I was a very lucky boy.
When it came to leaving school I didn't just go wide eyed into the big bad world to see where it took me. I knew.
Since being at least 8 years old I wanted to be a radio presenter. I loved listening to Manchester's Piccadilly Radio. I listened all day and all night. Timmy Mallett was my first favourite and when a lad called Mark Lupton from 2 years above me at St. Dunstan's won the top 10 singles on his show I was insanely jealous!
My teenage insomnia was never a problem because it meant I could listen to ALL of the Late Night Funster Show, all the way through to 2am.
I had a notebook full of ideas for features and would walk around Moston with my Walkman filling the gaps between tracks on whatever album I was wearing out with (eventually) perfectly timed links.
In 1991, aged 15, I started my own weekly show on Northern Air Hospital Radio and from that moment I was regularly broadcasting, joining the hospital radio station in my uni town, the university radio station, RSL's when I was back home in the summer and eventually I got a regular weekly overnight show on the mighty 96.9 Viking FM.
I made it…and I loved it!
It became obvious to the people who got paid to know what they were doing that I was of limited ability as a presenter but much better as a producer and I was a hungry and eager producer eventually touring the most romantic parts of the country (Hull, Reading, Swindon, Wigan) living my dream of being on the radio and winning awards for it - (alright, one award….but it was a Sony AND I danced with Amy Winehouse at the Grosvenor House do…..OK, NEAR Amy Winehouse!!)
I eventually landed at JACKfm in Bristol. A brilliant station that got the best of me. It suited me. The station suited me, the show suited me and the city REALLY suited me. I fell in love with it and fell in love in it meeting my incredible wife who resigned from the Traffic team the day I started.
And then….it ended.
Changes were being made at what was by then Sam FM that went against my priciples, i.e. they wanted to make me redundant. The writing was on the wall a few months earlier when we were at a group away day and the MD who had recently joined after some time being not quite good enough for Global talked about the need to make savings by losing the things we didn't need while looking directly at me.
Anyway, I was given the privilege of seeing my time out on air and spoiled it by behaving like a petulant child and saying something unhelpful in my last link effectively burning my bridges there and in the wider radio world. Something I regret.
I had a meeting with BBC Bristol where a deputy someone told me that he didn't see where I would fit in other than driving a van at the weekend and then telling me off for not drinking the nasty coffee I was given. (The milk was off)
On my last day I had to leave immediately because I had an interview or a job with a high street name insurer. All the time I spent in radio was on the wages of a producer and so I had no nest egg and a Direct Debit for rent to think about. They gave me the job in their call centre and so my future wife and I had a roof over our heads.
I've been in the same job ever since. The longest I've ever been in a job and it's grand. The work is something I'm good at, the pay is always on time, I have benefits that I'm not made to feel like an arsehole for taking advantage of. I can book holidays without a sharp intake of breath and being told I'm brave.
It's a great job.
A really great job for a great company.
I don't love it. I don't hate it. I just do it.
The thing is that when I left Sam FM I left my mojo there as well. I am not the same person. I'm not a loudmouth, I'm not a gobshite, I don't drink or eat whatever is in front of me any more. Now, I realise that doesn't sound like a bad thing and so what am I whinging for, but it isn't me.
I identified so much with being on the radio because it's all I ever saw myself being since childhood that I literally don't know who I am and so my passion for doing things has gone and I can't manufacture it.
I'm a bit lost.
I've tried keeping my hand in but I've not been able to dedicate the time and headspace to it and so it was all a bit hollow and, let's face it, sad.
I have other things that I love like listening to music, comedy and showing off but they won't pay the mortgage.
So I guess I'm writing this and publishing this as a cry for help really. People who have left radio and didn't have other irons in the fire (like trains or buses)…how do you find something new to care about?
When you're 47 and find yourself in the same position as all of your friends were when they were 16 and didn't know what to do with their lives, how do you find something that you can work to be good at again?
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