Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Providing a social service |
| Disadvantages: |
Not paid |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
My friend, Simon, used to ask me to go and do shows on Hospital Radio with him in Birmingham. The building was almost deserted and looked as if in the daytime it might have something to do with school meals or the distribution of pencil sharpeners in the West Midlands.
There were shelves of programmes archived on tape and an interesting new computer system that could run the shows seamlessly with lots of prerecorded 'live' material even when the building actually was completely deserted.
As well as getting me to make up songs on topical issues at five minutes notice on air, Simon would do things like playing an interview wiith Uri Geller he'd recorded at the NEC, coming straight out of it with, 'So, Flame, what do you think of Uri Geller?'
If you're going to be put on the spot, ideally try not to do it live on the radio. I think I managed, 'Well, Simon - the world has many problems ranging from hunger to global terrorism, and so far as I know none of them are going to be solved by bending spoons.'
At the other end of the service, of course, are the poor old punters, lying there bored and listening in for requests and favourite tunes to help them while away the time.
To get those requests sorted, Simon would go travelling around the wards making notes, then collate the information, find the music, and put out the show.
What people may not commonly realise is that all this work is done voluntarily. There's no stretch-Limo or fan-club for the Hospital Radio workers. Indeed, people get better (or if they're unlucky they don't) but either way they don't form a loyal audience for long. Soon the listeners are completely different people. Not much point developing a memorable catchphrase like, 'Hello Mrs Jones. How's your Bert's Lumbago?'
What I noticed last time some of my bits fell off and I was in a ward was that sometimes people play music directly from the control box that is supposed to have headphones (run through a tube - not wires). This can be deafening. It's like someone with headphones on a train. You can hear the 'ticketta-ticketta' bits of the music really loudly. It's as if someone with a loud-hailer is whispering urgently into your ear so that all you can hear is them.
They might be anti-social old codgers but at least it shows that they use the service!
If you want to be involved in hospital radio try contacting your local station. The Birmingham one that my friend was involved with is based at Dudley Road Hospital but there isn't one 'phone number that will be right for everybody's region.
However, a Google search for 'Hospital Radio Contact' I just did shows that there are internet sites with contact details available online for each region.
Bear in mind that these activities are voluntary but there may well be opportunites to help produce radio programmes or even DJ them.
It's useful experience and, in the case of my friend, Simon, experience that led to some lecturing on how to make radio programmes, and one telly role in which he died of plague.
Plague - that's another thing bending spoons can't fix.
