Christmas Cheesecake and Microphones

Come down to The Wrygarth on Wednesday, they said, we've something going on.

It soon became clear that what was going on was 'The Phil White Show' from Radio Humberside. It's a good job the front car park of our local, The Wrygarth Inn at Great Hatfield, is of a size to back in its travelling studio. I never did ask mine hosts, Ray and Sandra Thompson, if they'd measured it beforehand.

Phil White has been travelling the region for nearly a year doing outside broadcasts from out-of-the-way places and fascinating venues. As he maintains, there's always something of interest to fill his week-day 2.5 hour programme. He should know: by Christmas he'll have reached his 250th.

On a wet and very cold Wednesday, though, he and his two techies were pleased for the comfort of the Inn - if not for a handy manger, for the heat, the coffee, and the superb desserts Ray laid on as tasters. Ray doesn't merely own the pub, he's a highly qualified chef. Believe me, the Christmas Cheesecake was fought over.

Yours Truly in front of the Xmas Shelves

I'd been invited to chat about the Torc of Moonlight trilogy, for sale in the pub's shop, and was intent on discussing the background to Celtic water deities still recalled in the folklore of villages in the area, but it started by being a cabaret spot about Did I come here often and why I was on lime & soda, which rather wrong-footed me. Anyway, if you're desperate you can listen to my Six Minutes Of Fame via the BBC iPlayer HERE (starting at 45mins) which will be archived off-line mid-January. I have a feeling, though, that you'll need to be in the UK to listen as it needs a sign-in.

Of course, no writer worth their salt would pass up the research opportunity of such an occasion, and before the programme went live to air I collared one of the techies and asked nicely for a tour of the bus. 

The rear part is a relaxation area, both for Phil and the crew, and to conduct interviews, and is covered in memorabilia collected during the making of past programmes. The studio section, a mini version of those at Radio Humberside's HQ in Hull, is set just behind the driver's seat. As can be imagined, it is a bank of monitors and trailing wires with a single chair and a mixing desk. An aerial at the rear of the bus picks up the wi-fi signal from Phil's microphone, pushes it through the studio set-up, and via the dish on the roof is bounced off a satellite - currently somewhere above South America - to their HQ in Hull to be broadcast. 

I didn't understand half of it, but found it fascinating to be taken through the process. Will I use it in some future fiction? Never say never - which was why I asked for the tour.

We’d like you to come on the radio…

It’s the sort of telephone call that sets the heartbeat rising and the palms sweating. ‘Of course,’ I hear a calm, professional voice say. ‘I’d be delighted.’ In my other ear is a fearful woman screaming ‘Are you mad?!’

But of course, writers are. I’m on a deadline with my own work (mornings) and a deadline with client work (afternoons), but the entire day disintegrated because of eight minutes on air. I was asked out of the blue because the radio station, local BBC – let me not suggest that this was national network – was airing figures from Nielson Bookscan that UK paperback sales had dropped 25% in the last year. Was it due to the rise of ebooks? They needed someone who read them and the writer they had initially called had passed on my name.

I thought I’d be chatting with a small group, but no, it was me and a bookshop manager. Oh dear. Clearly this was expected to be a spectator, or at least a listener, sport. I spent the entire morning pulling together figures, sounding out other authors who had ebooks both via indie upload and publisher’s upload, and drinking far more tea than was good for me.

Tuning in to the station fifteen minutes before it rang so as to get a feel for the presenter’s stance, I found myself listening to a heated argument about selling cigarettes in brown paper packaging in an attempt to cut teenage smoking rates. Is this what I was letting myself in for? Before my slot came an exchange about the deaths of race horses at the country’s prestigious meetings which was so vitriolic that it extended beyond its time. Did people really want all this confrontation across their lunch hour?

I decided they didn’t, or at least I didn’t and, while my shadow was sitting in a corner with her head in her hands, I started playing the interview for laughs. And we did have a laugh, mostly at the presenter's expense, which is good radio, I guess. Me and the bookshop manager got on very well. Why wouldn’t we? We both want our readers to enjoy their purchased books, whatever form those books take. That’s what it’s all about, enjoyment.