Life's What You Make It Read online

  I went inside and checked out the spacious dance floor as all the guests were having dinner. We loaded the kit through the window, set up the huge speakers and the light boxes (carefully placing the word ‘Galaxy’ in full view). I drew the curtains so it was nice and dark, then wandered off to get some chips. At 8 p.m. prompt, I arrived back alone and stood by the decks, staring in disbelief at the sight before me. The disco-goers had arrived, and they were all over eighty. What the hell! Four vital letters missed off my booking: SAGA. Well, I tried valiantly for ten minutes, but it was no use.

  ‘The lights are making me dizzy.’

  ‘It’s too loud.’

  ‘This is not music.’

  Forced into a lighting and volume retreat, I walked up to the hotel owner and asked him for a week’s sub. Les was a lovely guy and paid up. I ran through town to Newquay Electrical Services, which, as well as Hoovers and plugs, also had a reasonable record selection.

  ‘I need old-people music.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stuff that isn’t loud.’

  In ten minutes I had what I needed: Victor Silvester, Sid Gateley, Max Bygraves. What a rave it was going to be.

  That night, we had a ball. I turned the lights off, opened the curtains so the majesty of a sunset over Towan beach flooded in (it got a bit bright for a scary moment), and they danced and they danced. Everyone went to bed happy, I’d survived my first gig, and I was set for the summer. Those two weeks before and after the high season when the SAGA louts came to town were always fun, but, I’m not going to lie, I preferred the younger crowd in between.

  During a few of the winters that followed, when the guests had all gone I would set up the decks in the now deserted dining room at home and present hours of radio shows … to myself. The disco was perfect for two reasons. Firstly, as all my mates worked in shops every day and missed the bulk of the summer, I had every day to myself and only worked for a few hours in the evenings. Secondly, I was performing! I had the bug, and the following week, the highlight of my year was coming to town. The Radio 1 Roadshow, live from Fistral beach.

  There is no history of the ‘broadcasting gene’ in our family. I wanted to be something very different when I was at Trenance Infants’ School. I was in the Blue Class and Barbie Reeve was my teacher. She had seen me through the highly traumatic first days of starting school. I had been perfectly happy to go once; in fact, I enjoyed it very much. However, when my mum got me up for the second day, I was traumatized. I’d been once; I very much did not intend to go again. As fast as Mum dressed me, I undressed myself. When I was finally crammed into my uniform, I was dragged sobbing down St Thomas’s Road and up the hill to school. I was thrown in through the classroom door and Mrs Reeve had to put her back against it in an effort to stop me escaping. This went on for days. My dad would sneak up the hill in his lunch break to see if I was okay. He would report back to my mum and say that I was sitting on my own in the playground, back against a tree, sobbing. I had to have lunch in the classroom for a while, because I made the entire canteen cry.

  On the Fistral rocks with Tim in matching outfits.

  After a time, as most kids do, I settled into school life. One afternoon, Mrs Reeve asked us what we wanted to do when we grew up. I announced that I wanted to be a gravedigger, but I’d leave holes in the coffin lid in case the bodies weren’t dead. Mrs Reeve instantly created a new job in the classroom and I was the first to be given the role of ‘Special Messenger’. I and those who followed me were given messages to take to the other teachers, a rudimentary internal-mail system. The job had been created for me solely so that I could be sent up the corridor to Mrs Chegwidden in the Yellow Class with a slip of paper. I handed it over, and she looked at me and thanked me. I found out years later that written on that slip of paper was: ‘This is my little gravedigger.’

  St Thomas’s Road, Newquay.

  Barbie Reeve remained a friend long after I left school. She was round and bubbly and incredibly funny, with short dark hair and a slightly bohemian approach to life. Every summer, she and the local amateur dramatics society would put on a comedy show at the Cozy Nook Theatre on Towan beach called Funzapoppin’. I loved it. The Cozy Nook was also where our school put on its annual pantomime, in which I worked my way up from a mouse to Prince Charming. Miss Rowland, who always reminded me of the witch on the bike in The Wizard of Oz, was the teacher who organized it. She was so impressed by my princely performance that she gave me a grape. That was high praise indeed. The Cozy Nook Theatre on Towan beach is now an aquarium.

  When I decided gravedigging wasn’t for me and confided in Barbie that I wanted to work in radio, she was very encouraging. It has always been a source of sadness that she died before I ‘made it’. I think she would have been very proud.

  So, I have no idea where the ‘broadcasting gene’ came from. It started very early on in my life. I have always had a fascination with radio and television. I’d watch shows like Top of the Pops and Tomorrow’s World not just for the content, but because I knew they were the shows where I was most likely to see cameras in their choreographed dance, capturing the action. It didn’t really matter which cameras, but there was one particular kind that would deeply excite me. The EMI 2001 had a white top. It looked incredible – proper telly – and had ‘BBCtv’ written on the side. I can’t describe the joy of catching a glimpse of one. James Burke used to do a science show, I think from the old Pebble Mill studios, and they didn’t care about hiding the kit or the crew, so it was everything I wanted from a television show, behind-the-scenes shown in all its glory. I loved those cameras so much I finally managed to track one down, and I have it now, pointing at the pool table. Few people who come for dinner can resist having a play. Sadly, it doesn’t work. I have all the necessary equipment to fire it up, but I’m terrified it will burn the house down.

  My pride and joy, the EMI 2001.

  I would put a cardboard box on our wooden tea trolley (my camera), and fix an old microphone to my dad’s fishing rod (my boom) and follow my poor brother around, asking for an interview. I’m pretty sure his first response was ‘No comment,’ but that soon turned to ‘No, Phillip!! Leave me alone,’ and quickly progressed to ‘Sod off.’ He used to love his Lego, and I mastered the art of building a TV studio out of it. I tipped a cardboard box on its side and had a full Lego TV studio within, cardboard lights strung from the roof on cotton wires, mobile booms, six cameras, a set – the works. I broadcast many a virtual Top of the Pops from inside that box. Come to think of it, I was easily pleased as a kid: a cardboard box was all I needed. One was a camera, one was a studio and, when our new deep freeze was delivered, I lived in the box it came in for a fortnight.

  My most treasured book was the Ladybird Book of Television. On the inside cover it had a full aerial map of BBC Television Centre. I studied every picture and knew every word; I knew that building better than our house. I was gutted many years later when I realized that I had lost the book, but how wonderful that my long-suffering brother was the one to find one online and buy it for me for Christmas. I’d watch the cameras dance on Top of the Pops, and years later I would be presenting This Morning from that very studio in the building that I had pored over in the pages of my favourite childhood book.

  There are many people who didn’t realize at the time that they were having a profound impact on my life. Bruce Connock was our careers adviser at Newquay Tretherras school. When he asked us all what we wanted to do for a career, I immediately said, ‘Broadcasting.’ Bless him, he never batted an eyelid; instead he spoke to a friend of his at the BBC in Plymouth and I was invited to go to watch the nightly local news, Spotlight South West, going out. It was so damned exciting, and I was so grateful that he didn’t ridicule my ambition. I got the chance to properly thank him when he was a guest on my This is Your Life. We sometimes hear stories of teachers who were unsupportive of young dreams, only to be mentioned on the cover notes of a multimillion-selling album years later in a withering
and public display of how unhelpful they were! Thankfully, Mr Connock wasn’t one of those teachers, and the fact that he took me seriously has always made me feel extremely grateful. Come to think of it, how lucky am I? When I told my mum and dad what my chosen career was, aside from my dad initially suggesting that might be more of a hobby than a job, they were never once anything other than totally supportive. Always watching, honest in their opinions, keeping my feet on the ground and, thank goodness … proud. I would eventually repay them by buying my dad a Hasselblad camera, which was his dream, and retiring him when he was fifty-seven after I got the role of Joseph.

  Bruce Connock at my This Is Your Life.

  You may be surprised that although I have been describing a fascination with telly, radio was my first love. I have a confused love affair with them both. A broadcasting threesome. I would listen to Radio Luxembourg in bed, in secret, and be captivated by the romance of a pirate-radio station forced to transmit from abroad. Whenever I could, I’d listen until it closed down at 3 a.m. The close-down sequence consisted of a song called ‘Maybe the Morning’, sung by Sunny, and the Luxembourg National Anthem. The signal was terrible and the station washed in and out like waves on a beach. The DJs – voices I knew so well – were Bob Stewart, Tony Prince, Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Mark Wesley and Peter Powell. I always thought that Peter, who would go on to have a profound effect on my career and become one of my best friends, had the best taste in music, and I’ve had the chance to tell him many times.

  Radio 1 was also an obsession. Every year, I’d buy the calendar; every day, I’d immerse myself in the station and its DJs. I wrote to all of them, asking how I could pursue a career in radio and, to their credit, in one way or another they all wrote back. Peter Powell had left Radio Luxembourg and was presenting a Saturday show from ten until one on Radio 1. I found out much later that the letter I had got back from him was actually written by his father, who was in charge of his personal mail. I eventually got that letter framed for him, and he now has it hanging on a wall in his house. One DJ wrote back with a piece of advice I use to this day: ‘Never address the world at large. Radio and TV are personal. I am six inches from the mic, you are a foot from the radio or six feet from the TV. We’re close, it’s just you and me, so never say, “How are you all today?” It’s just, “How are you?”’

  If there’s one thing I will change in any script, it’s that. You won’t ever hear me say, ‘Lots of you have called,’ or ‘Hope you are all having a good morning.’ It’s old school, but it has stuck. Annie Nightingale (who shares 1 April as a birthday with me … hi, Annie) echoed much of the advice. It was a tough job to get into, very few succeeded, be prepared for setbacks, practise and be patient. I was prepped. I wanted it so badly.

  Every year, the Radio 1 Roadshow came to Newquay, and it was a travelling circus coming to town, but with great music from huge orange speakers broadcast from a stage on a red, white and blue lorry. For two hours, that patch of Fistral beach was famous. The Roadshow was the brainchild of Johnny Beerling, a Radio 1 producer and later controller of the station, and it was in that capacity that I would work for him as a DJ in the then-distant future. The first Roadshow ever – and I was there – was held in 1973 on Fistral beach, with Alan Freeman, who also became a friend many years later. I would wake very early, run (barefoot) down the lane and across the mile of sand that was between the end of the beach where I lived and the other end, where the trucks would arrive. I was always there hours before a single other member of the crowd and I sat at the very front and watched. Watched the engineers set up, listened to the soundcheck, watched Smiley Miley set up his T-shirt and memorabilia shop (van). It was the highlight of my year. I hated the fact that in four hours I’d have to share the experience with 25,000 others. With about an hour to go, the DJ hosting the Devon and Cornwall leg of the tour would start their warm-up. Tony Blackburn, Noel Edmonds, Alan Freeman, Paul Burnett, and many more, I watched them all. By the time Paul Burnett hosted the show five years later I had managed to get a gig on Hospital Radio Plymouth, and he agreed to an interview. He was lucky to be alive that day – he’d drunk a wasp in his pint of beer and it had stung him in the throat! Being allergic, that would’ve done me in.

  When I eventually got to work on Radio 1, in 1988, I found out that the Devon/Cornwall leg was the most sought after by the DJs. When I’d worked my way through other parts of the country the show visited, I was so thrilled to be offered Newquay. I made sure I looked very closely at the eager faces in the front row, knowing that, years before, it would have been my eager face looking back. Not one of the 25,000 ever knew, but, for a moment, I turned away from the crowd to wipe my eyes. The realization that a dream had come true washed over me and made me cry. Kismet.

  If someone asks me how to get into broadcasting, I usually suggest hospital radio, if it exists in a hospital near them. That’s the advice many of the DJs gave to me, and it proved to be fantastic experience. Finding the right hospital took a bit of trial and error. The first I approached was kind enough to ask me to go down and watch a broadcast, which I gleefully did. My dad dropped me off at the hospital, because I was still learning to drive and had recently scared him senseless when he was teaching me by threading his car through an impossibly small gap between two lorries in an unwise overtaking manoeuvre. I’ll give him his credit, he never screamed, but he was silent for a mile or so, before saying, ‘Don’t ever do that again’ … I haven’t.

  This was why I wasn’t driving.

  When I walked into the studio I was met by a very lovely gentleman who was about 150 years old, and he told me he was on air so could I sit quietly and watch. So I did.

  I watched him open the mic, shakily introduce the next record, close the mic, then put his glasses on. He picked up the arm of the record player, bent down, squinted at the record on the turntable and then had three failed attempts at placing the needle at the start of the song. Whoever was listening in their hospital bed, and I suspected there were few, heard half a chorus of Boney M, then the end, then a couple of random bits in between before he managed to find the start. When the song was finally playing, he took his glasses off, beamed at me, and said, ‘With experience, you’ll get the hang of it. Don’t forget, I’ve been at this game for twenty years.’ I thanked him politely for his time, and left.

  I found what I was looking for in Hospital Radio Plymouth, with a group of young, exciting broadcasters led by local telly celebrity David Rodgers. David became a mate and in time introduced me to Judi Spiers, Hugh Scully and Ruth Langsford. The radio station had great facilities and two well-equipped studios. The location, though, was terrifying. It was sat on the top floor of an old hospital on Lockyer Street. The hospital had been thriving until one day – I believe the lifts failed – it had been rapidly evacuated of all patients and staff. The only lighting that worked was at the top for the studios, so the walk from the front door to the top floor had to be done by touch in pitch darkness, and by trial and error I had to learn the route. That walk scared the crap out of me every time. I went wrong and ended up in the morgue; I went wrong and ended up in the operating theatre; I went wrong and fell into a room that was full, floor to ceiling, of old X-ray pictures, dimly lit by a skylight. I have to admit I might have spent a few minutes looking through the X-rays. Man, some people were in a bad way.

  I had so much fun at Hospital Radio Plymouth and learned much of what I carry with me today. However, there is one evening I’d love to forget. Most of the programmes were live but, occasionally, if a DJ couldn’t be there, they would record a programme instead. I was given the job of being the technical operator for a show David Rodgers was recording. I was the engineer for a TV star! I perfectly rolled in his interviews, seamlessly played in the music and made sure the levels were good. Sadly, I failed to press record and two hours of work were never to be heard. He didn’t let me forget that for a long time. Another particularly memorable time was one evening when we came off air and I was sitting
with everyone in the staff room. In a moment of silence one word came from an unoccupied corner of the room. Whispered, but perfectly clear in a woman’s soft voice came the word ‘money’. We all stopped and stared at each other. It couldn’t possibly have been one of us. That woman’s voice, whispering, ‘Money,’ has stuck with me. I can hear it still. The story was, in the distant past, one of the nurses had taken her own life because she was in debt. It was scary, but also very sad.

  About ten years ago I was asked if I would be regressed to my past lives for This Morning, which was running a series of ‘past life’ films. I was interested so I agreed.

  I lay on a couch in a quiet, modern sitting room, and the camera rolled. The lady guiding me into my past lives had a curiously distracting high voice, so, rather than finding myself regressing anywhere, all I could hear were squirrels in the roof and the whir of the camera. She asked me to picture doors to walk through, but all I could picture was the editor’s face as we went back with hours of useless tape. Then, suddenly, and I have no idea how or why, I walked through a door. I was on a muddy street in a town; it seemed like the seventeenth century. There was a man two doors up selling end-of-season apples from a wooden crate. As people scuttled by on this cold, bleak day, I knew I was on the threshold of my home. I walked two steps down to the front door, and there my heart was gripped by a fearful sense of impending doom. I opened the door to silence and felt horror wash over me. Three steps in, and I saw them: two murdered bodies on the floor. I knew they were my wife and small child. Horror turned to fury. I knew why they were dead. I owed money to two brothers who worked at the end of the street in a sawmill. I ran, crying, from the scene of this cruel act of retribution, straight to the sawmill. One of the brothers was there, but I couldn’t see the other. I ran straight to him, picked up a large piece of cut four-by-two and clubbed him repeatedly. The noise brought out the other brother and I ran from the mill, through the streets, and hid in a church. Running to the back of the church to hide, I looked out of a window. If I’m ever in a church that is high up, I look out of a window if I can – not easy, as most are stained glass. If I ever see a long, sloping field rolling down to a grey, lazy river, I’ll know I’ve lived before. Until then, I’m putting these events down to a vivid imagination. Because what happened next was a horrific continuation of what had already been a particularly unpleasant experience. The brother found me, dragged me outside, punched me to the ground and, as my head hit the mud, he repeatedly stamped on it until I was dead!