Challenging times on the airwaves

The art of broadcasting:

You may or may not know that as well as writing this column I work for BBC Radio Manchester.

I’m a news reader and a reporter and I cover Oldham, Tameside and Stockport. It’s a fantastic job and I love it — but there have been a few knockbacks along the way.

When I started off I went for numerous jobs in commercial radio but no one wanted me. At one station in Wigan I rang up for feedback and the news editor didn’t pull any punches. He said, “Number one, I don’t know how you expect to work in radio with a voice like that. Number two…”

I said, “One’ll do thanks.” In the end I had to go for voice training which gave me more confidence and just took the edge off my broad Oldham accent, and I started to get a bit of work here and there.

Once I was allowed on the air I found the accent wasn’t the problem, it was my teeth. My weather forecasts became the stuff of legend, with an unfortunate Spoonerism of the term “patches of mist” featuring more than once. Getting the time right has also been a challenge. I once said, “BBC news in the North-West at midnight, I’m Kevin Fitzpatrick. It’s eleven o’clock, actually.” Nothing was quite on par, though, with a colleague of mine who recently read out a story about the “upcoming General Erection.”

While reading the news is fun, reporting is my forte and I’m known for my tough interviewing style. I was once questioning a guy live on air after he’d chosen to go on a Community Reparation Scheme where he would spend a day cleaning the streets instead of paying a fine after he got caught dropping litter.

I asked him what happened. “Well,” he explained, “I’d got a chip butty for my dinner and was eating it in the car and when I’d finished I just wound down the window and chucked the papers out.” I said, “Is that what you normally do?” He said, “Oh no, I normally have sandwiches.”

When broadcasting you should always imagine you’re speaking directly to one person. Your job as a presenter is to be interesting, engaging and entertaining. As a reporter, you have to be clear, concise and accurate, painting pictures with words as you bring your story to life.

Things often don’t go to plan but the listener should never know. Like a swan, the legs may be paddling frantically underneath the water but the programme should glide gracefully along the top.

I once crashed the radio car two minutes before the start of a strike by firefighters. But the show must go on so I had to pull myself together and commentate live on air as they joined the picket line and lit the brazier. I said, “It’s six o’clock and the firefighter strike is underway. They are now making their way out of the station . . . and they’ve just lit the brassiere.”

It was a fair size blaze so I’m thinking she must have been a pretty big woman.

Next week . . . The Art of Waving.