Well, it's that time of year for many young people to find out their fate as they open an envelope on A-Level results day. Of course, it's no different to when you did it the first time round with GCSE's, but this time it will maybe determine the rest of your life.
I remember both of the days fondly, going down to my school to pick up the paper that decided my fate, and low and behold, I hadn't done that well. Not surprising really when I had spent most of my revision time playing football and sitting on the beach. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. In hindsight, I probably should have studied more.
Panicking wasn't my first point of call though. I managed to scrape into university in the town of Bolton. A place, which caused me to grow up pretty quickly and find out who I really was. Incidentally, it wasn't even radio, or anything near to media, that I chose to study! It was actually computing. It was quite a lazy option really; I had studied it at GCSE and at A-Level and assumed this was the natural path that I should be taking.
I stuck it out for about a year, walking over exams where they had practically given you the answer and sitting in lectures just one day a week. In my spare time I wrote course work and worked in one of the local bars, serving people into the twilight hours in order to buy food and spend it on what I poured the punters by night. I quit university after finding myself getting bored with the monotone, bland life that I was leading and went back to my home in Essex to become a postman and try to work out what I should do.
I had always wanted to be in radio. I remember dancing around the room to Top of The Pops, and pretending to run in front of the TV while watching 'Whitney Houston's - I Will Always Love You' for weeks on end. It became more of a running joke (if you pardon the pun) and to this day I still don't know why I did that! I also have fond memories of going to the Radio 1 roadshow in Clacton every year, watching Simon Mayo ask the crowd to yell "MAYO" at the end of him trying to impersonate the Outhere Brothers hit at the time called 'Boom Boom Boom'. The one thing that always got my pulse racing though was the sound of live radio. I was one of those kids who used to phone local radio shows to try and win competitions (I did win once - tickets to see Mike Bassett: England Manager at the local cinema), but specifically, sitting down on a Sunday and listening to Alan 'Fluff' Freeman rattle off the chart, at what seemed like a million miles an hour. It wasn't so much what he was playing, but how he was saying things and what made the show flow together. From that I went on and discovered the likes of Chris Evans, Sara Cox, Scott Mills and Chris Moyles. I was hooked. I did try in my younger days to get into the radio industry, but was knocked back several times due to my lack of experience and my tender age.
I was lucky enough to fall on my feet, when one day I was offered a job by a small radio station to go and sort out their music database when I injured my leg. I had worked for them in the past when they were operating as a television and local radio station production company. I was overjoyed, mainly because I got me out of the house (I hadn't been out for weeks due to not being able to walk), but also it was a lifeline into what I wanted to do.
Since that day, I have grasped the dream tightly and never looked back, and have the pleasure of working with some of the greatest, funniest, cleverest and talented people ever to grace the airwaves. I learned from them everything that I could and adapted it into my own way to further myself. I now produce programmes on a national, local and international level, run outside broadcasts and design shows with a variety of topics.
Whatever you get in your A-Levels today, don't worry about a thing. Having passion for what you want to do in life is worth a million times more than a piece of paper with a letter on it.
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