What first drew you to Newcastle Student Radio?
I joined Newcastle in 2014. I remember at the Freshers Fair there was the Newcastle Theatre Society (NUTS), which I very much enjoyed quite quickly, because I love being involved in that kind of thing. I also knew very early doors that a few of the people in NUTS also did shows on NSR. I remember being asked by somebody “I’ve got a show on the student radio, do you want to come on and be my guest?”. I remember it sort of being the most exciting thing imaginable, and so I went on as a guest presenter. The server was down, we weren't broadcasting to anybody; but it was such a great way to get started. I was very grateful that I did get involved.
Was there a moment you realised, Oh! I’m actually quite good at this type of thing?
No, because I recognise I wasn’t very good at that type of thing. That was the great thing about student radio, and especially when I started out, was that I wasn’t very good. No one was very good. But it gave you a bit of a playground to go and work out what you were good and bad at. It was just that I was relatively committed. I didn’t do NSR for a huge amount of time, because I wasn’t broadcasting to anybody. It was Radio Tyneside that really got me to get going in this world. I was very happy to go and do two or three shows a week. I think that was the most important thing.
What kind of presenter were you back then compared to the personality you are now?
I think I was pretty similar in the sense that I was just trying to recreate what I enjoyed listening to. That's always kind of been my modus operandi when it comes to creating content or making a radio show; you first and foremost are the first audience member. If you’re creating things that you yourself want to listen to or enjoy then other people will as well. I was a big fan of formats and trying to think of aims and trying to come up with various different ways I could grab the non-existent audience to continue listening, and I would also go and put together weekly updates of my best link. I would download all of my shows and just put together five or six best links. I was a big fan of trying to make formats and games.
Were you already confident when you joined Newcastle Student Radio, or did radio help build your confidence?
I was a very confident person when I started, I was part of NUTS, I was very outgoing. I like chatting to people. Although the confidence side of things was very much the same, I did gain some confidence in knowing what I was doing when it came to the show and radio and understanding how the medium works. It wasn’t the confidence, but more getting understanding of the format and understanding the vehicle for the content.
What was it about radio hosting and vox pop presenting that made you think content creation was the career for you?
It was pretty quick after I was doing StreetSmart. I was posting the content on Facebook, and I was realizing that it was kind of starting to have a bit of a name for itself within the uni. People would be waiting for the next video to come out and tagging each other in it. I remember thinking, oh this is interesting. I never thought that it would become a YouTube channel, but it was an interesting time to notice, oh, maybe this is something. People often ask me ‘how did I get into YouTube?’; I never planned to get into YouTube.I just love making content. I always think if you start from that position of loving making content, then that's the best way forward. It took me three years before I made my first pound from YouTube. I think if you were going to try and break into YouTube as a job, you probably wouldn’t have the patience to stick around that long.
Do you feel like vox-pops were a phenomena of their time or with the influence of youtube shorts, could they be the future of content creation?
I’m not sure whether they're the future, but definitely back in 2017 when I first started doing them, they were nowhere near as prevalent as they are now. This was before short form content existed. It was pre TikTok, pre shorts, pre reels. The idea of standing outside interviewing people has been around since cameras have been around, but it was not the same prevalence that it has today. I remember the reason why I started doing StreetSmart was because I didn’t get a role as the presenter in the television society (NUTV). They were making the equivalent of StreetSmart (called Big Market Banter). They were about 20 minutes long and they'd get posted maybe once a term. I remember thinking, surely, this can be done better, more frequently. That's why StreetSmart was born. I thought, well, if you do this more regularly with shorter and more snappy edits, then you’ve got something relatively interesting. I just went out and did my own thing, grabbed a camera, stood on big market and away you go. I wasn’t really looking for permission to go and make stuff, I just got involved.
Reflecting on your time in radio years on, how do you think that those skills have transferred and helped you in content creation?
I think it was the ability to have the time to just try things, to fail, to make 100 things that didn't work out. It didn’t matter at all. I think the pressure that you get when you leave university is that you need to work pretty quickly, especially if you want to start something yourself. Whereas when you’re at uni, it doesn’t matter if no one is listening to a radio show. You’re building that experience and those skills of understanding what you’re good at.
How would you say the delivery of humour is different from radio to youtube?
I think when it comes to videos and edits, the humour comes from the edits. It didn’t hugely come from the actual delivery itself. Yes, if you could come up with a quip or a punch like then that would help, but it was the edit that made the humour and fun. You could really save yourself and really improve your comedic timing, just in an editing software, which you can’t do with radio. Radio is less about being funny and more about being someone that you want to hang out with. I think there are certain presenters who do this brilliantly, just being able to feel like you were talking to one person, and that is the hardest to master.
Was this something you felt prepared to deal with?
I don't think I was ever consciously looking to prepare for it. It’s just over the course of five years doing shows and listening back to them and, most importantly, taking pointers from people who were SMs or people I trusted, and getting feedback and understanding that this needs to get better. I think at the beginning, you always think that what you’re doing is very good, but looking back, it wasn’t. You need to have somebody who can point you in the right direction to be like that bit was/wasn’t good.
Do you think, had you not discovered NSR/Radio Tynesside, you’d still have ended up on your path now?
I really don’t know. I suppose the romantic answer is no, so NSR can take the credit. I think I probably would have always gone into some kind of content creation, because I love to watch it. I watch YouTube every day. I'm sure I would have made it, but in this world, I’m not quite sure what the roadmap would have been. It probably would have been less clear.
Do you think that hosting radio has made you a better content creator?
Absoloutelty. I do think it’s a case of not only radio hosting. It’s radio hosting and understanding the audience and really reflecting on each episode or each show, what was good and what was bad. I think you need to have a very thick skin, but also a propensity to really learn and to understand ‘okay, this was not that good.’ Removing all forms of ego, I think, is very important when it comes to getting better as a content creator and presenter.