Once more unto the Bank Holiday weekend….

THE GROVELLING APOLOGY

Yes, I know, I have a poor posting rate for my blog at best….

Yes, I will try harder…

The two 14 hour days this week knocked me out of kilter a bit 🙂

THE POINTLESS RAMBLE

The Teenage Fanclub album is sounding even better tonight… (Feck! I left the Eels album in work, must remedy that for the weekend.)

THE BEST THING?

One of the sweetest things about doing the breakfast show with Ruth? Bank holidays off… Sounds a bit sad and in reality it is but for those tortured souls who work in our little corner of the media they are a mostly rare commodity indeed.

Having done this as an actual paying gig for the last 13 years this is the first time I’ve had guaranteed bank holidays off EVER! It’s just a given thing – because you work fewer hours during a normal week you automatically give up rights to little things like bank holiday weekends, Christmas, New Year…..

Breakfast shows are always the exception to the rule (hard working souls that they all are!!!) and I always hated the lazy big headed turnips for that very reason. Like everything else in life your perspective changes slightly upon becoming one of those very turnips.

This weekend will be our second official BH off and it is a sweet wine at the end of a long fermentation indeed!!! (Think that reading Sideways has made me wine crazy, think I might need a drink this weekend.)

THE SHOW

As far as the show goes for the week just gone we had a bit of a nightmare trying to record a phone interview from the States with a well known superstar. Not with him personally I hasten to add (we never actually got to talk to him in the end) but with his American PR people who, I swear, weren’t able to dial an Irish landline to hook us up to the aforementioned superstar despite having it explained to them in great detail five times. Ruth and I had the studio for limited time and after 40 minutes we just gave up and went home..

Our “blink and you’ll miss it” appearance on ID on RTE 2 on Tuesday evening was great (even if we were both quite a lot frazzled from the long day.) Laura was as absolutely lovely as she appears onscreen, shame you missed the long fan rant we had before we went on about the Barenaked Ladies though…

TV is a strange oul medium though… Had 15 inches of make up plastered on me as usual (got made up next to RTE News queen Eileen Dunne, a strange and intimidating experience) – my lovely wife said it made me look 10 years younger onscreen and was desperately disappointed when I didn’t wear it home… 🙁 My grey patches in my hair even looked like highlights!!

The studio they film in is about the size of my living room too! One half is the set you see from The Den earlier in the day and then in the evening they swap the cameras round and hey presto – ID! Lovely folk – really good vibe…

REAL LIFE

Busy work week but did manage to make it out to lunch with Ruth and the missing part of our old Three Muskateers act Dusty Rhodes. People still to this day text and mail in asking where he is so gather round gentle reader and I shall tell all.

These days he’s the head honcho of pretty much the only successful production house making syndicated Irish radio programmes Digital Audio Productions. If you’ve ever heard Top 40 Oifiguil na hEireann, Backstage, The Buzz, Giotai, Net Nanny or the one I produce Untitled with David O’Doherty on your local station then Dusty is where they come from. One day you just get tired of being the monkey and want to be the organ grinder…

My birthday is looming large (thankfully I don’t get freaked out by numbers ever and if turning 30 didn’t freak me out then 32 sure as hell isn’t going to either!) and, for various reasons, this coming weekend will be the only chance I get to celebrate it with friends in Dublin. I have modest plans – a few drinkies in the nice quiet pub I mentioned earlier in “Why I’ve finally succumbed to being a media phony…” with the chance of us all heading to a karaoke place I know. A few more light beverages until the wee small hours and then…. Ah feck it, we can’t plan everything, but no traffic cones this time.

Yeah, if anything interesting, noteworthy or just downright scary happens I’ll keep you updated.

Disconcerting moment of the week? Went to visit my son’s new school today (we’re moving before the Summer) and brought him in to meet the principal. Lovely guy, very friendly yet authoritative, mid 50s, had a great chat about all things concerned, only late on reveals that he’s a listener and had recognised my voice. After years in the gulag that is night-time radio I will NEVER get used to people recognising me, least of all authority figures…

As for work tomorrow, Bank Holiday Friday, we have a cunning plan… Everything is already prepped for next Tuesday’s show so once 9 bells tolls tomorrow morning Ruth, David and myself are out of there faster than Jim McDaid can say it’s his round 🙂

Peace and fÂŁ$&*ng,

R