Over the years I’ve always designed my own website. Starting in 2000, I used the Desktop Publishing package Serif PagePlus to design my original site. Then I progressed to learning HTML and making use of numerous other website designing packages. I’ve gone through versions which used ‘Flash’, though these days […]
Sylvester McCoy Interview – 30th May 2020
On Saturday 30th May 2020, I interviewed Sylvester McCoy as part of the live-streaming “All In A Tiswas” which was presenting compilations of old Tiswas clips, plus at least one live guest each week with a connection to Tiswas. Sylvester had been a regular on the show during the late […]
Interview: The ‘missing episodes’ of Tiswas
When I was little, I absolutely adored Tiswas. You need to know this. If not, nothing that follows will make any sense. A bit like Tiswas really. When the rest of the world had forgotten it, I just couldn’t shake off those happy memories. In 2004 TiswasOnline began as a […]
Feature: My 30 Years ‘in the business’
As I sit and write this, July 1989 is 30 years ago and yet it doesn’t seem 5 minutes ago to me. So why am I sitting here thinking about 30 years ago? Well, it’s the 30th anniversary of my first setting foot in the wonderful world of broadcasting and […]
June 10th 2010 – Our Wedding Day
On June 10th 2010, I married my sweetheart Nikki at Christchurch in Burntwood. We’d known each other since 1993, when she was a guest on the ‘NightSchool’ programme on Beacon Radio which I’d helped to produce. We’d kept in touch, and finally started seeing each other in 2001. We got […]
Box Set: Weekend Magazine (Walsall)
During the Summer of 2016, Big Centre had been doing nicely. It had passed through the difficult times and emerged in really quite a good state. This made it attractive to other would-be owners. So it was that in October 2016, Big Centre was merged with Made Television, and was […]
Box Set: The Big Magazine
In April 2016 Big Centre TV re-branded to simply Big Centre. A subtle difference, but it was what everybody called it anyway, and the rebrand said goodbye to the colour swirl, and welcomed the stylized ‘BC’ icon. The company also now officially became Big Centre Television Broadcasting. With this rebrand […]
Box Sets: The Midland – Weekend Edition
The Midland was the name of Big Centre’s original daily news programme. The main anchor was Bob Hall with Lois Swinnerton, Roshni Patel and Monika Plaha also presenting on a regular basis. In November 2015, Big Centre went through a rough patch. A number of people were made redundant and […]
Box Set: The Big Centre Magazine
During the Summer of 2015, I was presenting Crossroads Check-in at the weekend on Big Centre. I was also helping Chanelle Shea-Calvin with Postbag which was a nice little half hour programme which highlighted stuff on the station, and allowed people to get in touch with their thoughts. Between us, we […]
Box Set: Continuity
Now this is where it gets a little anorakky. On the telly, the bits between the programmes where you hear the announcer speaking and saying things like “This is BBC1, now it’s time to see who’s the most depressed, in tonight’s seventeenth edition of EastEnders”. Yeah, well, anyway, those announcer […]