It was the morning before the Big Storm of '87, I was 20.

The Arrecife bound Monarch airliner taxiied to it's hold position on the runway at Gatwick. I took a deep breath, gripped the seat armrests firmly and stared out the window as the engines powered our airliner down the tarmac and into the air, destination Lanzarote.

I gripped those seats, not because I was fearful of flying. I gripped them and remember vividly doing it, because it was the first time I'd been away from home properly really and was trying to be brave sat amidst sun worshipping excited holiday makers. I was travelling that day because my passion for radio was that great, I'd have gone anywhere in the World to follow my dream professionally.

Up to that moment I'd dabbled in the business of radio, having presented hospital radio shows and acted as a 'runner' for a commercial station in Bedfordshire. Here I was, travelling back to an island I'd visited three months previously as a tourist, having accepted a job on a tiny 'held together by string and sticky tape' station, run by a German 'illegal' minus work permit.

Still none of that mattered really. Nor did working in a cockroach infested studio that was raided every other Thursday by the Guardia Civil (military policeforce). This was radio and I had arrived.

The next 20 years in a sentence; a year in Lanzo, Production Assistant and presenter in BBC local for two, presenter at a commercial station in Beds for one and a bit, Radio 1 for three to four-ish, a neighbouring Berks station for a further two, a radio school and various commercial stations for a further eight, then here. I'm settled in whatever guise and show they offer me... I think!

I do have another professional passion; photography. There's broadcasting, and there's my time as a creative portrait photographer. Sound and vision are integrally linked for me. I meet lots of interesting people, many of whom unwittingly seem to contribute to my radio shows.