A brush with mortality

Saturday was a big day for the Rileys. To be followed by another big day on Sunday.

On Saturday Jean and I were hosting a charity sporting dinner at Matt's school. 250 parents and friends were coming. I had organised the quiz, silent auction and guest speaker. Jean had sorted catering, the raffle, tables, money etc. As I said - a big day. Sunday was Free Radio's Warwickshire "Walk for Kids", one of our regular radio station charity walks. This was our "home town" walk too - and a bunch of friends were walking with us - and of course the station would be out in force to make sure all the walkers had a good time and raised lots of cash.

But first the Saturday charity dinner. Lots of early prep came to a halt at 11, as we settled down to watch the first Lions test.

Half time came, and Jean nipped out to pick up some last minute items for the dinner. She called from the car ".....lots of neighbours have the flags out - union jacks - we should put ours up....."

Now I realise the Union Jack is not quite the right flag for the British and Irish lions - but its the thought that counts. So, game paused, I went out into the garden. We live in a big house, with an even bigger garden. The flagpole was there when we bought the house, and we do stick a St Georges Cross or Union Jack up for big sporting events. I grabbed the flag from the shed and proceeded to hoist it. At this point it got stuck and I needed to go back to the house to grab a step ladder to untangle it.

Back with the ladder...... Just up a few feet ........ stretch up to grab the flag ......a gust of wind ...... slightly knocking me off balance ........ the stepladder shifts slightly as one of the legs sinks into a spot of soft ground ........ I lose my balance ever so slightly ......... I grab the flagpole to keep myself upright as I fall off the ladder....... I sink to the floor still holding on to the pole, only a few feet down........I realise I have a sharp pain in my forearm.......and I look up to see my forearm skewered on the cleat, the metal prong which you loop the rope around........I am well and truly skewered too, and have to physically lift my arm off the cleat as I get back up on my feet.

I then look at my forearm. It is completely ripped open, exposing tendons, muscle, bone etc. It's a truism in life that if you can see your insides, you are not in a good place. I was not in a good place.

That scene in The Terminator, where Arnie slices open his forearm - it was just like that, except there were no steel rods or cables exposed - just tendons and bones - I was mortifyingly human - and really exposed.

Not much blood though, I thought, as I gingerly grabbed my left arm in my right hand and walked quickly back to the house, hoping I wouldn't faint, or trip, as I went inside.

I shouted for Matt, and in I'm sure slightly overexcited tones asked him to call 999 and his mum "...I'm not in a good place here son..." I said, as I sat down, put a tea towel round my exposed flesh and thought of the many horrible outcomes that could befall me.

Jean got back in around 10 minutes. She looked as shocked as I felt. I've fallen off my bike a few times, incurring cuts and bruises, but this was something potentially far more serious, and we both knew it.

Keith and Kirsty were the paramedics who arrived shortly after. Keith an experienced, calm health professional. Kirsty younger, learning the ropes. Keith calmed me down and tested my fingers and wrist for damage.

Amazingly, there didn't seem to be anything wrong mechanically. In what must rank as one of the luckiest escapes ever, I appeared to have missed slicing anything important. I could squeeze, push etc - although actually being able to see the tendons moving was hugely unnerving. At this point I just looked away. "Right..." said Keith "...if you want, we can sew you up here..."

"Go for it" I said. And so Keith and Kirsty proceeded to put 16 stitches into my arm on my dining room table, in full view of my wife and son, at 12.30pm on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday afternoon.

Out came the "Gas and Air" so frequently given to expectant mums starting childbirth. You women have kept this secret from us blokes for too long! Within seconds I was high as a kite. We were laughing and joking with each other as the sutures went in - nothing had ever seemed as funny as falling off that ladder, slicing my arm open, leaving the flag half erected. I laughed so much we needed a second tank of the gas! Or was it because putting 16 stitches into a nine inch long wound just took so long?

1.30, and Keith and Kirsty were gone. I might have some strong views on how we organise and pay for the NHS - but I've never doubted the professionalism of those who work in its ranks - and Keith and Kirsty lived up to every ideal we like to imagine the NHS strives for - cool, calm, courteous, professional, and good. Life savers.

2pm - dosed up with codeine, I am contemplating what this means.

In the short term, it means I can get the charity dinner sorted, which Jean and I do, me through gritted teeth and more painkillers. Never has a fun evening seemed so long and arduous! We raised £12,000 though, to help rebuild a school in Christchurch in NZ devastated by their recent earthquake. Job done, we left just after midnight - as bone tired as we've ever been.

Sunday was our Free Radio "Walk for Kids". I was planning to walk it - as I have walked every one we have ever done so far. I was in no shape though, so Matt stepped in and did it for me. I did go along to cheer everyone off - and many of the real walkers must have looked askance at the tall chap in the official green jacket who looked like he was missing an arm! I will do it though, later in the Summer - I'm not going to have that blot on my copybook.

During that first two days, everyone I met, at the dinner and on the walk, told me I looked pale and shocked. And that's because I was - and I still am if I'm honest.

Given how tightly I was gripping the flagpole, completely unaware of the damage I was about to do, I was maybe half an inch away from tearing into muscle and/or tendon, severely damaging my left, dominant arm, causing me a lifetime of pain and inconvenience. More worryingly, I was also half an inch from tearing open my Radial or Ulnar artery. And that's what haunts me. I could easily have bled out, lying by a stupid flag pole, on an otherwise perfectly normal, boring Saturday, with no-one knowing quite where I was, my wife out doing errands, my son a few hundred yards away, watching rugby on the TV.

It isn't very often you come that close to your own mortality and live to tell the tale - but I did. That image, of me lying there, bleeding out, has been in my dreams for a couple of nights, but thankfully is receding. I will get over this, and will fully recover I'm sure. Writing this down and sharing it is part of that recovery process. But I understand just a little more now how folk can easily get post-traumatic stress disorder, even when people tell them how lucky they are to have survived a car accident, or industrial injury etc. it's the thought of what might have been, how close you came to something far worse, that lives on in your mind.

I do feel lucky, incredibly so. In fact, for an arch-rationalist, I did the unheard of on Sunday, and bought a Euro millions lottery ticket. I'll let you know if I win!

Quite how Jean, Matt and Alex (who came back from work helping set up for the Walk when Jean called her) coped with the blood and gore unfolding on their dining room table is beyond me.

Even more mortifying for me was the thought that had something terrible happened to me, Jean would have blamed herself for making the phone call about the flag. We had a heart to heart about that late on Saturday night.

So my three takeaways from my brush with mortality are:

1. You need to tell those you care about that you love them as often as possible.
2. You need to take care on ladders - and never get on one on your own if you can help it. There are thousands of serious accidents in this country every year, and dozens of deaths, from falling from height. I am glad I am one of the former rather than latter.
3. We all need to be grateful we live in a country where you can make a call, and in 15 minutes someone like Keith can come by and potentially save your life.

He's given me a bloody big scar though - I'm going to have to invent a more dramatic back-story than falling off a ladder.

Here are the pictures - take a deep breath.

Should we be worried about Apple

There's a lot of talk on-line about the imminent launch of "iRadio" or some such name for a new streamed music service from Apple. This follows fast on the heels of Google's "Music All Access" announcement

We've been here before of course - services like Pandora and Rhapsody in the states, and Spotify/last FM/We7 over here in Europe have been operating various forms of streaming music services for some time.

The concern being expressed is the impact of a launch of a streamed music service from someone with the market power of Apple or Google. Then there's the rumour that Amazon will follow suit! That's an awful lot of streamed music services, many of them from big players with lots of knowledge about us and our purchasing/browsing/music consumption habits.

The two issues I see are as follows

Will this plethora of services eat into traditional radio audiences?

Can they make money - and if so will this cannibalise traditional radio revenues?

Dealing with each in turn - I have said repeatedly that I don't believe customised, streamed music delivery is radio. It may, at the margins, take some consumer time away from radio consumption, but I believe it is much more likely to be a substitute for existing music consumption via CD/MP3 players or other devices. Pandora is the most entrenched service in the US, and whilst it claims to be "Radio" it isn't really - read this great analysis from Mark Barber to understand why - but even Pandora is only claiming a tiny fraction of the cume/TSL of traditional radio. Will more and more of these services grow TSL to streamed music - sure, to a degree, but cannibalisation of existing streamed services is more likely.

Of course I could be wrong - but even music intensive radio stations offer far more than a streamed set of tracks. Brand values, companionship, personality, interaction, news/traffic and other utility functions all make the user experience of listening to a radio station completely different in my view. And radio is ubiquitous, and free. The opportunity for listeners to consume streaming audio is also more limited, either because of the lack of proximity to internet access in certain places where radio is available, or just the cost if accessing on a mobile device. Radio has consistently faced challenges from other, newer media, but its ease of access, versatility and variety, information delivery and companionship features have consistently allowed it to co-exist alongside new entrants. I don't believe streaming music is an existential threat to that co-existence.

More critically - can these streaming services make money - and will this impact radio revenues. Well, a little bit of maths is in order here - so bear with me. A radio service listened to by 1,000 people in any particular hour could theoretically charge £2 for a 30" spot at prevailing commercial rates. So assuming 20 spots per hour (10 minutes) it could generate £40 of income for each 1,000 listeners. Or 4p per listener.

Apple is rumoured to have struck a deal with the major labels to pay them 0.16c per track played according to this article in Business Matters. Assuming 13/14 tracks per hour that's a 2c recording rights cost per listener per hour. Now that's just for the recording rights. Publishing rights are likely to double that cost to 4c per listener hour. That's about a 3p cost to Apple for every hour someone consumes their steaming service in UK currency.

So if that's what Apple are paying just for the music rights, and they also have to cover all of the infrastructure/technical costs of their service, run sales teams (as Pandora do I understand) and make a profit, they are going to have to generate a significant premium to the 3p they are already paying out every hour someone might listen to them.

Maybe 10p would cover everything and allow them to make a profit. But that's 2 to 3 times what traditional radio is making for every listener hour. And we are running 20 ad spot loads - could any streaming service interrupt its music for that heavy an ad-load - I doubt it. Maybe 5/6 ads tops I would think. So really they are likely to require spot prices getting on for 10 times more costly in terms of cpt to make their revenues stack up.

Ah, I hear you say - but they've got all this data, so can sell spots at higher value. Possibly - but Radio isn't a classified medium, so ads have to be made - and sold. And that's expensive. I can't see the Google ad model of text ads in search (or as pop ups on screen in you tube) being converted to audio-based streaming services.

Subscription might work, and certainly Pandora and others are trying this. I'm not sure if the labels would want even higher rates if subscriptions are involved, but this might be a way for these services to monetise their audience.

I just can't see the ad-supported business model though. They've got to sell all those ads, every hour, because they are being charged for every stream. And with Apple vs Google vs Amazon vs Pandora etc, the competition for ad revenues for this type of service will become pretty fierce pretty quickly.

Might this lead to massive downward pressure on radio rates. Well actually, the reverse might be the case - certainly these services will have to charge cpts much, much higher than we do - so maybe we'll get dragged up (!) It's worth also pointing out that a very high percentage of our income now comes from campaigns where sponsorship or promotion or brand advocacy is an essential part of the mix. A straight spot only campaign is becoming rarer on radio - and SPI/Brand Advocacy is pretty near impossible on a streamed service. So I think our revenue base can be largely protected - but for sure some advertisers will try streaming services, so we mustn't be complacent.

Will these services be disruptive - yes.

Do they spell the death-knell for radio - I don't think so.

Three Words

I wanted to find three words to describe the qualities of my mum.

The first is Stubborn. Not in any negative sense of course – but mum was stubborn in defence of her own interests, and those of her family.

Perhaps one of the three defining moments in mum’s life took place in the autumn of 1958, when she fell pregnant with me. Being a young, single woman expecting a baby in Ireland in the 1950s was not a comfortable position to be in. But she was stubborn in not wanting to marry my biological father. And she was stubborn in not wanting to give me up. So she put herself, and the rest of the Kinsella family it has to be said, through a fair bit of heartache leaving for Manchester, having me, resisting the British social services – every bit as bad as the Irish it seems – and persuading my grandparents to look after me while she began to build a life in Manchester. Looking back on it now, over 50 years ago, it took great courage, determination, and yes I’ll say it again, stubbornness, to remain true to herself and do what was best for me. I will always be grateful to her for that. I saw that stubbornness over and over again as I grew up, my mum fighting for me against a system in Britain in the 60s and 70s which seemed designed to put obstacles in the way of a working class kid, raised of Irish catholic parents, trying to grow up in northern England.

The second word could be love – but I wanted to use a deeper, more meaningful word to describe her relationship with my dad. Faithfulness comes closer perhaps, or constancy. Perhaps Steadfast captures it best, because without doubt the second defining moment in mum’s life was meeting Jim, in Manchester, back in the early 60s. What a lucky man Jim was, meeting such a wonderful woman – and what a lucky woman my mum was, meeting such a man as Jim Riley. I was doubly blessed to have such a powerful, courageous woman as my mother, and for her to have met such a warm, loving, selfless man as my dad, who treated me as his son from the moment he met me, and never wavered in his love for me or mum. The third defining moment in mum’s life was Jim’s own death, back in 1996, and that steadfastness remained with her long after his passing. There would never be another man in mum’s life – because Jim was the man she’d decided to share her life with.

The third word is sociable. My mum was quite the extravert in her day. She loved making friends – even to the end. I’d sit with her at Cubbington Mill, where she spent her final months, and whenever one of the staff members walked past, mum would chip in with a greeting and turn to me, to say, sotto voce, “she’s my friend you know”. She loved the fact her picture was in the paper recently, and one of the greatest sadness’s of her last year with us was that she wasn’t able to get out and see her friends in the way she used to do. I think this joy of life is a Kinsella trait – certainly many members of mum’s family are larger than life characters – and I guess you had to be pretty confident in yourself as one of six kids to get anywhere in No 6 Vincent Street in Dublin back in the 40s and 50s.

What would mum say now – how would she want her life to be remembered. Well, she’d want to say thanks to her mum and dad, Daisy and Peter, for everything they did for her. She’d want to send her love to her brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, especially Yvonne, who I know she came to view as the daughter she never had. She’d say thanks to all her friends, old and new, for making her life so happy. She’d want to tell me off for using so many tissues writing this eulogy, and finally she’d want to say a special thank you to Jean, for raising three grandchildren who were the light of her life.

Alex, Jess, Matt – she loved you more than words can say, and I know you loved her too.

If you three can be stubborn as she was in the defence of those important people in your life, as steadfast as she was in your love for your family, and as sociable as she was in remaining friends with all those who cross your path during your time on earth, Grandma will have passed on to you three of the greatest qualities life can give us. Thanks mum.

Speech to Coventry and Warwickshire Young Enterprise students

Capitalism ,  Private Enterprise  and the Free Market economy.

Call it what you will, it’s one of my passions in life, and I’m thrilled to be here tonight to see some of the next generation of entrepreneurs take their first steps along the road, I hope, to running their own successful businesses.

Young Enterprise is a great organisation.

In my view, schools don’t do nearly enough to encourage and promote the study of business, private enterprise, and economics, and so YE fills a much needed gap.

And why is business so important. Well, to answer that, you have to start by asking “where are we ranked in Britain on the ladder of human wealth?”

Well, we are one of the richest countries in the world, ranking 22nd out of 200 countries overall.  Given many of the countries below us have significant populations (China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil), the average Briton is probably in the top 5% of the world from a wealth perspective.  

So why are we so rich in Britain?

I believe there are three reasons, which have their roots in our rich history as a nation.

The first reason is the creation of Limited Liability companies. These allow you to invest in an enterprise, knowing that if all goes wrong, you will not be made to pay for all the debts of that company. That’s important, because if you thought that any company you backed could end up with its creditors chasing you for the company’s unpaid debts, and that you could therefore go bankrupt – you’d never invest in anything, especially anything risky, even if it had potentially high rewards. This concept of limiting someone’s liability just to the money they invest was a critical innovation that allowed risky enterprises to flourish after it was invented.

The earliest recognized company was the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands, chartered in 1553 in London with 250 shareholders – and the definition of  “Adventurer“ is a businessman who ventures capital – i.e. invests money. I love the fact that adventure and business are linked terms. And you can see why we needed limited liability. Putting ships to sea to explore strange lands to bring back exotic gems, spices etc – hugely risky – but potentially very rewarding. We needed a mechanism to let these explorers fund their adventures – and this was it.

Trade between nations flourished because of these companies. Great trading cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai sprang up because of these new found links

The second Innovation was the industrial revolution

This was a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the world. It began here in the United Kingdom, and then subsequently spread throughout Western Europe, North America, Japan, and eventually the rest of the world.

In the two centuries following 1800, the world's average per capita income increased over tenfold, while the world's population increased over sixfold. And Great Britain provided the legal and cultural foundations that enabled entrepreneurs to pioneer the industrial revolution.

The third innovation is the fact that the intellectual underpinning for the concept of “The Free Market” also sprang from the United Kingdom, with Scottish philosopher Adam Smith’s book “The Wealth of Nations” being arguably the first modern work of economics. Smith’s description of the invisible hand remains, today, the most powerful descriptor of how free markets work.

He said “......It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages...”

Whilst we rightly revere the english language itself, Shakespeare and the concept of parliamentary democracy as some of our greatest cultural exports, I would also say that the establishment of limited liability companies, the Industrial revolution, and the intellectual underpinnings of the Free Market represent a trio of British exports to the world which stand head and shoulders above anything else in terms of their effect on global living standards

So – we need business to maintain and increase our wealth – and we need you guys to be in business to carry that torch forward to the next generation, and to continue to create that wealth for us all to enjoy. So I want to spend the next few minutes talking to you, the finalists, to encourage you to think about making business your career.

Why should you choose business, and not become a doctor, teacher, architect, or any of the other professions your parents probably want you to pursue.

The first reason is – you just might not have a choice in the matter. If you have discovered that starting businesses and running them is your passion in life, you simply must do it.

I believe we must all strive to lead great lives – not just good lives or OK lives – but great lives. And that starts with passion. Only by pursuing your passion can you lead a great life, and if you are genuinely passionate about business and enterprise – we need you to pursue that passion at all costs for everyone’s benefit.  

As well as passion by the way, you need perseverance, resilience and a positive mental attitude. I think you need those three traits to lead a great life in whatever path you choose – but you most certainly need them if you are choosing the path of the entrepreneur. You won’t meet too many successful businessmen who aren’t passionate about what they do, give up easily, or who feel miserable most of the time.

The second reason why I’d encourage you to go into business is because it’s great, competitive fun. There’s much talk of the need for competitive sports in school. But not everyone is good at throwing a ball. However, collectively we can all apply ourselves to competitive enterprises. And that is what business is. The daily pursuit of competitive advantage over ones rivals.

O2 competes with Vodafone every day. Apple with Samsung, Coke competes with Pepsi. Lloyds competes with Santander; Free Radio competes with Capital FM.

And this rivalry has two effects.

Firstly, if you are competitive, it makes it stimulating to go to work – and I can tell you there are many supposedly “good” careers out there where you will not be stimulated every day. And secondly, it produces benefits for the consumer. Every day, in every great business, the people who work there are thinking of ways to outsmart their rivals – and that inevitably means thinking of ways to increase the benefits for customers – exactly as Adam Smith predicted back in the c18th.

The third reason to go into business is that it teaches you teamwork – and this is particularly why I think more emphasis should be placed on business in schools. You simply can’t build a great business alone – you have to be able to recruit, retain and inspire the people who work alongside you. That requires you to develop skills in emotional intelligence. Being able to manage teams, and inspire them to great things, is integral to business, and certainly gives me a thrill when I see it happening in my own company.

One other benefit of running your own business by the way is that you don’t have a “boss” to answer to – which for some people is reason alone to start their own firm.

Another reason is giving something back. Businesses don’t work in a vacuum. We are all part of society. And whilst I dislike the term “Stakeholder” and the increasing view from government that they can “force” businesses to be social partners, many, many businesses do engage in socially useful activities off their own bat – because they want to.

My company organises a series of charity walks each year. There’s one here – walking from Warwick to Coventry on Sunday June 23^rd, and it’s sponsored by this great University we are in tonight. There’s another in Brum, one in Wolverhampton and one in Worcester. Last year over 20,000 local people took part, and raised over £750,000 for local charities. We hope to beat that this year. It takes us a lot of time and effort to organise these – but we do it because we can, because we want to, and because it helps us help others.

Finally, you should go into business to make money.

Let’s be clear – being in business and being successful means making money. Money is the scorecard – and if you are successful you should expect to earn great rewards. And if you’ve created jobs for others, improved the lot of your consumers, and given something back to the community in the process – there’s nothing wrong in you enjoying material rewards too.

I don’t want to belabour the financial point – because, in Britain at least, discussing money is quite often seen as “not the done thing”, but it is precisely because the butcher or baker wants to make money that he offers us the ingredients for a good dinner. So we should all want these young people to make money – because by doing so they will make us all richer as a result.

And the end result of amassing great wealth quite often turns into the creation of huge social benefits. Just look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Two of the world’s richest men, who have not only pledged all of their money to a foundation working to alleviate poverty and illness – but they are busy persuading many, many other rich businessfolk to follow them in putting their money to good work.

Starting and running business is hugely challenging. Raising capital, dealing with banks, sorting out the legalities of it all, finding customers and suppliers, all difficult, all challenging, sometimes even frightening.

But it’s also one of the most exciting and important things anyone can do. Aspiring to lead a great organisation – like Richard Branson, James Dyson or Steve Jobs – creating jobs, creating new products and services is a worthy goal – in my book entering business is on a par with entering medicine, finance or law. Well done to all of you for achieving the goal of being here in tonight’s finals. You should all be rightly proud of what you have done so far, and I hope this experience has given you the appetite to “take on the world” by starting your own business. 

Snowmaggedon

Typically, we get around 6,000 people per day coming onto the Free Radio website, to check out a contest say, or look for some local information. That number represents around 1% of our regular audience.

However, on Friday of last week we had 97,000 people check in, and on Sunday we had 137,000 unique users - getting on for 20% of our total audience. The site actually crashed for a short time on Friday, traffic was so intense (boffins have now injected more oomph into it I am told).

And of course its all due to the snow, and its effect on schools.

Most schools these days have their own snowlines you can dial into, can tweet and text parents, host their own on-line information, and councils are increasingly good at collating all this school data into their own sites....and yet, when snow strikes  and schools close, local radio still becomes one of the first ports of call for parents.

Why is this? I suspect a couple of reasons. firstly they know our web address (do you know your council's or your kid's school web address?) and they trust that we'll have the information on our front page. Also, because people are more easily connected these days (smartphones, tablets etc) there's no need to wait for a computer to warm up in the morning - folk can go directly to our website from their phones and see if we have up to date information. There's a bit of folk memory going on too for parents, from the days when they were at school and we were the only game in town!

And boy, do we try to have up to date info. As David Lloyd  my group  PD put it to me today, we suddenly have to become experian as well as a radio station, because so many people are whizzing bits of information at us. For a biggish patch like the West Midlands you are talking about literally thousands of schools, and quite complex logistical issues in sorting, collating and displaying all this data. We like to think we got most stuff right (and a thank you goes out to all the staff who helped out at our stations over the last few days - and their equivalents up and down the country) but it does put a bit of a strain on our resources. Most stations run lean, so dragging staff in at 5.30 in the morning does mean less essential stuff doesn't get done.

There's no way of course that we can ever get the full lists actually broadcast over the air - those days are long gone, and I suspect when we did attempt to do it many years ago it was the dullest radio going. Adding in lots of T&T must have made those breakfast shows back before the internet interminable for people without kids, especially if they weren't planning on going out anywhere! Now it's a nod in the right direction by doing one or two of the latest closures, and a big push to check out the website.

Certainly this approach seems to be effective. The Q1 rajar data release always seems to be a good one for us, and although the seasonal bad weather only normally lasts for a few days, it must help pull a few listeners across from the networks - for a while at least!

And the fact is that if our experience is repeated elsewhere, literally millions of people in the UK must have gone on-line to local radio station websites every day over the past few days - and that says something fundamentally reassuring about our place in society.

"...It was twenty years ago today..."

Jean and I waved our daughter Alex off at the railway station this morning. She is off to Kenya for three months, doing Voluntary Service Overseas, and we're both proud and a little nervous about our 19 year old eldest child leaving home properly for the first time.

She was born on a beautiful summers day in 1993, just a little short of "..20 years ago today..." (copyright Lennon/McCartney), and of course at moments like this one ponders the passage of time and how life has changed during those intervening two decades.

Alex was born at LGI, and is a true Tyke. I was running Radio Aire at the time and her birth in Leeds coincided with an upturn in that station's fortunes after the very deep recession of 1990-1992. Driving back from the railway station today, I was wondering to myself how much radio had changed during the last 20 years. Could I identify 20 real improvements/developments/changes in our industry to mark the almost two decades I'd been a parent? I thought I could, so here goes:

1 - More local FM stations. Back in 1993 we had no regionals, and only a smattering of 2nd FMs in big local markets (none in Yorkshire as I recall) so all those new regional, and smaller local, and community stations, have all added to the overall quality of radio. We must have moved from 100 to over 300 local stations.

2 - DAB. I'm a big fan, and probably spend 50%+ of my time listening to DAB now, both for new stations and improved audio quality. I'm not sure switching off FM is the best way forward - but keeping DAB is a no-brainer - and with digital weekly reach at 40% of the adult population (including Sky/Freeview etc) many millions of folk agree with me.

3 -Online streaming. Wow - these days you can listen to a station anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world, via a PC. you couldn't do that 20 years ago.

4 - Mobile online - Even more wow - you can take a phone and use it to connect to a station anywhere in the world. We did have mobiles back in 1993 - but they were BIG! They also did not have any data capacity.

5 - Podcasts / listen again. Who'd have dreamt that you could put out a show, and then put a recording of it somewhere for people to listen to later! Genius, I would have said, back in 1993.

6. Rajar. Back in the early 90s the commercial Industry did its own research, and the BBC did its own research - and neither could make sense of the other. Advertisers hated it. I'm cheating slightly here because the first Rajar survey was Q4 1992 - so would have been published around about now - but you get my drift - hard to imagine now a time when the entire radio industry didn't all claim record figures on the same day!!

7 - Selector et al. Again a slight cheat as the first version of selector (RCS claim) was released 30 years ago. But no one owned PCs much until the beginning of the 90s in the UK, and we definitely were using a single PC (with floppy disc) and a dot matrix printer to generate our logs at Radio Aire, and it was all pretty new and whizzy at the time. The sophistication and manipulative power of current versions would leave that early program standing in the dust. More importantly, it was the rise of computer generated logs which put paid to presenters having their own input into music selection, certainly for daytimes on commercial radio.

8 - Master Control et al. The ability to drive all of the elements of a programme from one central hard drive didn't happen until the mid-90s (the launch of Heart FM was marred by RCS MC nightmares!) but now who would ever think of setting up a pro station without a fully computerised playout system. Radio Aire was still reliant on CDs whilst I was there, and we swapped and changed constantly because CD playout was so unreliable for a tight rotation CHR operation. I'd add in news management systems like Burli at this point too, as they have transformed news-gathering.

9 - Hard drive portable recorders. The newsroom at Aire used Uhers for certain, and I'm not sure quite when smaller hard drives replaced tape, but again what a transformation. And the ability now to record on a device like an iPhone and then send the resulting audio in to the studio instantaneously via email - just not something one could ever have imagined 20 years ago.

10 - ISDN/Codec developments. ISDN was another 90s technology that changed our industry, allowing down the line interviews,  much wider and easier sports commentary, and V/Os to work in their pyjamas! Other codec technology has made the ability to remote broadcast using standard POTS lines even more phenomenal of late.

11 - Satellite audio delivery. The commercial network built its own satellite delivery system, SMS, in the 1990s (the uplink is not far from my house just outside Rugby at Lawford Heath) to deliver Ads, IRN etc. Much has changed, but at the time, being able to deliver masses of network audio simultaneously to the commercial industry was revolutionary.

12 - Mobile phones. The advent of mobile telephony definitely helped democratise access to the airwaves. The ability to call in to a station, wherever you were, allowed far more people to participate in phone-ins across the airwaves than ever was the case with fixed line. (Ironically, It actually killed off one of the best radio shows - Les Ross's Round The World phone calls, which became redundant when everyone had a mobile.)

13 - Radio 5 Live. My favourite BBC station, which "sort of" began for two months in 1991 as "Scud FM", the 24 hour rolling news channel covering the first Gulf War which used Radio 4's FM frequencies. It was so popular the BBC was persuaded to launch 5 Live in 1994 - replacing the rather ill-thought out Radio Five which had started in 1990.

14 - Classic FM. Again I'm stretching slightly, as it launched in September 1992, but now a mainstay of UK Radio. Not my cup of tea as a listener I have to admit, but I am very grateful as a practitioner - Classic helped make commercial radio seem serious and grown up to an awful lot of advertisers during the 90s.

15 - Absolute Radio. Absolute was Virgin Radio originally of course, and launched in April 1993. I remember rushing back from a driving holiday in Scotland, with a pregnant Jean feeling very nervous in the passenger seat, in order to hear the launch!

16 - TalkSPORT. Again, this station started as Talk Radio UK in 1995, before morphing into TalkSPORT, where it continues to innovate to this day.

17 - Level-headed commercial radio management. I'm not kidding here - back in the early 90s a lot of senior commercial radio bosses were fruitcakes. Not all of them - but a lot! Getting the industry to agree on anything was a huge challenge. The general standard of commercial radio management at both a station, group and industry level has improved dramatically over the last two decades.

18 - Better regulators, with better legislation to enforce True I'm afraid, for those of you who moan about OFCOM - that which came before was worse. Probably because of the outmoded and outdated regulation to be sure, but the IBA and Radio Authority were hell compared to OFCOM.

19 - Social Media. How did we ever cope without knowing what our listeners were thinking, via text, twitter and facebook 24/7! It is without doubt a sea change for the industry in terms of feedback, helping us make our shows better and adding to the entertainment value of all output, everywhere.

20 - Wind up radios. I've saved Trevor Bayliss's ingenious invention until last for two reasons.

The first is the obvious one - here was an idea that has single handedly brought radio within reach of untold millions of people across the world. Trevor was inspired by a 1991 TV programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa, and the idea really took off when it was featured on Tomorrow's World in 1994, so I'm happy it falls within the last 20 years from an operational perspective. A brilliant, and simple idea, which means our medium continues to inform and entertain across the globe.

The second reason is that a wind-up radio was one of my Christmas gifts to Alex (it had a torch function too). I figured she could use both the radio and torch wherever she found herself during her three months in Kenya, and that when she put the radio on, it might remind her of me, and how much importance this great medium has played in my life and, by association, in hers too.

Most of the items on my list were born/created/invented in the early to mid 1990s - just after the 1990-1992 recession which was itself brought about by the 1987 Wall Street crash. The echoes with today are remarkable, and I only hope the next five to six years see both an upturn in the economy similar to the 90s - and also another burst of the energy, creativity and innovation which marked the UK Radio industry back then.

There - made it to 20 pretty easily. What did I miss?

A Fairytale of Aston

My earliest recollection of Christmas on the Radio was 1981.

I was a young, single brmb DJ, sharing a flat with Brendan Kearney in Walmley. Being single, I had the dreaded 2pm-6pm shift (no Christmas lunch for me!) and Brendan was on at 10am, doing the Christmas bloopers show. Brendan was famous for his collection of radio faux pas and cock-ups, and his Christmas Day "best of" show was always a festive highlight.

Ed Doolan was doing breakfast, and had invited then PD Bob Hopton to join him to act as the voice of Father Christmas (Bob did have a wonderfully deep voice). Jimmy Franks was driving the show.

The show had gone well. All of the children calling in had spoken to Father Christmas; all of the batteries had been handed out (firms like Ever Ready and Duracell used to give us big stocks of them to hand out on Xmas morning for parents who had bought their kids an electrically operated toy, but had forgotten the batteries!); Slade, Wizzard et al had been played, and all was well with the world.

The clock ticked round to 9.57. Ed picked up the programme schedule for the rest of the day - and ran through Brendan's show in some detail, picked up the features in mine, and the show afterwards - and highlighted the late night phone in scheduled for 10pm  The day had been well sign-posted to listeners, young and old, across the West Midlands

Ed then wrapped up - thanked Father Christmas, spread some peace, happiness and general Christmas bonhomie amongst the population of Birmingham who were tuned in, and gave Brendan's Christmas bloopers show one final tease - the best radio bloopers in the world - coming up after 10.

And then Ed put on his most serious tone, and uttered the words ".....This is brmb, it's 10 o'clock on Christmas day morning....and now... Her Majesty The Queen."

Now, at this point I have to tell you I was in the bath, having a good soak, getting ready to spring up, dry off and head off to "The Sauce Works" as brmb's Aston Road North studios were affectionately called. The Queen's Speech in those days went out on all radio stations at 10 am, and was, at 8 minutes in duration, the perfect opportunity for me to get dry and dressed, and then listen to Brendan's show whilst getting ready to go out - after all, who doesn't enjoy a good radio blooper......

Anyway - back to the radio.

"....Her Majesty The Queen" ...slight pause....followed by what can only be described as farting noises...followed by more farting noises! The whole of Birmingham, expecting to hear the words of HM The Queen, was instead being treated to trumping sounds coming from 96.4FM.

By this time I had almost drowned with laughter - but what the hell was going on?

It dawned on me at about exactly the same time as it dawned on the folks in the studio.

Someone had put the tape on back to front, and we were listening to the strains of "God Save The Queen" ....only backwards! I could only imagine the frantic rush by Jimmy to stop the tape. The bum-clenchingly excruciating part of this was knowing that Bob Hopton, the big boss, was in the studio watching his chances of a New Year's Honour going out of the window as his senior tech-op tied himself up in knots trying to turn a 3 1/2 inch reel-to-reel tape around in double-quick time.

Back up went the mic fader - Ed was told by Jimmy via talkback to fill.

As it was Christmas Day there wasn't much by way of news, no lists of "what's ons" to run through - just the upcoming schedule. So Ed, ever the trooper, started again to tell us all about what was coming up later in the day - only at half speed - pausing a lot -  trying to pad for time - and undoubtedly watching the pandemonium in the control room with utter disbelief.

Rereading that schedule must have been the longest couple of minutes of Ed's career.

Eventually the tape was reversed - and Ed was freed from his misery to cue in the Queen's speech correctly.

Brendan came on 8 minutes later to start his blooper show - knowing one of the best bloopers of all time had probably occurred 10 minutes previously, right in front of him.

None of the people involved in this have ever been knighted, although Ed did receive an MBE. And as boss, I've tried to avoid being anywhere near a studio on Christmas Day ever since!

Merry Christmas, and may all your bloopers occur in the middle of the night. In June!