A Night Spent With Faces Old And New

I made my way up to Tufnell Park tonight for Pippa and Holly's "Postmas" party where there were quite a few familar faces who I haven't seen for a while such as Chris Belson, Martin Perret and Kate "Kitty" Richardson who was also on the CMP course but is a superb piano player and singer.

There were also a few people who I don't know the names of but remembered my rather raucous antics when Pip, Chris and Holly lived in Harrow near Trinity back in Autumn 2006.

I had a chat to Kate about how messed up the current SU appears to be at Uni and the AGM meeting in 2006 where Ross Tilley put up a motion for the sacking of Salima and I'd come along with Ross Goodlass, and Alex Hill to support his motion and to defend Rayhan who had been put up for a similar motion by two of the other SU officers for goodness sake.

Although I didn't see her on the day itself, Kate was present at the meeting supporting Chris Adams and his environmental plans for the University. Chris was actually the VP Comms when Smoke Radio was launched in June 2005 and along with Rob Watson was very supportive as was his Rayhan the year after.

Nowadays it's a completely different story and the tensions and heated debate throughout that meeting were nothing compared to this year's AGM where only four or five people turned up.

Kate also spoke about how much she disliked Salima when in the Freshers Fayre's that year, the LGBT stand was put next to the Islamic Society stand which was completely wrong. Just another piece of evidence as to why the newspaper quite rightly said that the Fresher's Fayre was a disaster.

I also had a chat to Chris about music and artists such as The Roches and Robert Wyatt who he's quite a big fan of. He also spoke about his love for Radio 4 comedy shows such as "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" and the newer ones such as "The Unbelievable Truth".

I also spent quite a lot of time reminiscing with Pippa about the golden era of Smoke Radio when she used to present a show there with Chris and helped out Andy B with his show, alongside Tudor.

However all of them apart from Tudor left the station towards the end of 2006
and I fully understand why they did so as the atmosphere and community was just completely absent with politics getting in the way, and as Pippa was doing the show on her own she thought "why come in just to play music that you like when you can listen to it on your iPod at home?"

That was fair enough as whereas my show was and probably still is based around me combining my enjoyment of radio with the music I like, Pip and Chris were doing there show for a good laugh, and the amount of fun we had with Joey and the team just vanished completely when Ricky and the two Ross's took over the station.

It was really good to catch up with everyone and find out how they're all getting on although I decided to leave at midnight in order to get the last tube back.

I almost succeeded but the Northern Line train via Bank didn't arrive for 17 minutes, and when I got to Baker Street, the only train that was leaving went up to Wembley Park.

Luckily I managed to bump into Fiz where we ended up walking all the way to Wembley Central to get the N18, and had a good chat about various things and got a lot of stuff off our chests.

It turns out that in addition to headlining Area on Thursday, Fiz will also be spinning the disks at the Undercroft so it looks like it will all be good times on campus this week.
Provided that on Monday we turn up to the Undercroft before it gets absolutley rammed.

As for tomorrow, the morning will be spent as always listening to Robbie on Jazz FM, I'll spend the afternoon in the library doing further rummaging and in the evening it's time for the girls to get their skates on in Dancing On Ice.

To finish with tonight, I should point out that a few posts ago I suggested that one of our alumni Kelly Gravells was having a baby, when it turns out that she isn't.

I'll get you Landers!
Well, you may owe me a drink at Pub Golf on Monday. (wink wink)