TV People

TV celeb radio horrors. Some telly stars make the transition to radio and some radio stars make the transition to telly. As a Radio Producer I have had moments of complete despair as I have tried to teach a TV celeb the craft of making great radio.  Radio has no autocue, scripts, runners or for the most part programme assistants.  Which leaves your telly host very exposed.

There's a long list of TV presenters and telly celebs that get by because the camera loves them but if what they say aint up to much then there's a good chance radio will hate them and expose them and their shortcomings.

Sometimes there's no explanation, you would have thought Babs Windsor would be ace on the radio but her stilted embarrassing performance on Radio 2 had me reaching for the off switch.  I worked with one very famous TV Presenter she lasted exactly one hour, when she discovered the show wasn't scripted she went a whiter shade of pale and ran off to my boss to tell him that 'she didn't think that kind of radio was her thing.'

Good for her at least she knew her limits.  Then there are others who I really didn't think would make it.  The lovely Jeni Barnett and I went through a personal hell together where she pretty much screwed every link got herself into the most incoherent muddles but managed to pull through and then had an epiphany and suddenly got what she was supposed to do.  When we meet in the street we give each other one of those secret hugs that old soldiers who have fought wars together do.  I recommend Jeni's blog it's pretty much how she is.

So never underestimate the skill that's involved in radio and we should remember the saying 'one man's meat is another man's poison'