January, 1998 (continued):
Claire Paul was supposed to pick me up at 8:00 Thursday morning for the 90-minute drive from London to Cambridge, where the BBC seminar was being held.
At 7:50AM, I got a phone call from her husband, John. Claire had a bad case of the flu; instead I would be picked up by one of her presenters (i.e., disc jockeys), Jim Hawkins.
Although I felt bad about Claire’s illness, I looked forward to meeting Jim because it was his interest in my work that initially brought me to Claire’s attention.
At 8:00, I settled into an oversized chair in the hotel lobby to wait for Jim. At 8:05, the concierge approached me and said, “The gentleman who was supposed to pick you up has been in an accident, and the BBC is sending someone else to drive you to Cambridge.”
Later in the day I learned that this was inaccurate. What happened was Jim was stuck in traffic on the other side of town and realized he wouldn’t be able drive me, so he arranged for the BBC to send a driver for me.
When, using his mobile phone, he called the hotel to let me know, they accurately told him that I wasn’t in my room – I was in the lobby – and asked if he wanted to leave a message on my in-room voice mail.
No, he said, he wanted to give them a message to give to me immediately. The hotel operator then offered to take the message and have a note left under my door. Finally, in desperation Jim said, “No, look, you have to give him the message NOW. If I stay on the phone any longer I’m going to have an accident!”
It wasn’t until 9:00 that the driver showed up, and the seminar was scheduled to begin at 10:30. I slept almost the entire way; I foolishly had allowed myself to stay up too late the previous evening.
We arrived at 10:32, I ran into the offices of BBC Cambridge, I was escorted upstairs, introduced to the station’s managing editor, Nigel Dyson, and then hustled cross the hall to a meeting room where a couple of dozen editors and presenters from five BBC stations were gathered.
By this time I was fully awake, the attendees were very congenial, and we dived into the seminar…pausing only for a 30-minute lunch break before continuing to a bit past 3:00 in the afternoon.
Nigel finally pointed out that I had to return to London; otherwise I’d probably still be there, talking radio with them. I packed up my notes & tapes, and Jim Hawkins drove me back to London.
We left at 3:30 with the expectation that I would be back at my hotel by 5:00…thus giving me an hour to relax, eat and refresh before walking the couple of blocks to the Radio Academy session.
The traffic was slower than Jim had anticipated, however, and we reached the hotel at 5:35. This gave me barely 25 minutes.
My plan had been to eat yet another room service sandwich, but one usually needs to allow 20-40 minutes for the food to arrive.
I pushed “1” on the in-room telephone, Room Service answered, and I said, “I need a club sandwich up here in no more than 10 minutes; can you do it?”
To my shock & delight, they had it to me in eight minutes, allowing me to sit and ingest the protein (and raise my blood sugar level, which by this time was drooping) before going back downstairs to meet Jim.
The Radio Academy event was entitled “Stars, Who Needs ’Em?” and consisted of a panel session comprised of Chris Moyles, Steve Orchard, John Dash…and me. Riding herd on us was the panel leader, John Inverdale.
This turned out to be a very lively session, and the building management finally got us all to leave only by turning off the lights.
Yeah, that’s what happens when radio people get together and start talking about radio.
This also appears to have been an occasion on which I gave a witty reposte to a criticism from an audience member. Francis Currie — a 3-time PD Grad School attendee — emailed me to say:
“Congratulations on a great talk at the Radio Academy bash yesterday – and the put-down on the guy who said UK radio could learn nothing from US radio was a real gem.”
I do remember someone making the remark, and I do recall responding with some pithy, cogent reply.
Sure wish I could remember, though, what I actually said.
