JZ's Diary
Head of 成人快手 Radio Scotland, Jeff Zycinski, with a sneak preview of programme plans and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of his life at the helm.
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Goodbye SoundTown
Our third SoundTown project - this year in Elgin - has come at an end. There was a big final event in the town on Saturday and you may have caught some of the action on the Janice Forsyth Show.
In September we'll start afresh in Kelso and that means we'll be installing the studio facilitiesin Kelso High School in the coming weeks.
We started the SoundTown project three years ago in Dalmellington and in that time we have discovered a lot about working with schools and communities and about the expectations of children and teenagers.
We've also heard what those young people think of the 成人快手 and the kind of services we ought to be delivering in the future.
Just about every department in 成人快手 Scotland takes part in the SoundTown project over the course of the school year. The 成人快手 Scottish Syyphony Orchestra, for example, have been involved right from the start.
It's different from the kind of outside broadcasts where we arrive in a town for one day and leave a few hours later. SoundTown allows us to build relationships and make friends.
One day we'll revisit our various SoundTown schools and see what has become of the pupils we worked with. Perhaps some will be forging their own careers in the media or within the music business.
Unless we've put them off for life!.
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Dirty Dishes
One downside of the heatwave this summer is that it plays havoc with our technology. We tend to design all our outside broadcast kit with the assumption that it will be probably be cold and raining most of the year, so weeks of blazing sunshine can have unforseen consequences.
Today, for example, we had to cancel two events because the satellite dish on one of our outside broadcasts vans developed a fault. I'm told some gizmo in the centre of the dish actually melted. It might have been a rubber band, for all I know. As bad luck would have it, all our other OB vans were in different parts of the country andso our production teams had to make other arrnagments.
For that meant a mad dash from the Crinan Canal to the studios here in Glasgow. Luckily the team had pre-recorded some material from the location to provide a little bit of local colour to the programme.
Meanwhile Vic & Bryan were supposed to be having a in Tarbert, complete with live music from . Instead, producer Barbara Wallace retained the outdoor feel of the show with a live performance in the 成人快手 car park in Glasgow. The band set up on the steps outside my office and a good time was had by all.
I'm told that all the technical problems have now been sorted. And hey...here comes the rain.
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Karen Hits The Roof
The light smattering of rain didn't dampen Karen Dunbar's plans for a Gala Day here at Broadcasting House in Glasgow. In fact I thought the rain would give that authentic Scottish atmosphere.
This was Karen's last day in the hot seat of Studio 10 as her month-long run of Summer Supplements came to an end. There were tears, laughter and even some cheerleaders. Meanhwile Karen was crowned as the Gala Day Queen and changed into suitable attire to meet some of the listeners who had applied to be part of the fun.
I went along to one of our conference rooms which leads on to a roof terrace at the back of the building. Karen made a big entrance and had perfected the royal wave as photographers and autograph hunters surrounded her.
I got talking to two ladies from the Vale of Carron Rotary Club in Falkirk. They told me they had set up a breakaway Rotary Club because the original club wouldn't admit women as members. Who knew there was such militancy going on in the genteel world of the Rotary luncheons?
I was tempted to get my photograph taken with the cheerleaders, but I could just imagine that being used against me in a forthcoming News of the World expose. Rooftop Romp for Beeb Boss.
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The Write Stuff
Many years ago I attended a night-class in creative writing which was being taught by Archie Hind, the author of . There were about twenty of us in the class which was held once a week in St. Mungo's school. Mostly we competed for time to read aloud our short stories, poems or extracts from epic novels. Everyone was very nice about everyone else's work and the closest we got to constructive criticism was when one of the older classmates told you to speak louder. The best bit of the night was when Archie himself told stories about his life and sometimes he could lead us up the garden path with a complicated saga which turned out to be a very long joke. He spent twenty minutes one night telling us how he once, on foot, tried to trace the source of the River Clyde until he found himself following a small stream up the side of a mountain and then the stream became a narrow burn and then just a trickle of water coming from an old dripping tap.
"I thought about turning it off, " he said, deadpan, "but then I decided I'd better not."Of course, creative writing can mean all things to all people. On the first night of our class, a young chap excused himself after half an hour when he realised that this was not where you would learn about calligraphy.
Anyway, I mention all this because 成人快手 Radio Scotland has two initiatives on the go at the moment and both involve the creative writing. Have a look at the details of our Raw Challenge or else our search for new comedy writers.
There are no night classes involved and you don't even need a fancy pen.
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On Your Bike
Listeners may have noticed that two of our presenters - and - have developed a sudden obsession with bicycles and are currently puffing and panting their way across different parts of Scotland. This is all very well, but it makes me feel very guilty every time I park my car in the garage at home and see my new bike hanging there on the rack with the tyres still so new that they still have those little nipples of rubber on them.So much for good intentions. I bought that bike a few months back but a couple of weeks later the front brake developed a terrible squeak and, well, I never got round to sorting it.
Yet I used to be such a keen cycylist and still have the scars to prove it. I have a little dent on my chin from the day I went head over handlebars while speeding along the little country road between Monifieth and Barry. My sister - who was a hundred yards behind me - came rushing to my rescue with the comforting words "look at all that blood...there'e a huge hole in your chin...I can see right through!"
Then years later, the bike was my only means of transport as I tried to woo a girl in Prestwick. Trouble was, I lived in the east end of Glasgow. I set off very early one morning, cycled down the A77 and left a box of Milk Tray on her doorstep. Then I turned around and headed home. I remember getting to Kilmarnock and thinking this wasn't the best idea I'd ever had. By the time I got home - late that night - I was shaking and dehydrated and spent the next three days in bed.
Ah, but the joys of the open road. I do envy Tom and Lesley. Well, just a bit.
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Back To Work
So, I go away for a fortnight's holiday and return to discover the entire 成人快手 has been again. I wasn't sure whether I'd still have a desk to sit at when I turned up for work this morning, but I managed to bluff my way past security and bumped into in the corridor outside studio G10. She's been presenting the mid-morning programme during July and says she's just getting into the swing of it and this is her last week.
I'd spent the weekend in Inverness finalising plans for my move north next month and touring the building site that will be our new home in December. That was fun. We got to wear hard hats and walk up planks of wood into the shell of what will be a neighbour's house. All going well we should have great views across the city and as far as the Kessock Bridge and the Black Isle. Meanwhile we'll be staying in a house we've rented on the outskirts of town. It's unfurnished at the moment so we made do with airbeds this weekend. I don't know if you've ever tried to sleep on one of those...it's like balancing on a blancmange.
It was a busy weekend in Inverness, what with the Highland Games in full swing. Not that we went to the games. Well, if you've seen one caber being tossed... Instead we parked by the River Ness and listened to Vic & Bryan's live from Anstruther. This week they were joined on the road by our other dynamic duo, Colin & Justin and, by all accounts, shook hands with just about everyone in the town.
Meanwhile, back in Glasgow today, I attend the monthly meeting of our Radio Drama team and discuss the new plays being produced for Radio 4, Radio 3 and 成人快手 7. The range of output is impressive and our team seems to have developed a strong reputation for adapting detective stories - Sherlock 成人快手s, Rebus and the The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. It's my aspiration to have more drama on Radio Scotland and we're building that in to our plans for the next year or two.
Last thing this afternoon is a meeting with the Editor of land, Stewart Easton and our trails producer Ken Lindsay to discuss the promotion of GMS next month. We're changing the line-up of presenters and it seems like a good opportunity to give the programme a bit more profile on the station. One of the difficulties of trying to "sell" a news programme, however, is that you can't trail the specifics of the content - not unless you have a crystal ball.
So listen out next week to hear what we came up with.
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Summer In The City
It doesn't seem that long since I was building igloos in the back garden and now here we are in midst of a heatwave with experts predicting that Scotland will have record-breaking temperatures this week. Driving across Glasgow tonight I noticed that some jolly pranksters had decided to open a few hydrants and create roadside fountains. What fun. Unless of course their house catches light tonight and firefighters have to tackle the blaze with water pistols. Killjoy? Who, me?
Anyway I have to thank Tom Morton for reminding us that not every part of Scotland is in the grip of a heatwave. I was listening to Tom present his show from Shetland yesterday afternoon as he described the dreich weather and the "fog or sea-mist" that was engulfing the islands. No luck, Tom! Moments later he passed on a message from his producer in Aberdeen who had told him it was "a scorcher" in the granite city. It was certainly roasting in Clydebank yesterday as we sought refuge in a cool, dark cinema to watch . It wasn't bad - a bit long, perhaps - but what struck me was the overtly religious symbolism of the whole movie. Lots of references to Superman as a "god" and " a saviour" who had been sent to Earth by his father to show us the light. Even the imagery of Superman ascending to the heavens had the look of a painting. I'm surprised there's not been more a fuss made about this.
Anyway, back to the heatwave. In the car tonight I was listening to Bryan Burnett present Summer of Song and boy am I glad we decided to extend this programme beyond its original run of ten weeks. And tonight, as a joke, Bryan played a snatch of Bing Crosby singing White Christmas. You know, it actually made you feel cooler justing listening to it. Maybe we should make a policy to play songs about snow when the temperatures soars. After all, no one ever want to hear them in December.
Or maybe the heat is finally getting to me.
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Chased In Lancaster
So we're back in Scotland after our week in Devon. We spent last night in for no other reason than it looked from the map like a good place to have a break from the drive home. A bit of good luck, as it happened, because Lancaster turned out to be a really beautiful town and well worth a visit.
In fact we were lucky with the hotel too given that we'd booked the cheapest family room in one of those places just at the junction of the M6. This gave us access to the swimming pool and gym and then we discovered the hotel backed on to the still waters of the River Lune. In the evening sunshine it was all very pretty - chidren swimming, people on canoes, horseriders on the footpath - and though we knew the big ugly motorway was nearby you couldn't see or hear it.
Later we went for a drive into town, parked by the river and then found a secret stone stairway that led all the way up to the castle and priory. Only the oldest Zedette wanted to come with me and I think she began to regret this decision almost immediately. I wont say it was steep but I did wish I'd packed my Spiderman outfit and suction cups.We reached the summit and explored the outside of the castle. We would have lingered longer but then we found ourselves being chased by a elderly man in one of those motorised scooters. I'm not sure, but I think he may have been scootering under the influence of alcohol. He was shouting all sorts of threats and punctuating these with some top swear words and no matter how fast we tried to walk around the castle we could hear the buzz of his scooter getting closer and closer. It was a bit like being chased by a drunken Dalek.
We made our escape back down the stone stairs and hurried back to the Tardis, er, car. Then this morning we were back on the road, listening to a strange quiz on 成人快手 Radio Lancashire in which they gave you the ingredients of a dish and you had to guess what it would be when it was baked. Alas, the signal faded and we had retuned to 成人快手 Radio Cumbria before the answer was given. You know I wont sleep a wink tonight trying to figure it out.
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The Zoo
We drove to Exmoor Zoo listening again to Judy Speirs on 成人快手 Radio Devon and a quiz involving two female listeners from different villages. Each were being tested on how much they knew about their own village and I take my hat off to whoever compiles these questions. Would you, for instance, know when the mobile library stops on the main street? How about the name of the new Vicar? Or who edits the community newsletter?
Well these contestants knew just about every answer and at one point the quiz itself dissolved into a discussion about community issues. Finally it was a mobile library question that caught out one of them but she sounded far too well brought-up to be disappointed. It's how you play the game and all that, even though the loser was branded a "village idiot".
We got to the zoo through a series of single track roads. Now I know many people disapprove of zoos. My main problems with them is that I've spent too many hours peering into empty cages and vacant enclosures not realising that the creature that's supposed to be inside is either hibernating, dead or has been rushed into surgery because it's swallowed a child's lunch-box. I always think I spot something camouflaged in the undergrowth until someone tells me I've been staring at an old bucket.
was a delight. You actually got the chance to enter the enclosres and feed some of the animals. Ok, not the cheetahs or anything, but I did let a Wallaby nibble seed-clusters out of the palm of my hand and then I poked some leaves into the grateful jaws of a guinea pig. Eat your heart out David Attenborough!.
Then we jouneyed on to Lynton which is a beautiful little village perched on the top of a cliff with a funicular railway bringing tourists up from the shore. If you're looking for a place to have the traditional Devon Cream Tea, then Lynton is the place. It has so many cosy little tea rooms that you could actually stage a Cream Tea record-breaking event and still have somewhere different to go for supper.
I suggested this to Mrs Z but she was having none of it. I may have to make do with seed-clusters.
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Pirates In Ilfracombe
We had three gorgeous days on the beach at Woolacombe this week and I'd recommend it to anyone. When it's as hot as it has been this week you can almost imagine you're in Australia, thanks mainly to the number of Aussies who work in the local shops and bars and whose voices blare out of the lifeguard truck's loudspeaker. The town itself seems devoted to beach enthusiasts, with surfboards, bodyboards and wet suits on sale in every other shop.
I'm afraid I can't summon up the same passion for Ilfracombe which trades on its history as a Victorian seaside resort. We were duped into paying four quid to walk through the old tunnels that were carved out of the cliffside so that the ladies and gentlemen of yesteryear could enjoy the waters. We made our way through the tunnels with a sense of excitment and anticipation and then we arrived in the kind of landscape that used to feature in seventies episodes of Doctor Who. It was a quarry with waves. Well, having forked out good money to look at the place we couldn't very well just turn around and go back, so we spent a good ten or eleven minutes gazing at the rocks and then up and the cliffs and then down at the rocks again. Then we had some good luck: it started to rain.
We went back through the tunnels and past the girl who had sold us our tickets. I was going to give her a right good Glasgow glare but she looked so friendly and it dawned on me that she probably thought these tunnels and beaches were the eighth wonder of the world. I didn't have the heart to break it to her. For all I know she still believes in the tooth fairy.
So we made our way into the centre of the town and, like any British seaside town in the rain, it looked a bit miserable and delapidated. That's when I spotted the Embassy Cinema which was showing the new Pirates Of The Caribbean movie. We scampered inside and I have to tell you it was a real treat. I mean, the film was OK, but the cinema itself was superb. Tiny, but superb. Apparently it's just been refurbished and, get this, there was an usherette showing us to our seats! Also there was a curtain in front of the screen that opened and closed between the trailers and the main film. It was like going back in time.
Oh, and Johnny Depp was quite good too.
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成人快手 Radio Devon
成人快手 Radio Devon is our station of the week, although in this part of the county you can be spoiled for choice. We're able to pick up all the stations from South Wales as well as a local commercial station called Lantern -"playing the hits of the eighties, nineties and today!". Lantern has an afternoon quiz called "I'd Rather Be In The Pub" in which callers get to answer a string of questions but are only told how many they got right and not which ones. It can be a very frustrating listen.
Callers to 成人快手 Radio Devon tend to sound a little older than the pub-crawl crowd although, on Saturday afternoon, we heard a woman call in to describe her pre-wedding plans for a sophisticated girls' night out of "karaoke and cocktails". Later an elderly man phoned in to describe his teenage grand-daughter as "thirteen going on thirty". Now, to us listening in the car, this sounded like he was talking about her attitude to life, but I'm afraid the presenter got the wrong end of the stick and launched into dodgy discussion about the development of young girls' bodies.
Our favourite listen on 成人快手 Radio Devon is the mid-morning show presented by Judy Spiers. She seemed to share our own incredulity about the range of music she plays which, in the space of half an hour, included Love Shack, Sailing and The Laughing Policeman. She also has a sidekick called Danny who seems to lose the plot from time to time. At the start of one show she gave him a row for playing with a Gameboy.
It was interesting to hear Judy's take on the 成人快手 Scotland comedy, Still Game, which is on 成人快手 2 at the moment. She described it as a |Scottish version of Last of the Summer Wine - "Last of the Summer Whisky, I suppose" and said it was much funnier than the new Steve Coogan comedy.
Of course, we did all of this in-car listening because our plans to take the public footpath to Clovelly were thwarted by, well, the lack of a footpath. To be fair, there was a sigining indicating the direction we should go, but a few yards on there was another sign warning us that there was a bull in the field.
We took the car to Clovelly which meant parking outside a visitor centre which effectively acts as a turnstile into the historic village. It costs four quid a person to go through it and then you walk down the steep, narrow cobbled street, past the childhood home of until you reach a shop selling fresh fish and ice cream.
I'm thinking of doing the same thing at home. Perhaps I can persuade the neighbours to erect a gate at the top of the streeet and then charge people to walk thought it and admire the wondrous array of patio furniture and childrens bicycles in each garden.
Just a thought.
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Heading South
Two entire weeks of leave ahead and we're spending the first week in north. Devon in a rented cottage near . Of course the journey south gives me my usual chance to eavesdrop on dozens of other radio stations as we hurtle from one transmission area to the next. We have an overnight stay in Blackpool to break up the journey and, as we arrive on the seafront, 成人快手 Radio Lancashire is providing ball-by-ball commentary of a country cricket match between Lancashire and Yorkshire. You see how radio can add a touch of local colour to a holiday?
Blackpool is a strange place. When I was growing up in Glasgow, just about every other family spent the September weekend in Blackpool and came back with fantastic descriptions of the trams, the illuminations and the various fun-fair rides. I could only imagine it. Until about ten years ago, that is, when Mrz Z and I were returning from a wedding down south and decided to call in at Blackpool for a look-see. We walked up a street full of bed & breakfast places and chose one at random. I remember the landlord - a Fred West lookalike - congratulating us on our choice and boasting that he was one of the few proprietors who allowed people to eat fish suppers in the bedrooms. This, you understand, was supposed to be a good thing.
So tonight we took the children for a walk along the pier, ignored the obvious temptations of the hot-dogs stalls and had a ride in the dodgems. This was a bit pathetic because there were no other thrill-seekers and I had to take one car while the Zedettes shared another. I chased them around the circuit for what seemed like a couple of decades and then the attendant took pity on us and gave us an extra ride for free.
Next morning I was back at the wheel of the real car, heading down the M6, then onto the M5 and then north across country through Barnstaple. It all took a little longer that we had estimated and we had just enough time to dump our bags in the cottage, note with a thwack that the roofbeams are very low, and then head back out in search of a place to eat.
We found a local inn called The Hoops which had the same low-ceiling charm as our cottage. I'm destined to spend the rest of this week with concussion.
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The Headless Chicken
Back in the office today and my first meeting is with comedy producer, Margaret-Anne Docherty who talks me through her plans to promote Radio Scotland's shows at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.
"So remember how you offered to dress up as a huge chicken and walk around the streets giving out golden eggs?"
"Pardon?"
"you know...the big chicken suit...it was your idea.."Now I know my memory is not what it once was, but I think I would have remembered suggesting a career-ending bout of national humiliation. I really will have to stop mumbling in meetings. Truth be told I did suggest we use a giant chicken in our promotional photographs, building on the idea of "why did the chicken cross the road?" jokes as a link to our comedy. I'm quite certain I said nothing about getting into costume myself. Apart from anything else, I'm allergic to feathers.
Anyway, plans for Edinburgh are progressing well and this year we'll be working closely with 成人快手 7. I'm especially excited about the comedy show we're staging for children which will include the teenage talents of All The Milkman's Children, the comedy troupe from Paisley.
Meanwhile, we need some "Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?" jokes to get the ball rolling. I'm offering a special, limited edition, 成人快手 Radio Scotland 'bursting with new varieties" t-shirt to the top three joke suppliers.
Anyone want to pluck up the courage to make the first suggestion?
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The Radio Festival
I've been enjoying a heat-wave in Cambridge since Monday afternoon, attending the annual . It's a good chance to catch up on all the issues facing the industry and hear the view of people from commercial radio as well as my own bosses and colleagues at the 成人快手.
I even met up with fellow blogger, William Crawley, who presents programmes for 成人快手 Radio Ulster. He was boasting about his page impressions in a most undignified way. Sadly I did not have any facts at my disposal about the number of kindly souls who read this diary so naturally I just made them up.
The festival had many highlights including a very funny speech from the 成人快手's top man, Mark Thompson in which he laughed off the attacks from commercial radio by admitting that he was, indeed, Dr Evil and sat in a large chair in Broadcasting House stroking a white cat and sending his henchmen out to destroy his rivals. He joked that many of the senior executives in the commercial sector were double agents who are "working for us".
The following day we heard programme controllers from 成人快手 and commercial station reveal the secrets of their success . Paul Cooney, from Radio Clyde, made reference to "a resurgent Radio Scotland" when he talked about the competitive market, but he also took a swipe at the 成人快手 for paying too much for football commentary rights. He told the audience that Scotish football wasn't worth the money and there were many nods of agreement.
There was an inspiring session led by Mathew Bannister who talked about the importance of risk-taking and creativity and quoted everyone from Shakespeare to e.e. cummings. He gave us the behind the scenes story of his dealings with Chris Morris and recounted the uproar that ensued when Morris had gone on air with a spoof obituary of Michael Heseltine.
This had been my first ever visit to Cambridge and most of the festival delegates were staying in the small rooms usually occupied by undergraduates. Frankly I've seen more luxurious prison cells. But the town itself is simpy beautiful, with dreaming spires, punts on the river and everything you expect from the guide books.
The number of cyclists makes every foot-journey an adventure. Today we saw one elderly cyclist knocked on to the road as a group of Japanese tourists backed on to the road in their attempts to take photographs of the famous Mathematical bridge.
I wont tell you want the man said as be got back to his feet. It was lost in translation.
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The Last Laugh
The final day at the Radio Festival in Cambridge was all set to end with a few giggles and maybe a decent guffaw, but things didn't go quite to plan. The penultimate session was centred around the famous Cambridge Footlights, the university club that spawned talents such as John Cleese, Peter Cook and Rory McGrath.
Indeed Rory was there in the flesh and joined on stage by the current Footlights president Tom Sharpe (no, not the comic novelist, but a fresh-faced young student). The discussion got bogged down in notions of class and snobbery. I'm afraid young Tom rather lost the sympathy of the audience when he made reference to the "lower classes" After that his body language resembled that of a young boy trying to fold himself into invisibility.
Worse was to come when we were treated to a live performance by one half of a comedy foursome called The Cowards. As we all waited for punclines that never came I'm afraid I regressed into Glasgow Empire mode with an expression that colleagues told me was a mixture of bafflement and anger.
The day was saved by the final session in which 成人快手 Radio 1 presenter Colin Murray interviewed the legendary Tony Blackburn. The two of them seemed to display a mutual respect and Tony let slip that one of his old colleagues (called Dave) had recently been suggesting that they should both be back on Radio 1 because they "knew how to do it".
Tony dismissed the idea as ridiculous revealing that he was now in his sixties and that "Dave" was nearer seventy.
Cleary Tony has been thinking a lot about his age. He revealed that he had recently bought himself a new pair of headphones and realised that this would be the last pair he would ever buy.
"I plan to retire from radio at the end of the year, " he told the audience, "but not the end of this year. Maybe the end of 2030."
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