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I’ m a firm believer that early gifts offered to us in our childhood can have a massive influence on how we shape and develop our future careers and aspirations. In my particular case I can nominate three such significant items— a small transistor radio, a rudimentary reel-to-reel tape recorder, and a simple electronic construction kit. The combined effect of these gifts on my early learning processes became far greater than the sum of their individual parts.
But that scenario was to be put on hold when following my fruitful grammar school education in the north west of England where I excelled in music, art, physics and English grammar, my father, a highly successful architect encouraged me to study for, and become qualified in his lucrative profession. So for the next five years I enrolled in two British universities and proudly emerged in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in land and building surveying, construction management and economics! And‘ behind the scenes’ during this period I learned to play several musical instruments whilst continuing to experiment with recording techniques and associated electronics. My developing musical interests were enhanced by listening to many UK radio stations.
Not surprisingly because of my high qualifications I very quickly achieved a position as a senior land and building surveyor for a large British construction company, and for the following two years I was responsible for managing a host of projects ranging from new petrol filling stations to large hotels and entire home subdivisions.
As luck( bad luck as it turned out!) would have it, a massive recession fast approaching a depression hit the UK hard in 1982, and all new construction development ground to a halt. The upshot of this devastation resulted in hundreds of thousands of job lay-offs, and unfortunately I became one of them!
Accepting that this was going to be a long term recovery, I temporarily put aside my profession in construction and began to focus and refine my ongoing interests in music, radio and electronics at home. My local BBC( British Broadcasting Corporation) radio station was running a fun competition inviting musicians to compose, record and submit original short songs covering a local topic. Just for laughs I quickly rattled one off and sent it to the station expecting to hear nothing further. Amazingly less than a week later I got a surprise call from the station telling me how much they liked my song and that it won the contest and would be played on their airwaves! Thrilled is hardly the word!
The BBC continued requesting new topical songs and even jingles from me, and one day invited me to meet them in person at the station. I was flabbergasted when out of the blue they offered me a contract to come and work full time for them.
That opportunity became my 180 degree turning point, and in a finger snap I had become an employee of the world’ s most respected broadcasting authority, never again to return to the construction industry.
The following 8 years rewarded me generously with the finest on the job tuition in quality broadcasting, and allowed me many opportunities to advance my position from local radio to regional groups of stations in the north of England, and ultimately becoming a senior producer in London and Manchester for national and international BBC broadcasts.
In late 1989 I received an unexpected call from my father inviting me to join him on a business trip to Indianapolis, USA. Whilst there I spent much of my
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