Fetish for lobsters

We are in a basement room in the Phoenix building. It’s coming up to 11:30pm. We’ve been broadcasting on Festival Radio for an hour and a half. Mike Bradshaw is ‘driving the desk’. This is a phrase I only encountered very recently, and it still amuses me. I’m sitting across the other side of the desk. In the passenger seat I guess. We’re presenting a phone-in show: The Agony & the Ecstasy. Mike is a gifted and seasoned broadcaster. I’m not. I’m winging it.

My nerves are disguised by the fact that I’m playing a very confident character: Dr. Devlin. He’s an American. An ex-astronaut turned porn star, turned self-help guru. I’m taking calls from listeners who make up ludicrous problems and then I answer them with a combination of bad ideas and faux new age platitudes. In between this Mike spins a mixture of old novelty records and soundtrack oddities. Sometimes he’ll mix music under the actual phone conversations.

Every time we do a show it feels like a leap into the unknown. Will people actually call in? Will I be able to think of anything funny to say in response? Will the whole thing hang together? The short answer is ‘sometimes’. Through working on Festival Radio I’ve met several people who are creating and presenting their own shows. Like me, most of them are winging it, feeling their way towards a sense of what works and what brings the best out of them. Also like me, most of them will still be working in radio thirty years. And most of them will still be close friends thirty years later.

Mike brings up a fader. It’s a female caller who claims to have a sexual fetish for lobsters. Will I be able to think of anything funny to say in response? Let’s find out…