Mashed Articles

There are so many things I wanted to be. When I was little there were two choices: a train driver or SuperTed. I didn’t manage either, although (subtle early-’80s children’s TV joke warning) I was Spotty as a teenager. Oh ho ho.

When I was a bit older, I wanted to be a lawyer or a pilot, as my folks explained that those were the jobs that earned the most money. Unfortunately I was more interested in reading Your Sinclair and writing unpleasantly sweary text adventures on the school BBC Micro than studying law or straightening up and flying right. Three week computer ban and a stern telling off, in case you’re wondering. I avoided BASIC after that.

The problem with dream jobs is usually one of access. You can’t write a nice letter to someone at British Airways asking for a quick go in the cockpit, or turn up at Bristol Temple Meads and expect to be put in charge of a 125. It doesn’t usually work like that unless you’re walking in a cloud of Jimmy Saville’s cigar smoke.

But luckily for me, I did eventually stumble on some access. The year 1996 turned out to be the perfect time for a magazine geek to get his mum to help him write a nice letter to someone at Future towers. This allowed me to jam a toe in the door and play with GamesMaster’s fancy internet connection for a week. When I eventually figured out that I was supposed to do some work, I managed to spin this into what turned out to be my ideal career in magazines.

I am lucky to be where I am, but I’m also greedy. There are so many things I still want to be. And times have truly changed: access has become universal. Opportunities aren’t offered these days, they’re made. Say, for instance, I want to be a musician. I don’t need access to a proper studio, I need one microphone and some fancy software on my PC – software I can get for free. I don’t need a record label, and they’re all but extinct anyway, because indie distribution is the way forward. It now costs about £50 to put an album out online – that’s it.

What I would really need is the ability to make music which doesn’t sound like a buffalo being sick into a bucket full of spanners, and that’s something I just don’t have. Garageband on the iPad can help anyone to ‘make’ music, but I don’t feel connected to its auto-composition features; it’s like grinding the organ rather than punching the holes in the roll.

More so than being a rock star – I’m antisocial and I hate travelling, so it’s unlikely to work out anyway – I actually want to be on the radio. I can be, and I have been, in a way: recording podcasts, something I do in my ever-diminishing spare time, is quick and easy, and requires no specialist kit. Wire the right things up in the right sequence, click the right buttons, and you can broadcast to a live audience for free, and keep your witterings online for future generations.

I remember ascending to the top of my climbing frame when I was about six and broadcasting (shouting) my own radio station to the neighbourhood (nobody), complete with jingles, news segments, and poor childish renditions of popular songs.

Apart from swapping playground apparatus for the swings and roundabouts of the internet, nothing has really changed between Radio Back Garden and my podcast; not the scope of the audience nor the quality of the content. Turns out I’m a natural writer, not a talker. I’m still working on finding my radio voice.

It’s not hard to be inspired, though. Look at people like American film director Kevin Smith who, through a combination of the power of his name, his enthusiasm for talking (ironic for the man who played a mute called Silent Bob in many of his own films) and a savvy audience which really gets it, has basically managed to switch his career from director to podcaster. He runs an internet radio station from his living room, funded by personal adverts paid for by listeners.

His many live shows have convinced comedian John Lovitz to convert his Hollywood comedy club into a dedicated podcast theatre. He is quite literally driving the concept of podcasting forward.

I don’t have the contacts, the time, or the financial security to make a go of it on the same scale as Smith. But I think we can all take something from the fact that he was able to launch a radio station (which you can listen to at www.smodcast.com, if you’re not sensitive to a little bad language) just because he felt like doing it. You can do anything you want. I can do anything I want. We just need to pull out our machetes and hack our own paths through the jungle.