Look Mum, I’m Famous

I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Kent. Not so far across from where we lived on the Essex coast, but of course the Thames estuary was between us, so to visit them entailed a trip into London and then back out again.

One Saturday evening in the summer of 1986 they were listening to the radio – or I think more likely, the radio was on in the background while they were doing whatever old people did on a Saturday evening. The radio was tuned to BBC Essex. (Why they weren’t listening to BBC Kent, I don’t know. But given their location you would certainly have been able to pick up BBC Essex clearly enough.) One of them must’ve recognised either my voice or my name being mentioned on the radio.

“Ooh, isn’t that our nephew Simon they’re talking to?”

Something like that I imagine.

The next time they were in contact with my parents they relayed this fact to them. “We heard your Simon on the radio the other day. I said to Bob, ‘Hey, isn’t that Simon they’re talking to?’”

Several years later, when attending my uncle Bob’s funeral, my aunt at some point turned to me and said, “I remember that time we were listening to the radio and suddenly there you were being interviewed.”

Like a lot of local BBC radio stations back in the 1980s and 90s, BBC Essex had what could broadly be classed as youth programming.  Usually just one show a week – usually sometime on a Saturday evening. Because unlike commercial radio stations, their remit was to cater for everyone. While 90% of their output was aimed at the retired, the unemployed, the stay at home mums (or dads), commuters etc. some content back then fulfilled the needs of a public service broadcaster.

These ‘youth’ shows would feature local bands, the local music scene, maybe topical stories relating to teenagers and those in their early 20s. They would be presented by young people. Or at the very least, presenters who were younger than the general age of a local radio presenter.

BBC Sussex had a well established Saturday night show called I think ‘Turn it Up’. They would get their guests to record little stings for the show. “Hey we’re Nirvana and we say tune in to Radio Sussex and TURN IT UP!”

You get the idea. They had some pretty famous artists on their show. They probably didn’t ever have Nirvana, but still.

The Essex variant was not that polished, not that established, and to this day I have no idea what it was called (or if it even had a specific name.) As we’ve established elsewhere, 1986 was the year I left Stafford and returned home. It was the year I launched my record label, via that humble 12 track cassette compilation. Hand designed cover. Letraset for the title. Typed up track listing. Printed on to stiff blue card and then self assembled in my bedroom. The tapes themselves were copied from a master tape using my own Sony twin deck tape machine. Simple. Basic. Cost effective.

I must’ve been enthusiastic at that point. I sent out tapes wherever I could in a drive to get some publicity. A local weekly free newspaper (The Yellow Advertiser) published a review. Their music critic was lead singer in a local R’n’B band and his tastes were (to be honest) fairly limited. My compilation only featured one Essex band (unless you counted my own contribution) and this track the reviewer liked. But he clearly hated the rest and spent what brief column inches he gave us wondering why the band he liked had ended up on this otherwise weird and largely to his ears unlistenable collection of music.

Still, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

I guess I must also have sent a copy to the local radio station. I wasn’t a listener to their Saturday night show, but then I’d been living in Stafford for most of the last two years. I must’ve been aware of its existence. I assume I sent a copy in the hope they’d play something from it or somehow give us a mention. What happened instead was that one of their presenters (or reporters) phoned me up and asked if they could come and interview me about my label. I hadn’t expected that.

Having failed spectacularly to make it in the world of computer science, I suppose I felt an obligation to work hard at my new chosen vocation. I agreed to the interview, a date was set and a few days later someone arrived armed with a large tape machine and settled down in my parent’s living room to interview me.

It was not a positive experience (for me). My parents were in the house, if not directly in the room at the time of the interview. I was not (surprise surprise) media literate. I made for an awkward interviewee. I stumbled on giving my answers, having to ask for a second take on at least a couple of occasions. As usual, I didn’t really have much to say. Also, it was very early on in the whole enterprise and most of the interesting stories I’ve been able to share here had not happened at that point in time.

The only thing that sticks in my head from that interview was a line where I was adamant that I did not see myself aspiring to be the next Richard Branson. So kudos to me for that at least, I was on the money there. (Or ahead of the curve).

When the interview went out, I was very deliberately out of range, on a train somewhere travelling home from a day out in Chelmsford. In fact I specifically recall standing on the platform at Shenfield station (the place you changed for trains back to Southend Victoria), thinking to myself that this could be the very moment that  that short and stilted little interview might be going out. I made my connection, sat down and took out a book to read for the remaining forty minutes of the journey - and did my best to forget that the interview had ever happened.

And I would’ve succeeded if it hadn’t been for my aunt and uncle across the water in Kent. (Why were they listening to a magazine show aimed specifically at a teen audience on a local radio station for a county they didn’t even live in? I’ve never quite been able to work that one out.)

Of course, forty years on, there’s a tiny part of me that would be curious to hear that interview now. Thankfully of course it has gone the way of all things ephemeral. It lacks the cultural significance that leads to missing episodes of Dr Who being unearthed decades after they were thought lost forever.  It will never be heard again.

It might be considered ironic that over twenty years later I presented my own music show, Radio of the Second Dimension. But that was a different beast. It was a podcast from the days before podcasts were really a thing. It was me messing around, writing silly links and sketches to weave in around my personal music choices. I was in my element there, with full creative control and as many takes as I needed to get it right.

But I never did any further interviews. Certainly never anything on the radio. Not that I had to turn down loads of requests.

I should definitely make that clear.