Making a connection - across a room or across the Atlantic
30th August 2024
One of the things I love most about live broadcasting is the interaction with listeners - in real time. Making that connection is very special, often very personal, even intimate. You’re not broadcasting to thousands of people in a sports stadium, or even a few people together in a room. This is about YOU - speaking to one person, the listener. I always try to talk as if it’s just the two of us - me on this side of the microphone, you hearing my voice come out of the speaker or headphones. And if you can join the conversation, to make this a two way chat, all the better.
Early in my career there was only one way to do it - on the phone. I spent at least ten years of my 30 on air at BBC Radio Leeds hosting a daily phone-in, first the Newstalk debate between 9 and 10am Monday to Friday in the nineties and then, for two years from 2016 to 2018 in the multi-media age, the Big Yorkshire Phone-in at lunchtime. Advances in technology enabled listeners first to text (in their hundreds each day), then social media meant we could read messages on Facebook, Twitter and - most recently - WhatsApp. Even though it’s now almost ten months since I’ve broadcast regularly, many of those listeners are still in touch with me.
In the past few weeks I’ve had two very different reasons to enjoy, celebrate and be moved by the power of making a connection. The first was across the Atlantic, the second across a room in Bradford. First to Los Angeles and Craig. We met on Twitter / X (Craig Walker) Craig came across my audio diary ‘Mum and Me: The Dementia Diary’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p082m6hx Like me, he knew first hand the pain of losing a much loved mother to dementia. We were introduced, virtually, via a real life friend of mine. Hilary Robinson is a fabulous author, radio producer and all round star based in West Yorkshire: https://www.hilaryrobinson.co.uk/
I was waking up West Yorkshire early on Saturday and Sunday mornings on BBC Radio Leeds and would ask folk to get in touch answering three simple questions: who you are, where you are and what you’re up to? Brian in Pudsey, who used to alternate with his wife on pet duties, would simply answer (at 6.20am on a freezing February day): “Brian. Pudsey. Dogs.” Other people were coming back from work or setting off - to the milking parlour or bus garage. Expat listeners on the other side of the world would tune in for a flavour of home as they were dropping off to sleep.
And so it was that I met Craig, eight hours behind West Yorkshire, going to bed on the west coast of the USA as we got up in the West Riding. He’d send a short Twitter message, I’d read it out on air and reply online too. We were having a conversation. We were making a connection. We were forging a friendship.
Move on a couple of years and I find myself at 7am on a summer morning sitting at my computer talking live to Craig (11pm in L.A.) for his own podcast ‘All Things Nonlinear Dynamical - Talks About the Brain and Human Connection’: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6mQ68l8nWgBj2TZ3wMy73b?si=WPjy0_p9QOuUWSeELDOjXw
We discussed Mums and dementia and the joy - above all - of making a connection: “So I'm so glad that we're smiling and laughing, remembering these stories because there are so many, and people don't often talk about this, there are lots of joyful moments, a lot of innocence almost, you know, that you get so much pleasure from looking after somebody as well as the pain that comes with it.” https://open.spotify.com/episode/6mQ68l8nWgBj2TZ3wMy73b?si=WPjy0_p9QOuUWSeELDOjXw
Now, thanks to the wonders of technology, I can sit at my computer in Headingley, Leeds and record the introductions to Craig’s podcasts - all from the comfort of my little office. In fact I recorded the words that introduce the fabulous Hilary Robinson who made that connection in the first place when, a few weeks later, she too had a chat with Craig: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hilary-robinson-episode-all-things-nonlinear-dynamical-craig-walker-sx6jc/
The second connection was very different but profoundly moving. I won’t go into too much detail because it was a private conversation. Suffice to say that I regularly give talks about dementia, about Mum and about how, every weekend from 2019 to 2022, the professional radio me would meet the prviate, personal me. That’s because ‘Mum and Me: The Dementia Diary’ was documenting what was happening to Mum as her mixed dementia (Alzheimer’s and vascular) advanced and as I tried to cope with her and me. This wasn’t broadcaster me, this was an ordinary son talking about his ordinary Mum, which is perhaps why it struck such a chord, made a such a connection, with listeners.
This week I was invited by the inspirational Ben Verdeyen, who’s PCSO of the year 2023, to speak to his newest memory group. Ben covers Shipley, Saltaire and Nab Wood for West Yorkshire Police. Dementia is personal to him too. He founded Shipley Memories Group first and, such was the demand, has now set up a second which meets at Hepworth and Idle Cricket Club. I was the guest speaker. One of the people who was there, supporting their spouse, came up to me after I’d finished speaking, tears in my eyes holding Mum’s toy donkey Ripple. We stepped outside into the late summer afternoon and talked and talked and shed a few more tears. The power of making a connection …
If there’s anything here you’d like to comment on, or you’d like me to talk to, work with or train your organisation or company, do please get in touch: https://www.theandrewedwards.com/contact
