No, not the title of the Queen hit (though that’s a great track anyway in my book) but the tale of a retired (and therefore maybe slightly gaga) person (strike that; I prefer the American term “senior”, as in the T-shirt I saw in Pike Place market in Seattle, proudly stating: “I’m a senior; give me my damn discount”) and a project to renew his acquaintance with radio presenting.
A few years ago I was a presenter (all right, DJ if you prefer) on Hereford Hospital Radio. Great times, although I often wondered how many people actually listened to our programmes. I don’t recall that we ever did any in-depth market research to answer that question. Maybe we were afraid of what the answer might be and anyway we were all having too good a time. So, as I am no longer a wage-slave / salary-man / whatever you like to call it, I thought I might take it up again.
The local hospital radio organisation in Bristol, where I now live, took ages getting back to me, so I tried the newer community radio station, Bristol Community FM. So far I have been impressed with the comprehensiveness of the training they are offering for us six volunteer inductees. In fact during the very first training evening we were told that at the end of just four training sessions of two and a half hours each, we needed to be ready to record a one-hour pilot show. Provided that show meets BCFM’s criteria, especially with regard to having a Bristol angle, it’ll be broadcast and could lead to a regular slot in the schedule.
When given this unexpected and prompot challenge, my off the cuff response was this: one of the things I have enjoyed most in the five years I have been here in Bristol is the quality and variety of the live music scene; much of it in pubs and other informal venues; all inexpensive or free. I have seen so many very talented performers who don’t make their living from music, maybe because they are in less-commercial genres, but maybe because they would prefer the music to be a part-time activity. But I have also seen performers who are full-time musicians but have been happy to perform in pubs, including Andy Shepherd, a legend of the jazz saxophone for years and Beth Rowley, who’s gone from pub gigs to #4 in the album charts in very short while. I though I could interview musicians on both sides of the financial divide and investigate what makes the difference, as well as talking to venue owners and of course playing some music, both live and studio recordings. So far so good; however it turned out that four of the six of us on the course wanted to present a show focused on the local music scene, albeit different genres in some cases. I was thus persuaded partly buy my better judgement and partly by the station, to propose a second option.
Before I retired (sorry, that word again) I had spent the last 5 years of my full-time work in the employ of The Stroke Association and the last two of those was in media relations; placing stories about stroke and stroke survivors and being interviewed on radio and television. During that work I had met some really fantastic people who had fought back from the often devastating effects of this condition and none them more so than a Jamaican-born Bristolian called Lafrance Gordon. This man was introduced to me by the local Black Development Agency who said, “We have here a very charismatic stroke survivor who could be a banner-carrier for you.” How right they were; I set up more broadcast interviews with Lafrance (many of which I did with him) than pretty well all the other stroke survivors in my region (the whole of the South) put together.
Doing those interviews I earned more about a fact that I’d already known: that people of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian background are significantly moiré at risk from stroke than are white people. What’s more, there are large gaps in awareness in those communities, as Lafrance showed me.
As stroke is the nation’s #3 killer and its #1 cause of severe disability, I thus decided that the most worthwhile subject for the pilot would be this very topic. I’d been in touch with many of the local experts on stroke both in the NHS and the charity sector, and I could interview all those as well as Lafrance and other stroke survivors. Finally I could salt the mix (sorry, spice it up, as salt is a no-no) with musical requests from the interviewees.
Watch this space!
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