UTV Presenter of the Year 2015!

In December 2015 I won Presenter of the Year at the UTV Awards! I was so gutted that my flight home from holiday was delayed & I missed the do but absolutely delighted that I won! Massive thanks to Trev, Terry, Iain, Scott & Jon, everyone at The Lodge (past & present, you know who you are!), everyone that’s ever given me advice, listened to a demo or given me a shot on their radio station, & my ACE friends & family who’ve put up with me moving all over & working silly hours. This really does mean loads!

Here’s to a crackin’ year of radio in 2016!

 

 

New station voice of Cando FM!

You need to check out Barrow’s newest community radio station, Cando FM! A team of dedicated volunteers have got together with some of the staff from Furness College & managed to win an FM community radio station licence. I’m their station voice & you can hear a few examples of how I sound on the station here.. ENJOY!!

 

One of the top 4 presenters in the North West!!

IMG_4616I’ll warn you, I’m going to be on Cloud 9 for a while after this one! I cannot tell you how flattered I was to find out, just a few weeks ago, that I’d been nominated at the prestigious O2 Media Awards Northwest for Broadcast Presenter of the Year 2015!

It all took place last Thursday night (November 12th) at Chester Race Course with BBC Breakfast’s Louise Minchin hosting. The awards covered all media so there were lots of big names from television, print, online & radio knocking around & the excitement in the air was electric! When it came around to the Broadcast Presenter of the Year category my tummy did a somersault as the famous words “and the nominees are” were spoken before a clip of each entrant’s audio/footage was played out. As the majority of the awards that night had been won by news programmes & journalists the entries had a distinctly hard-hitting & often emotive feel. I was nervous that my light-hearted audio might not “fit” with the mood & path that the evening seemed to be on but was bowled over when the room exploded in hysterics! If I could have paused the evening I would have done because that was my win right there. I had a room of over a hundred hard-to-please media folk laughing their heads off at my entertaining radio show, I couldn’t have asked for more!

IMG_4618Not surprisingly the very talented & experienced Lucy Meacock from ITV’s Granada Reports won the award (Well done Lucy!) but, as she went up on stage, the organiser came over to introduce himself & told me that I had come a close second! What a result?! Together with the rest of the UTV team I floated around on Cloud 9 late into the night. What an evening! Big thanks to Liz, Mark & everyone else who helped organise the night, I won’t forget it in a hurry! Here’s to next year! Oh, & if you want to hear my entry, here it is.. ENJOY!!

Listening figures on my radio show

After all of my previous off peak shows (weekend shows, overnight shows, evening shows, late shows – you name it, I’ve hosted them all!) plus God only knows how many freelance shifts I’ve covered over the years, it was nice to join the team at Wire FM at the end of 2012 where I continue to host their afternoon show (I get up & go to bed at a normal time now in case you were wondering).

This stability & peak time slot gave me the platform I needed to really build some decent listening figures & show that I could make a difference. They’ve been improving each quarter **quickly touches wood** & I’m so happy to announce that, in the last set of figures, my show (which now boasts more listeners than any other on the station) has had the highest figures it has ever had since the station launched in 1998! I won’t bore you with the figures & percentages but did want to share that exciting little fact with you. Fingers crossed they keep going in the right direction!