Mrs Jazzjet and I went to a volunteering fare today in our home city of Exeter. One thing that caught my eye was hospital radio. I can’t imagine that there’s much opportunity to blast out some electric Miles Davis in the afternoon to a captive, not too mention unwell audience. More likely to be Neil Diamond and Engelbert Humperdinck. But has anyone any experience of working in hospital radio to share before I take the plunge?
Hospital Radio
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… and which Neil Diamond song could it possible be!
Neil’s cover of Girlfriend in a Coma?
Yes – I’ve been a member of our local station for 23 years and am currently its Treasurer.
I would recommend it. It’s not just playing music – we visit the patients (which I’ve found more enjoyable the older I’ve got), there are opportunities to fund raise (I’ve spent many an afternoon at local fetes reuniting punters with sunglasses and announcing that burgers are now half price at the barbeque) and made a number of good friends. I’ve been trained how to cue up records, learned some interviewing skills, have experience of creating radio shows and even do a bit of sound editing from time to time.
It’s one of those things that you get more out of the more you put in. While it’s not always easy to slip many obscure records in to your shows (request shows are the main thing we do and are very much Abba/ Frank Sinatra/ Queen with the odd unusual pick) you can occasionally go a bit off piste.
Definitely give it a go – if the station round your way is anything like ours we’re down members since COVID (we couldn’t broadcast for a good 6-8 months, let alone visit patients) so opportunities may well be plentiful. You’ll also be able to have the “what records can’t you play?” conversation down the pub which I’ve had numerous times.
I wish you all well but – Abba / Frank Sinatra / Queen / Brexit / triffic.
It’s how Galton and Simpson got started.
They certainly met in a sanatorium, not sure if they wrote anything for hospital radio, though
Milford Hospital near Guildford was a chest and TB hospital. My wife worked there in the 90s doing clinical research. G&S met there, wrote scripts and converted a laundry room into a radio studio to broadcast them. Some of the site is still there, the rest having been redeveloped for houses.
http://www.hambledonsurrey.co.uk/?page_id=6435
I did it for about 3 years in the late 80s and I really enjoyed it. Particularly the patient interactions. Older presenters seemed to think they’d done their time with the request shows and had their own 60 minute shows with no requests. To me, that seemed a bit self-indulgent, largely because they played terrible music with no thought for the audience. I stopped because I took on too much and ended up in 4 hour committee meetings which were chock full o’internal politics- like the Jackie Weaver meeting that went viral during COVID.
I volunteered at the Leeds General Infirmary radio station in the late 70s. Was helping the ‘real’ DJs rather than going on the air myself. Most of the DJs were terrible self indulgent types who put on Smashy and Nicey personas. There was one good bloke who played Billy Connolly live LPs – that cheered the patients up! I used this volunteering as part of my Duke of Edinburgh Award community service. The hospital managers sent me down to the porters room to get my D of E book signed off by Jimmy Savile. Even then I remember being very underwhelmed by his real-life seedy persona compared to the “Jim’ll Fix It” act.
Many thanks for all the helpful comments. I’m still mulling it over.