Back in Beanoland...
Last night we took the show to Dundee to our Soundtown school, Baldragon Academy. It was a good experience and I was really happy with the way it went.
I had been thinking for the past week about ways to involve the pupils in the show. Initially the idea was to have them pick the music, but my fear was that we would end up with an hour of indie bands enjoyed by teenagers but end up alienating our core audience which is.... well not teenagers anyway.
My 'brainwave' was to have the sixth year pupils engineer and produce the show and give Paul a night off. Well not so much a night off but have him just stand around in the background drinking tea and watching while someone else does all the hard work. ( If I was a cruel man I'd be tempted to say "No change there then!" but I'm not and he does work incredibly hard every other night.)
Besides, Paul got the worst job of the night which was to tell me at 6:59:50 that the texts and e-mails were down and we would possibly doing a live request show without any requests! For our junior radio staff it was a lesson in the most difficult part of the producer's job ...handling your presenter.
Thankfully, with a combination of our technology, the school's computer, a teacher's mobile broadband and Paul's hotmail account we were able to get access to the all important texts and e-mails, which were expertly delivered by the team from Baldragon.
The Soundtown project has been a big success with several of the pupils applying for media courses after getting hooked on radio in the past year. I wonder if they would be so keen if they saw the less glamorous side of the job.
After the show, Paul and I were booked on the 7:50 back to Glasgow. Dundee's best known chippie was shut and the only eating option near the train station was a kebab shop. He stood guard on the CDs while I nipped in to get the tea.
He did make me ask for a receipt for £2.50 in a kebab shop though which drew some funny looks.
I'm also willing to bet that eating pakora on a bench at the train station is not how our Soundtown pupils imagine we glamorous radio presenters round off our evening.
