Radio

Words: Chris Baraniuk
Photography: John Stewardson

For Andy Ward, 23, messing around on student radio was the perfect breeding-ground for his slap-dash brand of absurdist comedy.

“I’m over in the middle bit, by Burger King,” I shout down my mobile to Andy, mere metres away in Paddington station. We spot each other and, since neither of us is city savvy, slip in to a nearby Korean restaurant to avoid the bustle.

“I’ve just left Keele Uni,” he begins. “During my whole time there I was involved with student radio in some form or another. We were nonsensical. We did idiotic features every week, like a whole series based on rhymes and puns. Play your Picards Right was a gameshow that we made up as we went along – nothing to do with Star Trek,” he adds helpfully.

“We were nominated for a Student Radio Award for Best Interview after a show we did with The Hoosiers,” Andy goes on. “We didn’t want to do a conventional interview, so we brought ‘wacky’ gifts along – Vimto, champagne flutes, Space Invaders, that sort of thing. We thought they’d like it, but we ended up spilling Vimto all over them. They’ve stopped doing student radio interviews now. Who knows if that was our fault?”

It’s the irreverent style of his shows that helped garner popularity amongst fellow students, particularly his Garth Marenghi and Mighty Boosh influenced Ghost Stories series, which began as a one-off airtime filler.

“We got loads of texts and feedback from people saying we should do more,” he explains. “So we did. My Dad used to play us this tape of monologue ghost stories at Christmas, and I think the inspiration came from that – I really liked working with a single narrating voice. Not even any sound effects. With the monologue, you can really get a sense of how to drive the comedy forward.”

His sample reels don’t hide the fact that producing them was side-splittingly good fun. He hasn’t wasted time on editing out background laughter or wobbly lines. In fact, he says, that’s all part of the plan: “It was all deliberately amateurish. It helps the fun come across. We knew we couldn’t act or do voices properly, so felt it was better not to try too hard.”

But could that style be accommodated by professional radio? “Definitely. I think people really appreciate things that don’t try too hard to iron out the imperfections, like when actors in sitcoms can’t help laughing at each other’s jokes. But you do have to be careful with absurd comedy: it’s a bad idea to string random words together and hope that people will find it funny.”

As we’re finishing up I ask Andy how he would describe himself. He looks exasperated. “I have no idea. I always cringe at questions like that on job forms. I just can’t take anything that seriously. I need someone to give me a comedy job, or I won’t survive in the real world. Put that in capital letters. Save me from starvation.”

andyward16@googlemail.com

Words: Etan Smallman
Photography: Elizabeth Gordon

On the crest of a radio wave, 21-year-old Veena V is out to banish boring radio with her fiery brand of presenting.

Veena V is a busy bee. Tracking down the budding – but seemingly elusive – radio presenter for this interview was no easy task, with call after call being met by the dead-end of her chirpy voicemail message.

A renowned broadcaster (whose name escapes me) once said that all it takes to be a good presenter is the ability to record a half-decent answerphone message. If that were the case, Veena has it in the bag. She also has the alliterative name and mega-watt smile that make her look as if she’s pre-packaged, primed, and ready to hit the radio big-time.

When I finally get to speak to the 21-year-old East Londoner, she tells me her ideal job would be on Radio 1. Chatting away to her, I almost feel like I’m phoning into her show, with her bubbly tones and cheery demeanour. But she’s no Fearne or Edith copycat.

“I don’t think there are many female presenters like me,” Veena proclaims: “I’m kind of quite out-there.” She rejects what she calls “the same boring old ideas” in favour of a highly energetic interviewing style.

In an industry driven by contacts, she knows how to play the game, and is sufficiently linked-up to secure interviews with the likes of the Pussycat Dolls (twice), Jay Sean and Gym Class Heroes.

But her proudest achievement came when she dramatically increased the listenership on one of her old stations – garnering a peak of over 100,000 listeners – and beating the station’s breakfast show, an almost unprecedented feat in the industry. It can’t have gone down well with the breakfast hosts. “No!” she giggles. “I didn’t really say anything; I just quietly smiled to myself.”

Live radio, though, has its pitfalls – and pre-recorded shows aren’t much better, as Brand and Ross recently reminded the nation. Broadcasting since the age of 16, Veena must have had her fair share of embarrassing on-air moments. “Nothing really; I don’t really get embarrassed,” she insists.

I persist with my line of questioning. “Well, on one of my old radio shows, I used to get guys literally calling up all the time for my number, which got quite annoying, but made for quite a good radio show. I’d take the mickey out of them and give them fake numbers.” And apart from inadvertently swearing live on-air back when she was 16, it’s been pretty slip-up free so far.

Veena’s known for using her former Club Asia radio show, Exposure, to discover the freshest unsigned talent. But the tables have now turned, and she’s the unsigned act getting a slice of recognition.

“I’ve got so many ambitions,” she enthuses. “Yes, I want to be a really good radio presenter, but I want to build the ‘Veena V brand’ and maybe one day have my own production company, or an agency to help new artists.”

www.veenav.com

Following on from our finalist announcement for Radio HaHa, here are some short biogs of the chosen 9. Many thanks to all those who took the time to submit their moments of comic genius.

Daniel Jamieson
Daniel is a 17-year-old film student from Edinburgh. His submission, AJ and Finnegan, is a spoof American cop show following partners AJ, a young hot-shot rookie, and Finnegan, a gritty old-hand maverick as they fight back threats to national security while constantly arguing about it. It was created in his college’s recording studio, and Daniel directs, storylines, edits and adds sounds to each episode, while allowing actors to improvise some real comedy gold.

Jenni Armstrong
Jenni is a stand-up comedian who writes sitcoms for radio and television, and makes comedy shorts. She uses a DIY aesthetic to enhance the surreal comedy of her work, and has filmed a mini-series called Jenni Shows and Tells which can be viewed on YouTube. In May, Jenni did a comedy review in the style of this show for 4Laughs. Jenni’s submissions for Radio HaHa include Lebacuppacoffee, a mock promo for a Lebanese coffee shop, and the surreal skit The Adventures of Gok Wan.

Lauren O’Reilly
Lauren is a 22-year-old postgraduate student in scriptwriting and drama school graduate who aims to write scripts for radio. Her idea for Radio HaHa, The Race, is an inner space-style comedy skit following sperm as they compete to fertilise an egg following a drunken encounter. Lauren’s inspiration for the piece struck following a night out where Lauren found herself watching a group of drunken men dance terribly and asked herself, “You were the one that reached the egg first?”

Madeleine Brettingham
Madeleine is a radio and television comedy writer whose work has featured on several Radio 4 programmes, including Recorded for Training Purposes, Fordham and Lipson and The News Quiz. She’s interested in comedy that provides a new take on the world, and her submission, Goth Town, poses questions such as ‘What’s it like having to exude satanic majesty while you’re buying bogroll from CostCutter, or visiting your nan?’ Goth Town follows the story of a misfit brother and sister who live in a grimy townhouse near Morrisons, and their struggle to stand out in a grey world.

Richard Cray
Richard is a former radio commercial producer who, in his words, “Left the industry to get a proper job.” He’s been a regular on the London comedy circuit, produces podcasts for Comedy 365 and is co-producing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. Richard’s submission is a compilation of spoof radio ads and promos: The Dogs Must Be Carried, Top 50, and Liar News.

Nicola Depuis
After studying Radio & Theatre Production, Nicola worked as a journalist for seven years, during which time she hosted a weekly radio show. A finalist in the Galway Film Fleadh pitching competition this year, her first screenplay was recently optioned and she’s currently working on a studio assignment. Tubescent is a radio sitcom that gives a comic insight into the lives, worries and conversations of teenage friends aimlessly riding the public transport systems of their city.

Richard Kelly
Richard is a former teacher who is now focusing on a writing career. His sit-com, The Good Defenders, is a comical take on the traditional superhero story following a team of B-list heroes that protect Earth from rogue celebrities, with some hilarious consequences.

Andy Ward
A recent Keele University graduate, Andy Ward presented, produced and wrote several popular university radio shows while studying there and has recently been trying his hand at stand-up comedy. His submission, Spooky Times, is a surreal ghost story that follows a man who encounters particularly bad problems whilst attempting to prepare a barbecue, juxtaposing the presentation style and atmosphere of a serious ghost story with a comic writing style.

Stephen Yorke & Ben Harris
Stephen and Ben are a duo who write TV radio and press ads at separate advertising agencies in London. The pair recently decided to collaborate on their own comedy pieces. and came up with the idea of creating podcasts to bring their comedy to the world. Their programme, Funpot, is recorded at home on their computer and comprises 5-minute slots of the pair ‘trying to make each other laugh’ by creating comic situations and playing off one another.

As you may have noticed, over the last few months we’ve been calling for up-and-coming comics to fling their funny bits in our direction for a unique competition with E4 Radio, called Radio HaHa. The response was incredible: we had literally thousands of audio clips and scripts snippets piling into our inbox.

It took us a little while, but we have our 9 finalists. They’ll be wending their wily ways to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival next week for a day of intensive workshops, followed by a nerve-racking pitch to a panel of E4 Radio commissioners, who have pledged to match at least one of them with an independent production company to take the idea to broadcast.

So here they are:

Daniel Jamieson for his shrewd spoof of US police drama
Jenni Armstrong for her delightfully surreal Gok Wan adventures
Lauren O’Reilly for her sticky sperm sketch The Race
Nicola Depuis for teen-public-transport-com Tubescent
Madeleine Brettingham for Goth Town’s dark humour
Richard Kelly for his off-the-wall take on the superhero genre
Stephen Yorke for some witty on-air banter
Andy Ward for his dryly hilarious Spooky Times
Richard Cray for taking off local radio cliches with tongue firmly in cheek

You can also read more detailed biogs of all of the above.

More to come from the finalists: watch this space. We’ll be following the ideas through the development process in the next issue of 4Talent magazine, and they’ll even be featuring in a special episode of The Fix podcast, which launched with the first episode yesterday.

Update: 9 finalists revealed

We’ve just launched our fantastic new competition with E4 Radio: Radio HaHa. Submit short audio clips or comic scribblings: the best 9 will go through intensive workshops at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, then pitch to get their idea developed into a fully-fledged radio show on the new station when it launches.

But what’s E4 Radio actually about? No doubt any radio producers among you will be drooling with anticipation at the thought of a new door being chiselled in the rock-face of British radio, so we asked the team to pitch it to us in 300 words. So from the horse’s mouth:

“E4 Radio will be a new kind of station. One that’s up for a bit of fun and mischief and for doing things differently. Like the TV channel and its website, E4 Radio will provide mainstream entertainment targeted at 16-34s. The schedule will focus on the E4 staples of great music, comedy and entertainment and will pride itself on being the first to bring its audience new stuff and new talent from these worlds.

We’re going to give the audience more access to the airwaves than ever before, providing new levels of interactivity and an active role in shaping the sound of the station, from music to the news agenda. We’re making a radio station for an audience that likes to listen to radio content when they want to, on-demand as well as live, and we’ll be commissioning different programmes tailored to these listening modes.

In terms of comedy, our door is open to every kind of comedy there is - we want our schedule to be flexible enough to accommodate to accommodate bite-sized short programmes, more traditional built blocks, and we hope to pioneer new comedy formats that don’t even exist yet. We think there’s tonnes of scope to innovate with format and we want to trial lots of things. As with all our output we want to create programming from a much more diverse set of voices, stimulate new areas of independent production and create new cross platform collaborations.”

We have a date lined up with the enigmatic Holy Moly as part of our new radio series… and are looking for opinionated bloggers, tabloid journos with a thirst for gossip, or anyone with the style and attitude to get the conversation flowing with one of the media’s most elusive figures.

More info on the Head to Head page.

The 4Talent Awards 2008 are now open: across 20 categories, get your work judged by Channel 4 commissioners and the producers who supply them.

Categories are short doc, long doc, dramatic writing, dramatic performance, directing, comedy writing, comedy performance, presenting, on-air radio, off-air radio, music, music for production, music video, innovation, multi-platform, animation, journalism, photography, multi-talented and the mysterious wildcard award.

channel4.com/4talentawards