Radio Norfolk

Had a great time with Graham and Karen on Radio Norfolk today – they invited me to be one of their Friday ‘ladies at lunch’ which was huge fun.

My co ladies were Pam Brooks aka Kate Hardy (in black in the photo), novelist; and Sara Lock (in turquoise), all round good egg who has been on cash in the attic (and who went to school with the fabulous Joanna Lumley). I am the one in blue, with Karen in green. Graham was heavily outnumbered by us girls.

You can listen to the program again (for a limited period) here.

Graham and Karen are having a week on the Wensum next week which sounds fun. I hope the weather is good for them.

Ladies at lunch on the radio

I did my radio bit today with Graham and Karen on Radio Norfolk, and it was great! Not like work at all. I think I now want to be a radio presenter when I grow up.

Radio Norfolk is based in Norwich’s Forum building, which also houses the main public library. There is also an exhibition space on the ground floor where they sometimes have concerts and other events, and which currently houses four (I think it is four) fabulous dragons made by children at local schools – well worth a visit if you are in Norwich.

The radio studios are upstairs, there are two of them, so they can switch seamlessly from one to the other. (And also, I was told, so they can keep on going if one breaks down!) I was fascinated to see how it all worked as I have never been in a radio studio before (my previous radio experience was by telephone).

I suppose I was with Karen and Graham for about 1/2 hour? Not sure exactly. We chatted about silly things (mainly school playground games based on an article in the local paper) and I did a bit of talk about landlord and tenant stuff. Of course you can only scratch the surface in that time, there is so much to say, but I did my best. They seemed to think it was OK anyway. I only lost it once.

I thoroughly enjoyed doing the show, party because Graham and Karen are so nice, and partly because it was such fun being silly on the radio. They did say they might have me back one day, which would be brilliant if it happened. I’ll let you know if I do.

Radio Norfolk

Funny I should have written about radio last night. Because today a nice man from Radio Norfolk rang up and asked me to go on his program next week. Next Wednesday in fact, fact fans, 10.00 to 1.00, with Graham and Karen. For a program on renting property.

Of course, as is the way of things, when he rang I was in the middle of having a new printer installed, and our talk was punctuated by the creaking and grinding noises of a printer being set up and tested. So I probably did not sound as intelligent as (of course) I really am. Well thats my excuse anyway.

So if you are at a loose end next Wednesday, why not tune in and see how I do? He promised that they would not do a Jeremy Paxman on me, so hopefully I won’t be gibbering with fear. It looks from the Radio Norfolk site as if the program cannot be downloaded via iplayer so you will only be able to listen to it live.

Anyway, thats enough blogging. I have two talks to do in London tomorrow. A talk for CLT on repossession proceedings in the morning and a talk about Landlord-Law at the Legal IT Show in the afternoon. Thankfully it looks as if the snow won’t be too bad for my journey, But I will have to get up at 5.00 am to catch the early train, which is never nice. And I still haven’t packed my bag!

It is very sad that this sort of thing is still going on, and that some tenants are frightened to report poor conditions because they are scared of being evicted. Either legally via section 21 or by the boys coming round to evict them forcibly.

The program mentioned the current review of the private sector being undertaken at York University, and it will be interesting to see if there are any suggestions in the report on how to deal with this sort of thing.

The program pointed out that the majority of landlords are responsible and provide decent properties. No doubt they would be very happy to see the back of the criminal landlord who gives them all a bad name.

At the time of writing you can listen to the program via this link, but I am not sure how long this will stay online.

Although I would have preferred to be interviewed on proper landlord law, my site does cover lodger stuff. Apparently there is not much on the net on lodgers so when she did her re-searching, my site was pretty high up on the list (perhaps partly due to my www.lodger.org.uk domain name).

They were not able to do the first day they suggested as someone important in sport died and they had to do a feature on him, but we did it on the Friday.

As it was in Hampshire and I am in Norwich it was done on the phone. You get rung up and they then put you on hold but you can hear the program. When you are on the air they clue you in by asking a question with your name in it so you know when to answer. It is all very immediate and frantic on the radio, quite fun, but there were constant interruptions for things like traffic reports, or updates on a charity auction they were doing. I just sat there and spoke when asked to.

I listened to myself later via the BBC listen again feature and I suppose I was not too awful, although I ummd a bit. But you do, don’t you, when you are thinking of what to say? I don’t think there were any real bad bits, although I suspect that they knew when I was struggling as they would cut in with a charity auction update, which let me off the hook a couple of times.

Anyway, I have now ‘done’ radio. Did anyone hear me? What did you think?