On the Radio

I’m a child of the 70s and 80s, so I’m channelling Donna Summer here (I’m sorry if that song is now going to bug you for the next few hours! Well kind of sorry – but such great lyrics – whoa oh oh oh oh….).

It’s a little-known fact about me that, as a university student, I was a radio announcer on Radio One, Otago University’s student radio station. I am about as averse to dead air as I am to typos, which meant that there was never a dull (or silent) moment on my shows. I was the DJ for the dance show and occasionally the women’s show. I recall I did actually play a few tracks from my Donna Summer On the Radio LP and yes, we did in fact have the technology to play LPs back then. Ah, heady times. You really had to have your wits about you to talk and balance those massive headphones on your head and line up ad tracks and get the record player needle in exactly the right place to start, all at the same time.

Anyway, I had completely forgotten about all of this, until I was asked to do a radio interview a few weeks ago. That got me to thinking that I had never been on that side of the equation in a radio station – I had only been the one pushing all the coloured sliders, not the one being interviewed. I was all ready to put on the big headphones but I didn’t even need to do that this time! So if you happen to want to hear me being interviewed by Maureen Howard about this whole raw/plant-based food lark, here’s the link – just go to Eco Living in Action and listen to the 2013-11-07 interview.

It runs for 27 minutes apparently. But if that doesn’t float your boat, or you only have five minutes to spare, you could always spend it with the late, great Donna Summer instead. There are plenty of clips on youtube where, even with the appalling quality, it’s hard not to be impressed by the things that woman could do with eyeshadow. (But since I’m a little cautious about copyright law, I’ll let you find them yourself.)