Popshield

Another day in the office

Wake up at 4am, 40 miles drive in the dark, arrive at work, move some faders, drink a lot of tea, Top Cat arrives 30 seconds before TX, show Verucca Salt the talkback button, sign News Shmu’s birthday card, shake hands with the lovely Sally Jensen, air kiss Top Cat’s unshaved beard, harmonise on ‘happy birthday’ to News Shmu, set up a vegetable spot FX mic for John Wayne, fade up some ranty callers, fade up some vegetables, buy a copy of the Times for an old lady in King’s Cross Station, watch old lady blow the savings on chocolate, get my 4am-start-face stared at all the way home on the train by a strange lady, get off, squint in the sunlit, say hi to the cows, wonder where this late summer suddenly came from, get home, get shouted at by the cat, watch the SITC movie because my husband is away for the first time since we got married, I don’t even like chick flicks.  Uh oh, is my life in any way normal?

Sunday morning blessings

It’s Sunday morning and I am back in the studio after getting married.  

“So, how was it?” asks Jerry Wobegon.

“It was amazing, brilliant, the cake collapsed and I didn’t care, it was great!”

“And is your other half in the industry?”  says Jerry.

“Sort of. In audio, but not show business” I reply.

“And will you be starting a family now?” he goes on.

“Hmm, perhaps”  I say, slightly taken aback by the sudden directness of the smalltalk.

“I’m sure you will” says Jerry.  

“I’m sure you will, and I’m sure you’d have lovely children”.

God bless the showbiz Pope and his wild predictions.

Don’t I Know You?

Charming Timothy Scissorhands the Victorian scarecrow is back in the building to give an interview about his new Hollywood movie. This is the first time I’ve seen him since fading up the last telephone balance unit of his radio career.

Timothy enters the studio. He says hi to The Team and gives me a really long hard puzzled stare.

“Don’t I know you?” he exclaims.

“Yes, of course, hello again!” I say, not mentioning the thing that must not be mentioned.

“Hang on a minute”, says he, “I know you, I know all of you! OMG I used to work here!”

Smashey and Nicey were quipping relentlessly for about five hours on the trot during our studio recording today.

Smashey: I met the singer Frank Munro once, lovely bloke. Have you met him?

Nicey: Yes I have. I thought he was a bit of a letch actually.

Smashey: Oh, I didn’t know he slept with you too!  And I thought I was special!

and so it went on…

Not So Goods Lift

Noah’s Ark - one of the nicest (and talented) young bands you could meet - came to make history at the world famous Maid Of Orleans Studios today.  ’Twas a pity then that their lovely gear got stuck in the ancient goods lift.  The same band who famously had £100,000 of lovely vintage gear stolen from a trailer a few years back.  Undeserved gear karma, I’d say.

The lift in question is one of those where you have the grille that goes across followed by a sliding door on the outside. One of the band’s magic carpets had slid off the top of a flight case trolley and was trapped in the grille.  Everything was tantalisingly near to the ground but as the exterior door was locked shut there was no way to unload it.  Being a Saturday, there was noone on site able to open it up. So we had to wait a good three hours for a lift engineer to appear on site.  

Luckily the session was not live. Faced with an impasse, the band’s sweet nature seemed to intensify.  The lead singer even offered to go and buy us some sandwiches. Later, we were able to make up for lost time and the mood was positively peachy throughout.

A Day In The Life Of Equipment Faults

February can be a tricky and sticky month. God only knows why. Everything has gone awry with our trusty studio equipment.  

Reliability is a very important quality in man, animal and machine alike.

In the last twenty-four hours my colleagues and I have been involved in a head-spinning, plate-balancing performance of fault-finding, fault-reporting and confusion-diffusion.  And of course nothing is allowed to stand in the path of getting the Nations Favourite radio shows made.  All is seasoned with stress, and if the show is live you get a double helping.

Here is a summary of the various faults:

1. Failure of playout server - faulty hard disk and cache disk replaced.
2. Distorted/ high level cue send on telephone balance unit via T/B panel.
3. Telephone balance unit silent owing to fault at exchange.
4. Telephone balance unit failing to divert to desk.
5. Corrupted desk aux causing the reverb unit to be undeselectably (new word) routed to itself. 

Fault 5 was nasty.  It produced a horrible howl-round every time the reverb was faded up during soundcheck for country queen Annie-Lou Harrison. The fault rendered the reverb unit unusable, but this sadly wasn’t an option due to the material. In the words of Raggamouse, Wagwan?? Even my lucky cowboy boots failed to make a bad ting good - tsk! I was left with no other option but to reset the entire desk and start again. Not good. Times like these it would be useful to be able to snapshot desk settings. Not the first time I’ve been here and it’s stressful.  Thank god we weren’t live.

Amongst the madness of the day, the presenter’s dad came in for an interview. He himself the presenter of many an 80’s kids TV show. Lovely chap. My gorgeous fiance was a contestant on one of his shows which was basically What’s My Line for kids. In this case “collecting lightbulbs” was the hobby in question. We had a little chat and a laugh about it. He asked if the collection still exists. “Yes, I believe it does”, I replied. “Well hang onto it, it will be worth a few bob soon” he says.

It’s good to know we’ve got a nest egg to fall back on.

Ventriloquism On The Radio?

Today I arrived at the theatre to work on a radio comedy show in front of a live audience.  Imagine my delight to discover one of the guests was going to be with 70s ventriloquist sensation Nigel De Saucie and his sidekick Nooky The Dog.  

We didn’t put a mic out for the dog and I kind of regretted it.  Sort of gave the game away to the audience.  I’m not sure if radio’s quite the right medium for ventriloquism anyway.  It’ll never catch on.

Diddy or Diddny?

A good colleague of mine called Nick notoriously asks a big hard rapper: 

“Would you like a cup of tea Mr Dogg?”.

I am excited to hear how his session with P. Doddy goes today.  Nick is threatening to slip in a reference to Ken Didd and his Doddymen.