DON TRUSCOTT

One of the truly great characters in the old and early days of BBC Radio Nottingham. An honest, trustworthy, hardworking lovable man who sadly died all too young; at the age of 33 of cancer. I'm so glad that his old mate Alvin Lee, of Ten Years After, who also came from Nottingham and had his first amps built by Don, was able to invite him down to the rock star mansion. It made Don's year. He could also drive an adapted radio car mini faster than any Formula 1 star. That reminds me. Don played me a 12 inch reel to reel of the band recording one of their albums. Can't recall which one it was. Where is it now? Don was trained as a music tape editor for BBC Radio Three, as now is. He was also an extraordinarily gifted sound man. Miss you, mate.

RADIO TRENT AND THE HANGOVER CURE

Coming soon!!!

TOM CRUISE and the $100,000 bet.

This is about a bet on the boxer Evander Holyfield.

MEETING STANLEY KUBRICK

Stanley Kubrick was/is one of the world's finest film directors. But a very shy person who avoided the flash celeb culture that we inhabit, although he sat right at the very top of the tree. You want to know more?

HOLLYWOOD STARS IN MY EYES

Hollywood comes a callin' from St. John's Wood, London. Or was it the Red Lion in Mayfair? Bit of both, really. I had done a long GMTV shift and presumed the call was a wind-up. How wrong could I be?

DERMOT MURNAGHAN AND THE TAXI AND THE LUNCHTIME STRIP CLUB

Coming soon.

TINA BAKER - UK SOAP QUEEN - IN BASQUE AND STOCKINGS

Coming soon

VIV STANSHALL

Trevor's Friday night programme attracted a vast range of guests. Among them was Viv Stanshall, straight from some Nottingham stage. As Trevor started to introduce the radio people Stanshall interrupted saying: 'I'm too heavy. I have to sit down.' He did, and proceeded to provide amusing entertainment. It was the best show on radio. As Trevor points out in his blog, not a lot of people knew that. I was the Friday night reporter, alternating weekends with Simon Cole, now incredibly important in news management at Sky. After laughing myself stupid and waiting for the guests to depart I wandered through to the control room where a worried looking Trevor was busy doing something with that evening's tape, a legal requirement that also allowed either Tom Beesley, the manager, or John Bright, the Programme Organiser, to listen at their leisure. There had been a helluva lot of swearing on that night's programme. Although no one had rung in to complain, Trevor was worried about his job. 'The managers don't listen, do they?' I asked, confident in the knowledge that had they done so that night they would have called to complain. 'No,' he replied. 'And they're not going to get a second chance, either.' He was bending over several hours worth of tape. It was sitting on a massive magnet used to recycle tapes. Taking it over to one of the main tape players he listened carefully on headphones before commenting, with a broad smile: 'Oh dear, yet again the machine's failed to record the programme.' The presenter was right(in Trevor's blog): he did go far in broadcasting.

TREVOR DANN

Here's a link to one of the still bright sparks of British radio: TREVOR DANN. I'll put his blog on later so he can tell you about phone ins. Trevor was the one and only General Reporter on BBC Radio Nottingham. The newsroom had about fifteen members, a news editor, deputy, the rest being producers and reporters. Ok, if you are bored, here's Trevor's phone in blog story, courtesy of The Radio Academy. Now, back to Trevor. This musician comes in, Trevor got the musos, we got the rest of the stuff. "So, what's this guy got? I ask at lunchtime.' 'Don't know,' replies Trevor. 'He wouldn't give me his real name so I refused to interview him.' Nice one. We were all 22 at that time and a very exciting time it was to be in the new fangled local radio. Plus, Nottingham was something of a buzzy place - still is, so I gather. I was going to say it's now the drug capital of Britain until an undercover police officer friend of mine told me that this title now belongs to Cornwall. Why? The kids down there have bugger all to do. Enough for now, great Azimov film on: I, Robot. Wanna watch. Tera.

DEAD SERIOUS

Okay. Looks like fun so far. We all know journalists rank either just above or below estate agents, and you can't get lower than that, can you? I would ask one question. How many estate agents have died doing their job? I know one very clear, very newsworthy answer. No others, I'm afraid. How many journalists? You try and work it out. I have more than twelve friends who have been murdered, either by militias or by the state. One was even killed by an ordinary murderer. I don't mean those. The ones I am referring to are the men and women killed for reporting on the world as it is. Does it worry me today that they died? After all, that was a long time ago, ish. Yes, but why does it not worry many more people? It angers me that these people are so easily forgotten in our celebrity obsessed culture. I raise a hat and a glass to those friends who never reached the age of 30 - 40 - 50 - 60. Serious point over. You, and I, ought to remember that some of these characters were the most fun people to be around. They enjoyed life. That, only makes their early death more sad.

A GREAT DAY OUT

Only 21 and had to turn them down. They offered me the job but in those days a trainee journalist was "indentured" to a newspaper. Those indentures were damn near unbreakable. Unlike the falsies I was already wearing in my mouth thanks to rugger and soccer. They broke at a moment's notice, usually at the most embarrassing time. So it was to be another year before I made my way back ready to take a job in the exciting world of local radio. Yes, it was exciting and rather rare. A little different to the days of podcasting, MySpace and YouTube.

Before Day One

First interview at BBC Radio Nottingham. I was working for The Lincolnshire Times and had - always have had - a great broadcasting voice. My news editor pushed me off to the place his son in law was running as News Editor and we met up down the local. I had so much booze poured down me that I had to ask permission to leave the one and a half hour interview with the manager Colin Walters to go to the loo. A sign of times to come. The news editor, Tony Cook, had a famous test: new journos had to get drunk and then read the news while listening to the playback head through headphones on one of the big tape machines. That meant hearing back what you had read moments earlier. Not the easiest of things to do while sober. Oddly enough, it was one of the finest newsrooms I have ever worked in. And work we did. Great fun too. Never seemed to notice that the best years of my life were slipping by as I worked nearly every night and every other weekend.

Still Piddling About

Watched HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU this evening with Nick Robinson. Well done Nick for not hiding the baldness and for wearing the specs. I trained Nick while working as a film director at Newsround. He also got us banned from using those new fangled devices - mobile phones. I'd swiped them from Main News and Nick walked through the newsroom, ear and mouth glued to the bloody thing, straight in front of Chris Cramer, my former boss and head of Home News. Sadly, the man was too sharp, knew exactly how this Newsround trainee had got a BBC phone and had Newsround banned from filching them ever again. By the way, what the hell happened to these mobile telephones? Did they ever take off and get used by the general public? Did they become smaller? If you see one of the original ones produced by Vodafone you'll recall they looked like an old-fashioned gents urinal.

First Story

I nearly started yesterday. Then had second thoughts. There is so much I want to say but the process of putting it down in order is worrying me. I have the strangest feeling that once the first story goes down I am going to witness a flood of memories. I'm not sure I want to experience that right at this moment.

Where Do I Start?

Difficult one. So, where do I begin recounting all these millions of memories. I should add that most of them are happy. I'm using this to run through a lot of great joy. But, dear blog reader, some of them are not at all happy. Some of the people that I met en route were strange characters who went on to cause great pain and distress to many people. Yes, and several of them are dead. Don't worry, quite a lot survived and became extremely wealthy. I imagine you would want to know about the famous names. Yes, there are many of them although not all were met on the BBC ladder, so I shall be sparing about them.

My Life in the BBC

This is exactly what the title would suggest. I joined the BBC at the tender age of twenty two and stayed working with it freelance/staff/freelance until three decades later. If I had had the sense to remain staff I would now be retired with a full pension, although I would probably have had to suffer many years of terminal boredom. From where I stand right now I would have happily gone through that. So much for hindsight.