Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1491103
20 S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y tent-pole movie, which you've been a part of on many of your productions. It was a summer blockbuster movie that flipped the switch for you. It flipped the switch for me. And I can remember asking my mum if I could go back to see it again and again, and I think she cut me off at three times. She said, "There's absolutely no need for you to see that film a fourth time." [laughs] How did you take that interest and develop it into a skill? If you can imagine then in Belfast in the 1970s, it was an area of conflict. I went to a Christian Brothers school and their focus was not so much on the arts. There was no theatre program. I knew that I wanted to work in television and film and wasn't quite sure how to do it. I discovered in the local newspaper, the Irish News, an advertisement for a trainee audio assistant. Is that what led to you working at the BBC? It was. I got an invitation to go in for an interview and thought, "Okay, I'd better learn something about sound." I went to the local library and was able to check out a couple of books on sound recording techniques and I learned about moving coil microphones, tape recorders, reel to reels, and kind of just basic electronic theory that would go into sound recording techniques. I kind of fumbled my way through that interview and they said, "Well, we'd like to invite you back for an interview this afternoon." I can remember going away from that interview and thinking, "Oh, that's pretty good. I've got through to the second interview." I went away and started reading up. I went into a local coffee shop and just started reading more and more and more. But when I went back for the second interview, it wasn't focused on the electronics part of things or sound recording, it was more about, "What are your interests? What are your passions?" They wanted to build a story of me. I told them about my love of film and the BBC productions that I'd watched and listened to on BBC Radio Ulster. At the end of that interview, they actually told me I was going to be invited for the position of trainee audio assistant. I walked away from that and it was like walking on air. Suddenly, I had gotten into an institution, the British Broadcasting Corporation, that is a job for life. So, on April 6, 1981, I went off to their engineering center, which was a place called Evesham just outside Birmingham, that was basically a university for all talent across the BBC. Clockwise from top left: Studying at the BBC's engineering center in Evasham in 1981; on location for a BBC's Gloria Hunniford Radio Show; grabbing a pint at a BBC party with my friend David Kilpatrick; ready for a ride in Belfast in 1986; my first car; my BBC ID card.