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Who is Adrian Finighan? Currently working as a newsreader on CNN, Adrian Finighan spent some of his early career at Radio Broadland. Presenter of both the "Broadland Beat" and the Late show as well as the popular "Saturday Special" sports programme, he spoke to me about his time at the station in 2004...
The Interview
How did you initially get
into radio? I was brought in to be a part of the original launch team at Broadland by Russ Stuart, who gave me my first job as a trainee in the newsroom at Gwent Broadcasting. Ever the astute businessman, I guess Russ figured that I was keen, young and most importantly very cheap – so he brought me to Norwich along with Chief Engineer Brian Barr when he made the move from South Wales. I’ve much to thank him for. He must have spotted something in me, goodness knows what, and employed me straight after my “A” levels. I went for my job interview at Gwent Broadcasting in my school uniform!
What shows
did you present during your
time at
Radio Broadland? I presented the “Broadland Beat” (Yuk, what a name!) from 7.30 to 10, which was when we closed down in the early days. Moved to the Late Show (10 – 1) when Rob moved to Breakfast a year or so later. I seem to remember that as Rob & I had produced reasonably decent RAJAR figures (I can take no credit – Rob Chandler, still one of the greatest radio talents this country has, built a huge audience at Drivetime in the early days and I inherited some of ‘em), it was hoped that I’d encourage people to go to bed with their radios tuned to Broadland so that they would wake up to Rob. At least, that was the way it was sold to me…. And I fell for it!!! I also presented the “Saturday Special” sports show with Kevin Piper from 2-6 on, er, Saturday afternoon. I can safely say that that programme was the most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done on radio, mostly thanks to Kev, David Hughes and the guy who’s currently looking after Radio Norfolk; Peter Cook, who used to help out behind the scenes. We used to get up to some pretty childish stuff which for some reason seemed hilarious at the time – like opening the mics during a song and unzipping our flies in time to the music. And while one of us was reading the classified football results – the other tried to put him off. Oh how we laughed! Well, you had to be there.
What did you do after you left Radio Broadland? Well, I moved to Radio Norfolk, via Radio Cambridgeshire, to present the evening “regional share” programme. Moved to London to “announce” behind the globe on BBC One, read news and “jock” in the dead of night on Radio 2. And since 1994 I’ve worked for BBC News, presenting business news for a while on BBC World (and News 24 when it came on-air). Then in 1998, after a three month spell as the New York presenter of World Business Report, I became a full time news reader on World and News 24. I’m still allowed out to read the news over at Radio 2 though if I’ve been a good boy. And I get to voice the odd documentary (I’ve done ‘em on Channel 4 and on Five) or corporate video.
With all that TV and radio
experience under your belt you've probably said or done a few
embarrassing things, haven't you!? Frequently. I’ve been on Auntie’s Bloomers a couple of times through cock-ups on the telly. I once cracked up reading the news on Radio 2 at Christmas time; Santa had been attacked by a mob of stone throwing yobs in a town near Reading. The last line of the script said that “one of his elves was also injured”, and I’m afraid that I just went (I once took Radio 2 off air for over a minute at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. 5 million listeners heard Steve Wright followed by silence. Ooer. I’d prefer to forget that one. At Broadland I was the boy from Wales who hadn’t a clue about the geography of Norfolk, or the pronunciation of places like Wymondham or Happisburgh, so opportunity for embarrassment was great. I remember David Hughes saying on the news one day that “a woman was nobbed at knifepoint in Anglia Square”. Not mine, but enjoyable nonetheless!
What were the callers to your radio shows like? Have you got any interesting stories about them? Well, Broadland listeners were on the whole a fabulous bunch. I was once stalked by a woman who was one of Nick Risby’s fans from his previous station Pennine, who’d followed him to Norwich, and Blackpool before that! A long and sorry story but quite scary at the time! Some of Radio Norfolk’s callers were “interesting”. I remember trying to counsel a tearful woman who’d called up saying she was about to top herself. And when I was presenting “Nightride” on Radio 2 some “older” women listeners used to send me their knickers (seriously, they did!)!
Have you ever had to deal with any big technical glitches? Ooer. You’ve just made me realise that I’ve been working in the “broadcasting” business for over twenty years now and in that time I have more or less experienced everything that could possibly go wrong. From power failures to diarrhoea I’ve been there, done that. Tony Gillham once tried to play a practical joke on me at Broadland by poking a hand through the main studio door and flicking the light switch off. Unfortunately he hit the studio master power switch and not only plunged me into darkness but took the station off air! And more recently I had just come off air at BBC World when the Real IRA taxi bomb went off outside Television Centre. That cleared the ear-wax out I can tell you. I broke the news of the blast on BBC1 in the middle of the night (I seem to do a lot of my broadcasting in the middle of the night, have you noticed? At least it’s daytime somewhere when I’m on BBC World. Viewers down under must think “Jeez, that bloke looks like he could do with a good kip”).
How would you sum yourself up? What kind of things interest you and what really annoys you? Well, what you hear, or see these days, is more or less what you get. I’m very ordinary. Wife, three kids, mortgage, etc. Musically I’ll listen to everything from Coldplay to Mamas & Papas. I dislike rude, greedy and selfish people. I like funny, sociable, inspiring people. I’m a bit of a gadget freak. And I’m addicted to news. I get very tetchy when I haven’t heard or seen a bulletin in more than a couple of hours!
A final note from Adrian... I have very fond memories of my time at Broadland, I was still very young when I started work there and was lucky enough to have been a part of a remarkably talented team, some of whom I’m still in touch with today (and others, alas, not). Through your web-site I’d like to thank Mike Stewart, Rob Chandler, Dave Brown, Tony Gillham, Bob Harris and David Jennings for being such excellent mentors and for passing on so many of the valuable skills that are still with me today. And I’d like to pay special tribute to two of the true greats of radio who are sadly no longer with us; John Warwick and Julian Smith, both of whom taught me so much.
Where is Adrian now?
Adrian can now be found
presenting world news from London on CNN.
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