AS we mentioned in last week’s tale from the shed, one of our favourite things to get up to, particularly in the early days was to attend music events. We’d still do it where we can get away doing so.

Therefore, if there is anyone reading this that is hosting a live music event (with good music, obviously), and there’s free tickets and the possibility of a bribe, sorry, donation involving drink tokens for the benefit of our constantly parched local radio team, then please get in touch. 

Anyway. Back to the events. In the nascent years of both NCB Radio and Cornwall becoming a home for live music, we used to be invited to trot along to the Looe Music Festival, have a stand and bring along our hilariously amateur attempts to broadcast live radio, which we did, while getting progressively inebriated as each day wore on. Some of our team would stay in Looe for the occasion, others would come and go. It was often easy to tell which is which by how straight they were walking by the time early evening came. 

Being plonked right by the beach, it was our mission to bring a flavour of the festival to all three of our mothers listening. 

Broadcasting the festival live was a bit beyond our meagre technical capacity, given we could barely connect to our own system half the time, such was the unreliability of early 2010’s era internet speed and public access wifi. But what we did do is bring the participants to home. 

Various memorable occasions stick in our mind when we reflect on our 2012 and 2013 visits to the music festival, which sadly is no longer – because in our mind, it was terrific fun and the town of Looe really came to life for the event. 

The first was when two of our team interviewed the headliners of one of the years, the Darkness. We were, firstly shocked that they’d agreed to the interview, and our rock music presenter at the time was over the moon at the thought of meeting his heroes, so naturally, we let him lead on the interview. 

We were told to meet outside a small cottage a stone’s throw away from the beach where the main stage was. After knocking on the door, it was answered by the man most associated with the band, obviously, the lead singer Justin Hawkins who let us in and the rest of the band bar one were in the living room, playing a games console if memory serves us. He guided us to a back room, where the interview would take place. He said he wasn’t doing the interview, as he didn’t want to but the drummer, Ed Graham was. 

Justin’s plan had become clear. For the time that Ed did the interview with him, Justin made it his mission to try and distract Ed wherever possible. We might if we look extra hard still have the audio somewhere, we hope we do. 

The second was a meeting with a slightly inebriated Betty Stogs – an interview that was a riot. If ever a fine advert for the ale you are selling, was the fun you’d have when you’d had a few.