Andy Newman, Wyvern News, Kidderminster

Why anyone would give me a job in radio in October 1982 is beyond me. I was the archetypal socially inadequate radio anorak. OK so I wasn’t actually wearing an anorak but I was still wearing my mother’s knitted sweaters – honestly. The one thing I had going for me is that I did know one end of a tape recorder from the other, and in a radio newsroom full of journalists who’d never worked in radio before my modest technical skills made me look like some kind of wizard.

It was on the strength of this that I was hired as the newsroom “Sparky”. The pay: £5 an afternoon. That was my reward for carting up voicers, compiling the racing results, and at 12.45 pm dashing round to the paper shop to collect the first edition of the Worcester Evening News so David Holdsworth could lift the main story off the front page and get it into the one o’clock bulletin. (After checking it of course!)

My next break came when Sybil Ruscoe headed off to the dizzy heights of Beacon Radio. That meant the hugely talented and professionally generous Frazer Sheppard could be promoted from his position as newsroom trainee, which in turn created a journalistic opening for me.

News Editor David Holdsworth took a big risk by giving me that opportunity, but despite a few early gaffes I never really looked back, and somehow stayed in gainful employment in broadcast newsrooms for the next 30 years. I even swapped the microphone for a camera and appeared on Midlands Today in front of dozens of viewers (on a good night).

So thank you David, and thank you Wyvern.

Andy Newman, Wyvern News, Kidderminster.