Me On The Internet, Take 2

Radio 1 never do tours. It’s a very restricted area, and only people with passes get passed Billy on security. But during Access All Areas week they opened a competition for listeners to win tickets to go on a tour of Radio 1. I entered, thinking about how many people apply for the likes of Radio 1’s Big Weekend, and forgot about it. And then I got an email a few days later - I was a winner.

So off i set the following saturday into London, and to radio 1. We went in, got given some passes and then were taken through to the daytime office where all the daytime presenters are usually sat. If you’ve watched the office cams before or Beckycam, it’s that office. Scott Mills, Chris Moyles, Fearne Cotton etc. all sit there. For Fearne’s birthday a few years back, Chris Moyles gave her a framed picture of himself, which i remember them talking about on the radio, and there it was, sat on her desk! 

As they were telling us about the mountain of crap people send in every day for the presenters, they brought out a giant chocolate head of Chris Moyles somebody had sent in. Amazing, is all I can say. Scott Mills had left out a bunch of signed cards for us, which was nice, and I took one of those. We saw all the props on and around his (very messy) desk from The Bjorn Identity show he did in Glasgow this year.

Then we were taken downstairs, where we had to turn our phones off because you know that thing when you have your phone close to the computer and every so often it makes inteference noises? Well that happens, only everybody listening to radio 1 hears it. I thought that was interesting haha, might just be the geek in me coming out.

We got taken into the live lounge, which was amazing. Just to think of all the many many huge names who’ve performed live right there over the years. Through a window to our left, and live on air, was Jo Whiley, who gave us a wave. It was surreal to hear Radio 1 in the background, knowing it was going out live across the country, and seeing her right in front of me as she was hosting. Reggie Yates then walked in with some little cakes, and offered us all one.

In came Dev and he took us through to another studio, where he chatted to us for a bit and showed us how they work the radio desk, and let us have a little play with the jingle machine. Interesting to note is that the machine which does all the music has a little countdown as the song starts, telling the presenter how long until lyrics start. That must make hitting the vocal easier haha. And each song also has notes like ‘It’s number 2 this week’ or ‘That song is out next monday’, so the presenters can also mention that if they want to leading into or out of the song.

Over the complicated webcam system, we then got a peak into the news presenting room, at about 28 minutes past the hour, and had a quick chat with the news presenter. Another thing that was cool was that after we had a picture taken in the studio and walked out, we hear *digital - fm - online. this THIS is bbc radio 1* and then the news presenter starts talking live on radio 1. Just thinking ‘Wow, I was speaking to her 2 minutes ago, and now she’s live on radio 1’, it’s crazy.

We then had a look around the evening office, which Dev and Zane Lowe amongst others are based in.

Then we headed out, shook hands with Dev on the way out and said goodbye. My only regret about the whole thing is that Rachel from The Chris Moyles Show was there, and I am a *HUGE* Chris Moyles Show fan, like I couldn’t tell you. And I didn’t say anything, cause i was too scared. In hindsight i should’ve just quietly sang the ‘Good moooorning from the Chris Moyles Show’ jingle close to her to break the ice. Funny that I’m scared to say hi and ‘are you rachel?’ but singing a jingle to her wouldn’t phase me. I digress.

One of the best days of the year. I’m a huge radio 1 fan and to have this experience was just incredible. Fuck yeah, Radio 1!

Online, I have a Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and obviously a Tumblr. But the other sites don’t link to my Tumblr, and vice versa. That’s so I can be open and honest on here without somebody googling my youtube username and finding me. Why would somebody Google me, I hear you ask? Well, let me explain. :P

About a year ago I started work on a video for youtube. Originally, it was going to be just a parody song I was making to show a few friends, but when they were enthusing about it, I decided to tidy it up and make a video to go with. So I busted out my greenscreen (i’m a film student, so thats why i had one) and got to work, spending a week on this video. When it was done I uploaded it to youtube and was surprised that within about 15 minutes it had already gathered 50 views.

My goal when making it was to get 3,000 views in total. Only 1 of my other videos had that many views so it was quite a high goal. Within a day it had about 400 views. Within 2 days it had 1000 views, at which point i was over the moon. My friend at college had to tell me to calm down. The next day, it had 4000, the day after 10000.

For the best part of a month following that, the video was getting thousands upon thousands of views every day and I suddenly had all this attention on me. I had went from being an average every day 18 year old who everyone pretty much ignored, to having people turning round in college, or in my town, when I walked past. Random people would come up when I was out shopping and sing the main line from the song at me, or shout out my youtube username at me, or just generally be pleased to see me. Suddenly there was a lot of interest from the media too.

Around 2 weeks in, the video got shown as the number 1 video of the day on Attack Of The Show - it’s like The Gadget Show except its on in the US, Canada and Australia. My video got about a 6 minute segment on there.

Then I got an email from The Charlotte Church Show - they were making a new series which incorporated viral videos as part of it and wanted me to have a segment on the non-screenable pilot. At first, they were more interested in possibly having me being a recurring guest with an ‘Ask Andrew’ feature (a reference to an earlier video of mine. It’s removed now, don’t try searching it, it wont work), but then after a couple of conversations over the phone with a producer, they decided the best idea was to have me go to their studios and sing my song live. After all was booked, I got an email with the train and hotel information, and then a few hours later I had a call; The executive producer had made the decision to cancel the feature. It didn’t make sense to me that they would do it after paying for it, and I was let down, but after a day or so I was back in a good mood again.

The local newspaper (which goes out over a few towns in my area) wanted to have a story about me, so I did an interview over the phone, they sent a photographer over to take a picture. And they didn’t mention that I was going to be the front page. What a shock that was. So for that whole week, every newspaper outlet I went to had a stack of newspapers with me on the front!

A variety of other things happened too, including a live performance in front of a few hundred people and a variety of cover versions done by youtube celebrities. It was such a strange and surreal month, where every day I would wake up and there’d be this new amazing thing happen relating to that video. And for the whole month, there was a lot of attention on me.

Nowadays I still get recognised from time to time, which makes me a little embarrassed but I guess I don’t really mind it. I wouldn’t want to be properly famous, but I’m glad I had that experience.