Video didn't kill the radio star....

I have just had great fun choosing my playlists for my Friday and Saturday shows this weekend on Ridge Radio (www.ridgeradio.co.uk)

Tune in on Friday at 5pm for the Friday Footlights show when I’ll have Flo O’Mahoney and Libby Bliss as my guests talking about their Young Oxted Players production of ‘The Herd’ which premiered at the Southern Counties Drama Festival a few weeks ago to critical acclaim, and which is showing again at the Barn Theatre, Oxted on 27^th April.

If you can’t manage that, why not listen to the Saturday Morning Breakfast show from 7am to 9am this coming Saturday for news, views, the best in popular music and classic golden oldies as well as a chart run down and information about what’s on locally.

I must say this radio lark is great fun. I get to choose my own music and talk without anyone telling me to shut up for two hours on the trot, which is a real treat. The pleasurable hour spent in front of the computer picking out the music for the week is even more fun. I’ve rediscovered songs and artists I had totally forgotten about and the lists I’ve put together have certainly been eclectic if nothing else.

The downside is that I’ve spent a fortune on i-tunes, which I have decided is a wonderful resource. Thank goodness we bought a new computer just after Christmas so I have plenty of memory left to download stuff. I’ve also made good use of Wikipedia to get background information on shows I know very little about, or on singers and songwriters. Wikipedia gets a bad press due to its inaccuracies, but for my purposes it’s great.

It’s just a shame that I can’t make my living doing the DJ thing. Maybe someone from Radio 2 would like to retire and the Beeb would consider me instead? Apparently, according to the radio station trainer, I’ve taken to it like a duck to water. I don’t know why, I’ve never done it before. Must be the performer in me!

Amazingly, I’d never heard of Ridge Radio before I started doing this and that says something about their PR. They are an incredible little local station, broadcasting for 18 hours a day, seven days a week when most community stations manage just two or three hours a day only. Run solely by volunteers, it’s a small but quite professional set up which deserves to be successful, but is apparently always in a perilous financial state as it depends entirely on fundraising. Being a radio station, it is not eligible to register as a charity. They really need to improve their own publicity; more people need to know about them.

However I am determined not to get involved in the running of the thing because if there’s one thing my involvement in am-dram has taught me, it’s that if you get caught up in the running or the administration of something it ceases to become a pleasure and becomes a chore. I’m just going to go along and do the bit I enjoy and maybe participate in a bit of fundraising from time to time (such as bag packing in Morrisons), but I’m not organising anything and no way am I doing anything official. I’d love the place to carry on for years, but if that means I have to become an organiser then it will have to go to the wall. Let someone else do that for a change.  

But in the meantime, tune in and support. With increased listeners comes improved reputation and hopefully more funding as advertisers begin to feel it’s worthwhile spending their cash. And you get to listen to my dulcet tones for four hours each week! What more could you want?