I meant to write about this earlier. Damn flu! I met Roisin from RedRadar in The Grand Social on the night of The Digital Socket Awards.
We had a bit of a chat about what RedRadar is and she asked if I’d like to get involved, RedRadar is part of the online section of Young People’s Programming in RTE and the website covers music and fashion.
So a couple of weeks ago I went in to record some video for them. I spoke about some album artwork and about my defining music moment. I’m not going to give away what I spoke about but I will say I couldn’t decide on one piece of artwork.
Also in RTE recording pieces that day were Aidan, Mike and Ali. Lots of fun.
It wasn’t the first time that I had been through the bowels of RTE. When I was 18 (not today or yesterday) I did some work experience out there and got to know the place pretty well.
I was there full-time for a few weeks, then twice a week for about three months working on a kids Saturday morning TV show called ‘Scratch Saturday’.
There are a couple of events that stand out about everything. The first one was a Monday morning production meeting. Brian Redding and Brian Graham were presenting the show and Philip Kampf was directing. Mary Kingston also presented.
It was going to be French week, the guys were going to wear stripey shirts, strings of garlic and berets. I remember that a French Tricolour couldn’t be found anywhere and someone having to ask the French Embassy for a flag. Somehow at the production meeting I got the job of choosing the music for the opening sequence for the show. This would introduce the audience to the French episode.
I was sent off to the audio archives in the Radio Centre to find a suitable piece of music. Not having a clue in the world what I should do, I picked a few songs out. After about an hour deliberating with myself I chose ‘I Love Paris’. It was either the Dean Martin or the Frank Sinatra version.
On Saturday, when the live show went out, I was quite relieved that it all worked. The biggest job though that Saturday was because it was the day before Easter Sunday, all the kids in the audience got Easter eggs. We had to try and make sure they didn’t eat them all and make themselves sick on air!
The other was after the National Song Contest. It was 1991 and the SONG F entry didn’t show up to the national final. On Monday morning at the production meeting some bright spark came up with the idea that us, the work experience crew, would act as the backing vocalists/dancers for Brian Reddin. Together we would become Song F.
Yeah, it sounds great! Until we realised that the makey-upy song would start off in a traditional sean-nos style before kicking into a 70’s disco funk track. To match this, the four of us would have to dress in traditional ‘Peig Sayers’ garb before throwing off our shawls, stepping out of our long skirts ala Bucks Fizz to reveal us in bright jump suits giving it loads.
This went out on live TV, me, dancing, wearing a jumpsuit. One thing I’m thankful for is I can’t find it on YouTube.
It’s the little things.
We replaced this: