Northern Exposure
It's been far too long since I was last in Kirkwall or Lerwick, but I've now established a monthly conference call with our man in the north, John Ferguson. John manages our community stations ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Orkney and ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Shetland from his base in Kirkwall. I was there in September and you couldn't walk ten yards down the street with John without listeners approaching him with a comment on the programming or a suggestion for a news story.
I spoke to John first thing this morning and he had clearly forgotten that I could listen to his programmes using the Listen Again function on the Radio Scotland website. I told him how I'd heard a recent community announcement about a new art class in Kirkwall and the appeal for people to pose as life models. You do feel you're eavesdropping on other people's business when you hear this sort of thing. Yet it's compelling.
Late last year I'd also spent a day at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Shetland and had been impressed with the new studios in Lerwick. I had once made programmes from the old ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ studios which, if memory serves, were located in a condemned tenement block. The new set-up seems to have given the station a new lease of life and our senior producer there, Caroline Moyes, is forever suggesting programme ideas and ways that other Radio Scotland producers can cover events in her patch.
Of course our afternoon presenter, Tom Morton, lives on Shetland and, when not in Aberdeen, he presents his programme from a studio attached to his own home. He's such an enthusiast for his adopted homeland. He once gave me a tour of Lerwick telling me how the local record shop was one of the best in the country, how the sports centre was top notch, how the Chinese restaurant was fantastic... I wasn't sure if he was trying to convince me or convince himself, but it was convincing.
On my last trip to Lerwick we were walking from one pub to, well, another pub when we got to talking about music and, in particular, the American singer-songwriter who recorded Marlena on the Wall. It became one of those frustrating episodes where neither of us could remember her name. It threatened to spoil the whole night and prevent us from discussing other weighty matters. Finally I was forced to call Deirdre Leitch a producer in Inverness who, it turns out, sits by her home computer waiting for calls like this. She gave me the name and, after tormenting Tom for another five minutes, I shared the information with him.
What a relief. We were then able to get on with our mission and, much later, forget our own names.
As for the singer? Well...I'll tell you tomorrow.
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