in most of his shots although the funniest has to be the one of Hopps (the Lantern FM PC by the way) doing his part of the song on the toilet!

As much as I love this rendition, there's also another one lurking on youtube done not too long after the record was released, by the many characters of Harry Enfield back in Christmas 1997. This was back in the day when Enfield and his team could take anything big in popular culture and send it up really well without it looking forced, which I think is lacking in television comedy in the present day.
Personally in this clip I think Paul Whitehouse comes across as the funnier one!

"I'm Picking Up Good Vibrations"

It really does feel like summer for me with this warm weather, despite it being the beginning of September. I decided to sun myself on the shores of Ramsgate nonetheless stopping off in the nearby arcade spending a ridiculous amount of time on a "High Roller Casino" pinball machine and the Addams Family electric shock game, not reccomended if you have a heart condition.
Although it was nice on the beach itself there is one thing that's constantly bugging me about Ramsgate and that's a little place called the Jazz Room. This is because of the over 25s age restriction for the nights where they have a DJ playing soul and disco and it made me realise of similar clubs around London which I'll never get to visit whilst I'm at Uni. Surely a smart dress code is acceptable enough?

My last weekend here in Canterbury for this summer will be rather quiet, partly because mum and dad are going up to Yorkshire again as my Grandad hasn't been to well recently. I would have loved to have made the journey up North this summer but then again, these are rather difficult times.

An Annoying Leakage

The weather is still really lovely in Canterbury, but unfortunatley the same can't be said about my physical condition. I woke up to find wax stains on my pillow as I have an earache, which has resulted in me bringing a roll of toilet tissue to my bedroom with it's constant leaking.

I managed to book a doctors appointment but not without having to fill a temporary appointment form as a result of moving to Harrow and signing up with one of the doctors there. It had to happen just before returning didn't it! I got prescribed with two antibiotic substances to take reguarly as opposed to eardrops as the ear that's in all this pain is perferated. Just to make things more irritating.

Actually I've always caught a minor but irritable illness at a time when my outlook is more than positive but for me it's preferrable to being bullied and talked down to by the tools working at ASDA. But why look back at it, it's what's ahead that's more important and I'm getting even more excited about coming back now! Let's hope the weather stays the same.

Ideal Conditions

The last few days in Canterbury have been rather nice in terms of tempertures. I decided to go for a little walk and lie down in the Dane John Gardens in Canterbury which is an ideal place for relaxation in the city and where I spent many a day on my HND course escaping to whilst everyone else struggled to get their assignments done at the last minute. Certainly more picturesque than the green outside Harrow Halls with a bandstand and the large mansion houses adding to the scene.

It's not all easy however as I agreed to make a mince and pasta meal for the rest of my family tomorrow and I'm rather nervous as to whether I have enough ingredients. This is beacuse I normally end up using a whole packet of mince in an individual meal back at Uni and god knows how I'm going to have enough for five people.

It will probably be more meatier as well because I don't like using onions when cooking due to an annoyance of biting into them when I don't expect them. Yes I'm very picky when it comes to eating with even the tiniest of ingredients refusing to satisfy my taste buds.

The schedule for Freshers's has been posted on the brand spanking new Smoke Radio website including the specialist schedule for after 9 under the banner "Smoke Specialist". I'd imagine that this doesn't make my own show a specialist show anymore but that's fine with me considering the direction I want to go in radio and with the show itself. Some interesting shows lined up too although I'm rather confused as why the page is taken up with an enlarged image of Josie (formerly Emo) Edwards!
Never mind Emo, with the amount of red that she's wearing I think she should be known as Elmo! Now I doubt she would take kindly to being compared to my favourite Muppet character!

Possible Predictions

I recieved an e-mail sent to all the radio students about what the next few weeks have in store for us when starting the radio features module at the end of this month. It states that in the first week we'll be having a guest speaker and we'll also be going on a visit, which I'm guessing will be to some random location and put in pairs to produce a dummy feature. Hopefully it will give me ideas on what to propose for the radio feature I'll be producing indivdually as I am still completely stumped for ideas for a subject to carry with interest for 7-10 minutes.

I'm sure like all obstacles it will pull through in the end, but this is probably the most nervous I've felt about a practical module. Especially having to write a proposal on my chosen idea pretty soon into the module but I'll try and keep an eye out for anything that could work well in the non-visual manner. One idea I think I have in mind would be to do a feature on hypnotism. Now of course you wouldn't be able to actually include the activity taking place but I'm certain that there would be enough people more than happy enough to discuss it's effects and whether it actually helps people to overcome their fears.

I might actually need to undergo hypnotism myself before starting the assignment!

Very Twisted

It's all too weird, first of all I wake up relieved that I don't have an abandoned baby inside my back pack, pretty soon after I find out that Steve Irwin has died in an underwater accident and I the state I'm in now is completely muddled up.

Lantern FM in Devon along with many other stations are now running a 128k audio stream for the output so I decided to have a listen in this morning and give Suse a ring in the studio. I accidentally ended up speaking to the sales rep and not realising until after two minutes as the woman on the other end of the line was really polite and quite warming to my comments! I did get through in the end but this probably shows how nice everyone is at the station and that you can get lead in too far sometimes as they are perfect communicators.

I really need to sort myself out especially as in two weeks I'll be very busy with all sorts at things at Uni for Freshers and the last thing I want to do is forget what day it is!

Anticipation!

Just returned from the Olive Grove in Canterbury where we went for Olly's two months overdue birthday meal. Everyone seemed to notice a few changes to the resturaunt the most notable being the window to the kitchens being removed but I couldn't notice too much difference. The food there wasn't too bad either.

I've heard a few more things about what's being planned for Fresher's Week as far as events go and the week looks set to finish in style with a Smoke Radio Area 51 night on the Friday! The way it's all been planned it sounds as if everyone in the University in outside and greater London will be unable to avoid our presence!
I also recieved a nice message from a girl called Claire who I met at the Rebirth gig earlier this year and is going to be attending the Incognito gig along with many others in October. She's written quite a few reviews for similar artists including one for former Cog labelmate Omar which can be found here.

Omar actually grew up in Canterbury for most of his life, although I didn't actually know that after moving into the area when his hit single "There's Nothing Like This" was doing pretty well in the charts. At the time of it's released I used to get it confused with Lenny Kravitz's "It Ain't Over Till It's Over" as I was a bit more dismissive towards those sort of records back then. Those two in particular seem to have stood the test of time especially with the Omar track being featured in an episode of 'Extras' by Ricky Gervais.

Still Some Hope. Or Is There?

I've had a gander of the SRA discussion forum where there is a thread about the Entertainment category for the Student Radio Awards 2006. It appears that the entries on the Kiss 100 website are just a selection of the many entries that are recieved and the judging for the category has been divided between a 'well chosen selection of people within the industry'.
Well at least we can live and breathe for now knowing that our dynamic duo Goodlass and Marshall may still have a chance.

Whilst all this is taking place I'd like to point out how I'm becoming irritated with the organising of the awards and changes that are being made in behind our backs. Important annoucements about the awards are made in a low key manner when no one expects them and there have been no set dates for the awards and nomination parties as of yet which means that the tickets could disapear without anyone knowing they've gone on sale. To be fair the awards themselves don't take place until around November but this is a UK wide event and several stations around the country up for nominations will need to sort out their travel in advance.

As for recieving awards I was rather irritated at about how a few people last year took it badly after Smoke Radio didn't recieve any nominations when we'd only been broadcasting for 5 days out of a whole academic year! However with the way things are looking now we are only getting stronger.
After speaking to the head of marketing it looks as if we're going to be dominating the University with t-shirts, pens and rather embarrasingly our calendar which features many of our presenters dressed in fancy outfits. All these items will be perfect for submitting for the marketing and promotions catergory in 2007!

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

It would probably be appropriate to include some video evidence of the work of Victor Lewis Smith after my dissecting of his material earlier, so I thought it would be appropriate to show his take on the classic children's story 'Sparky's Magic Piano'. I won't mention exactly what it involves just so I don't upset anyone but the result can be found here although I prefer the follow up here partly because of the rather dimunitive jokes about Elton John and the Queen Mother.

After viewing this 'adaptation' I managed to dig out the original radio version of the story broadcast many years ago on the BBC Light Programme. Yes we're going back that far in radio. I'd imagine the vocoder effect for the piano's voice was pretty revolutionary for the time, but the part that sticks out the most is the way the mother and the piano teacher pronounce the word "pianist" as "pi-anist".

I was actually deprived of hearing this story when I was younger although my granny used to own (and probably still does own) an LP of Peter And The Wolf by Prokofiev, which was composed as "an introduction to each instrument of the orchestra". It was difficult not to compare the character of the grandfather (played by the bassoon) to my real grandfather who shared similar traits.

If I remember correctly her copy of the piece had actor Frank Phillips as the narrator, but several people including Sir David Attenborough, Sir John Geilgud and even Dame Edna Everage have had a go at narrating.
I have a tape of the piece narrated by someone who hasn't been knighted but should be imediately, and that would be Phillip Schofield, recorded around the time when he would do anything and everything within popular culture.

All these radio based children's stories have started to make a mark on me, and I feel tempted when I get back on the radio to play such delights as "The Laughing Policeman" and "I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat". It would probably make my mum listen but they'd be best left to gather cobwebs.

A Disapointing Blow

I managed to find an item on the Kiss 100 website featuring
the Entertainment Nominations for the 2006 SRAs which features 10 potential nominees for said category at the Student Radio Awards. Rather shockingly Smoke Radio isn't one of them. Our submission in question was "Living For The Weekend" from Ross Goodlass and Ricky Marshall and I can't understand why we don't have a place within the chosen 10.
However the way I see it, the shows that have been nominated will help to show the way forward for the station and have certainly given me a few ideas for my show which I may develop. Whether they'll actually work is another thing.

As an aside I've recently been listening to a series of radio programmes which may or may not be an influence for our dynamic duo, that being Victor Lewis Smith's series on Radio 1 from the early 90s. He could be seen by some as Kenny Everett on acid with his sketches based around weird audio effects and clever stereo placement but he was compared by others to that of Chris Morris doing similar stuff on BBC GLR around the same time. Morris went on to further success with Radio 4's "On The Hour" and "The Day Today" on BBC 2 whilst Lewis-Smith ended up being a TV critic for the London Evening Standard.

But anyway that's beside the point, Victor's show was very controversial for the time with rather tastless sketches mocking celebrities such as Esther Rantzen and Hale and Pace, and prank phone calls being broadcast without the victims consent. The latter being a technique adapted by our very own Goodlass and Marshall to mixed results. All this randmoness is interspersed with tape winds and very cheesy jingles but Victor mentions that 'they're better than Jazz FM' a now defunct station which had only just started in London at the time and was heard a lot in my house whilst living in London.

But that's kind of ironic as each week the show featured a track by doo-wop gospel act Take 6 who were commonplace on Jazz FM around that time and some of their songs are just superb such as 'Get Away Jordan' with its brilliant harmonies putting Bobby McFerrin down to size.
One to play on my show sometime this semester as fuck knows where you're going to hear music like that anywhere in London or the UK for that matter in this day and age.

It's a shame that programmes like this don't get as much recognition but I'd imagine it would be too controversial to repeat on BBC7 these days although the style isn't too disimilar to the comedy that's on Radio 2 nowadays such as "Blagger's Guide" and "It's Been A Bad Week". I'd also reccomend searching youtube for "TV Offal", Victor's Channel 4 series searching through the veal of television including some very funny parody songs for the likes of Dale Winton, Carol Vorderman etc. Not to mention the exploits of the Gay Daleks.

Overall this probably shows how ideas that some may believe to be original in radio have been done countless times.

"Never Was A Cloudy Day"

Ken Bruce on Radio 2 earlier today made a comment about the reasoning for "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire being included in his show especially for today being the first day of said month. Could be coincidental but then again so is the scheduling of my first show during Freshers Week as it just happens to be on the "21st Night Of September" as mentioned in the opening line of that very song. I very much doubt I'll be playing that song as it's played quite a lot on other stations and I'm sure it's in Smoke Radio's G-List! There's so many other decent tracks to play from the band especially from the mid to late 70s.

I've managed to find a co-host for my show as well, as Pippa from 'The Evening Session' may be helping out with proceedings and should be more than enjoyable to present with. Jo who helped out last time has been promoted to co-presenting Smoke Signal, our daily magazine programme so I thought it would be good to get someone else to help out and try out new things as well. Hopefully I'll also have Edward in the studio as well to basically interrupt and just take the mickey out of everything and everyone which is much needed for when I go out of the ordinary with a radio show. Then again things are always out of the ordinary with the 'Tudor Gent'.

The only downside about returning is my loan will probably arrive later than everyone elses due to a misunderstanding with the forms. However after finding out that I'm only £39 overdrawn with the ASDA money now in my account, it shouldn't be too much of a bankruptcy.

Now Playing: Incognito - Jacaranda