My Life By Henry O'Donovan

My Life - Chapter 7

I have been writing a book about my rather strange life. I know this book will never actually be published, so I'm putting it here. Enjoy, if you know what the hell I'm going on about!

As I mentioned in the last chapter, the superpirates started in early 1981. Beautiful crystal clear FM radio! Both Sunshine Radio and Radio Nova cornered the market. Eventually Radio Nova surpassed its competition and became number one in the lucrative Dublin market. Everyone was listening to Nova!

RTÉ (the national broadcaster) had set up Radio 2, a national music station to offset the pirates in 1979, but it didn’t work. They just didn’t know how to do it, and they were restricted to what was called “needle time” They could only play a certain amount of music, and had to have so many minutes of talk each hour. Of course, the pirates did not have these restrictions.

Nova soared ahead of Sunshine playing what they called “clutter free” radio. No ads, hardly any talk, just back to back West coast US music. It was an instant winner with the listeners of Dublin.

Chris Cary, the owner, had been working on Radio Caroline off the coast of the UK, then went to England and created a shop front business called Comp Shop. He had his hand in computers well before anyone had a computer in their homes. He became a millionaire. He had the money to set up Nova in Dublin, pay his staff good wages, and he also hired sales reps to go out and sell advertising. Soon, the big players, like Jameson Jewellers, Clearys (department store) and other national and international companies came on board.

RTÉ was furious. Nova was robbing their revenue. Their failed pop station was marginally successful in country areas, but the big piece of the advertising pie was obviously in the biggest city, Dublin. As I said earlier, everyone was listening to Nova. You would walk down Grafton street, a busy thoroughfare in the city, and passing the shops, Nova was on.

In 1984, owner Chris Cary ordered a huge mast from overseas. This was to blast Nova into Dublin and further afield! Nova could now be heard throughout Wales, the west coast of England, into Scotland, right through the Republic of Ireland and up to Belfast in Northern Ireland. At one stage, the British government wrote to the Irish government complaining about Nova’s dominance in The Isle of Man. Their local station Manx Radio’s audience dropped to the ground. I’ll say it again. EVERYONE was listening to Nova!

I needed to be on that station! I applied for a job on the next biggest station in Dublin, Sunshine Radio. At this point I was reading news on small non paying pirate stations. I was quite good at it actually! I always say that news reading is the hardest job on radio. If you even trip up on one word, it’s very noticeable. I was refused Sunshine on the basis that I did not have a degree or even my leaving cert! They didn’t say that but they did infer it. So much for that. Would I dare approach the biggest radio station in the land, Radio Nova? Of course! I was without fear. Fearless youth is a wonderful thing.

There was an ad on air for a newsreader at Nova. I jumped at it. I got my little cassette recorder, grabbed a newspaper and read a demo news clip. At this stage I was used to reading news on the small pirates. Piece of cake! Or was it? Some of Nova’s broadcasters were English. The station had a very British feel to it. I had a well spoken Irish accent, but I kind of made it sound a little bit English. If you remember back in the '40s Pathé news would play in the cinemas, reporting on the war. The presenters doing those reports were terribly posh. They all sounded like the king or queen! Even in Australia the reporters sounded English.

By the eighties this posh sound was still used in broadcasting albeit not nearly as tilted as it was back then. I recorded my demo news piece and sent it to Nova. I really did not think anything would come of it, having been unceremoniously refused by Sunshine Radio for lack of education results. About a week later I got a letter. I had no phone! Head of News at Nova was Sybil Fennell, who was now owner Chris Cary’s partner in crime. They were a thing now. I was asked to audition for the job. I was beside myself, and suddenly terribly nervous. Nova had been in central Dublin, but they moved the station to a place called Rathfarnham, which was basically in the country. They did this because Cary had bought this huge mast and basically he wanted it to be on the top of a mountain to get wider coverage. That mast by the way, was delivered by ship, being too big for air freight. Walking up the very long lane to the station I thought to myself “I can’t do this. I can’t do this” I was petrified! But I was also very determined! Then I saw this massive broadcasting mast. It was almost as big as the national broadcaster RTÉ’s mast. I nearly turned around to go back home, but I figured that I would not get the job anyway and no love lost kinda thing. As a young man aged 22, I was about to face my destiny.

My Life - Chapter 8

As I strode up the long path to the station I noticed there was a long queue of people. What was going on here? The realisation hit me like a ton of bricks. They were all going to be auditioning for this one news reading job. My heart sank. I joined the queue, and in no time there were people queueing behind me. There must have been over a hundred people going for this job! In the 1980’s Dublin was a stark place. Very high unemployment. Having been on the dole, I was familiar with long queues. This was different of course. This was a queue to get a job on the country's biggest “commercial” station. People went in to the station. People came out of the station. It took what seemed to be forever. Now it was my turn.

Remember, Nova had been on air for 4 years now and the DJs and newsreaders had become household names. This was very intimidating for me. I was totally amazed at how professional this station was. I was used to broadcasting in people’s living rooms, with shonky equipment! This was state of the art. Separate newsroom, professional microphones. A recording studio to record ads etc. These studios were more professional than the national broadcaster RTÉ’s. I thought to myself “This is all so beautiful.” That’s the only word I could think of! So I was put into a studio and asked to do my demo reading the news. I sort of went into a haze. It was like I was no longer in my own body. It would appear that I did a sterling job in my audition. I don’t think I was actually quite “there” for those three endless minutes.

I got the job. 100 Irish pounds a week for 5 days of reading the news for 6 hours each day. That was a LOT of money in those days for a young fella like me. I was now officially an employee of the great Radio Nova, the biggest commercial station in the country. I floated through the corridors of the station, passing all these famous presenters. I hopped on the bus back to the city, and the driver was playing Radio Nova. Of course he was! I thought to myself “He’s going to be listening to me soon”. Can you imagine how I felt? I was started on the midnight to 6am shift, as most rookies were. Nova had a 24 hours news service. No one else had. RTÉ didn’t. They closed down at midnight!

So here I was realising my dreams. As someone who has a huge phobia with public speaking, I seemed okay with broadcasting. Possibly because I could not see my audience. Nova had literally hundreds of thousands of listeners right through Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. That didn’t bother me at all.

My father and stepmother were quite oblivious to what was going on with my life. I was not living at home at this stage. I had a bedsitter. They were in an amusement arcade in a town called Bray, south of Dublin, and over the tannoy system was Radio Nova. At this point I was taken off the midnight shift and would broadcast news from 7pm. The news came on and I was reading it. My step mum heard me. She was astounded. “Is that Henry on Nova?” she exclaimed. It certainly was!

I started voicing commercials. The owner Chris Cary said: “Get in there and voice this ad for Brown Thomas (a department store)." I did it and he handed me 20 pounds in cash on the spot. How cool was that? I was doing what I loved and actually getting paid pretty well for it!

Chris Cary was a rather “colourful” character. He would go into fits of rage for no reason that we would understand. Actually one day he lost his watch, and went tearing around the station trying to find it. Cary would fire people on a regular basis. Then he would hire them back just hours later! It was always the DJs he fired. He never said a bad word to us newsreaders. He really did respect us. Perhaps it was because his girlfriend was head of news. I don’t really know.

One day he was in a terrible mood. He shut the station down. Nova went off the air. Dead air, to use a broadcast term. We all went to the pub and waited for him to calm down. I was drinking beers. This is important to note because a couple of hours later Nova was back on air, just in time for my news shift at 7pm. But I was a little bit drunk! Try reading the news when you are drunk. It really doesn’t work. It’s a hard enough job to do sober!

I loved working on such a professional station. I later asked my boss, head of news Sybil Fennel why I got the newsreading job ahead of all these people auditioning. She said “Simple. You read well and you can type”. It was a simple answer, but an appropriate one. In retrospect, I loved that answer. Nova didn’t care that I had no tertiary education. They didn’t care that I failed my leaving cert. They simply wanted someone with a good clear voice who could type. Typing was very important for this job. You had to type really fast as news was breaking right up to the TOTH (Top Of The Hour). There is a funny story though. Some years earlier a newsreader called Bryan Dobson was on Nova. He could not type. In fact in those days not many people did. He actually hand wrote his bulletins. Amazing! He went on to be the biggest TV news anchor on Irish TV. In fact many DJs and newsreaders ended up on the national broadcaster. They were already so well trained. Probably better than RTÉ would train them.

RTÉ hated Nova, but seemed to have no problem stealing our staff. In fact at one stage RTÉ jammed Nova from their broadcast museum. If you tried to listen, a cal tone (very noisy whistle) would drown the broadcasts. Can you believe it? The national broadcaster up to this illegal activity? Of course this was never proven. However, we all knew it was true!

Later on in Ireland a third “superpirate” emerged. It was called Q102. I left Nova and set up the news service there. It was a smaller operation at the start, with less professional equipment. The studios were simply not as good as Nova's. I had made a very bad move. A number of Nova’s broadcasters moved to Q. Nova was my everything though. I had made a terrible mistake, but Nova took me back. Later on, Q102 changed management and became as professional as Nova. I was a Nova man to the very core, and to the end of my time in Ireland.

Walking up that hill to be auditioned by Nova, staring at that huge broadcast mast, I was a scared young man facing my destiny. My dream had come true. But at 22, your dream cannot end there. I later had a nervous breakdown, “live” on air. That was like dying, but I was too young to die.

My Life - Chapter 9

Radio Nova was the love of my life. It was now 1987. I was 25. Nova had a lot of problems. As newsreaders, we all joined the NUJ (National Union Of Journalists). This was the largest union for journalists, both print and electronic media. I’m not sure why we joined. I just did what I was told.

Owner of Radio Nova hated this union. Of course he would. The current affairs show which aired each evening was becoming skewed with what some perceived to be biassed coverage of “the troubles” in Northern Ireland, basically doing everything to support the provisional IRA. That’s what I heard anyway. It may not be true. Cary was livid. Here was this English man running the country's biggest commercial station being heckled by his own staff. I didn’t want to know about this stuff.

Nova was being threatened. All the news staff (including me) were ordered to go on strike, and so we did. Some DJs did too. I was very naive. I just followed like a sheep to the slaughter, and that’s what it felt like. My adoration for Nova was limitless.

So we were there standing outside the studios with placards. It was awful. I hated it. Eventually some of us broke the strike and went back on air.

Nova had other problems too. The advertisers were leaving in droves because of this strike. The print media had a field day.

This great radio station was sinking, to the delight of our competitors, Sunshine Radio and Q102. For legal reasons that I really know nothing of, Chris Cary changed the name of the station to Energy 103, and moved the studios back to central Dublin. Now I was a newsreader on Energy 103. It was a fantastic station, but it wasn’t Nova. Or was it?

Many of Nova’s broadcasters went onto British radio. As I mentioned earlier, many went onto RTÉ, Ireland’s National Broadcaster. They all had experience on the most professional radio station in the land and now were broadcasting legally. I actually applied for a job on the national broadcaster. I was refused based on lack of education. Nothing new here!

On Energy 103, I started selling advertising. I would go to the ad agencies and spruke a 30 spot (30 second commercial). Then I would voice it. So I was getting commission and a wage and voiceover fees. Great stuff!

But there were dark days ahead. I think being brought up in children’s homes and not having parents per se, there was something going on inside me that I didn’t understand. As most young people I was a daring young man. I reached for the stars, and found them in Nova. I say that with a chuckle. I will quote the meaning of Nova, courtesy of Wikipedia, because they can explain it better than me! “A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star, that slowly fades over several weeks or many months.”

This was indeed what my Radio Nova was. It definitely had faded at this stage, albeit over some years. I was suddenly losing my confidence. In those days we did not have what we call audio bytes...we had no reporters in the field, so to speak. So it was three minutes of reading news “live” to air. I started panicking in the news bulletins.

My heart was beating very fast and I was losing breath. This was hell on wheels doing a 3 minute news bulletin. It was very obvious to the listeners too. No one ever said anything to me, but I’m sure our broadcasters were talking about me. I told my father and stepmother about this, and I think they just dismissed it as a phase I was going through. How were they to know after all. This dreadful experience started multiplying. It got worse and worse. In the name of professionalism, I decided to leave. It could not go on.

In the summer of 1987 I left my beloved career and fled to London. I got a job in The Broadcast Monitoring Company, a company which sold broadcast content to radio and TV stations.

Basically I was typing any mention of commercial products on radio or TV. So I was listening to these broadcasts, typing this stuff out, which they would sell to their clients. It was a dead end job. I hated it. After being on national radio in Ireland, I was reduced to this.

Ironically, given that I had a nervous breakdown on Irish radio, I was cheeky enough to apply for a job on BBC World Service! This was the biggest radio station in the world! Still is! I got a 30 second piece called “Letter from Scotland”. So, going from the biggest station in Ireland to the biggest station in the world was fun!

However, my first 30 second stint on BBC World service was my last. I had lied to the BBC, saying I was educated at Eton and Oxford. Talk about a huge lie! They soon found out that this was false and let me go! I didn’t really care. I didn’t think I would get the job in the first place. I thought it was great fun being on the world’s largest radio station, even if it was for just 30 seconds!