Shona Films

All a bit of a fluke this. Was studying architecture when really I shouldn’t have been. I should have done fine art or enrolled at Joe Kubert’s school in New York or something. I had always wanted to draw comics. That was always what I had wanted to do. I had been reading comics from the age of 6…they were a distraction from the fights my parents used to have. And trust me they were serious fights. Mum attacking Dad with carving knife kinda serious. Anyway comics were a way out and I loved them. I collected them when I could…but living in Sub Saharan Africa that was always a problem. Comics were as rare as snow.

Anyway in my final year of Architecture myself and Bernd Ertl, who has now become a storyboard artist extraordinaire in Austria, made an animation film.

My tutors figured I was never really going to study architecture and one gave me a pamphlet that was an animation studio looking for animators. But above it was a trainee presenter job at the BBC. I applied for both. Got the BBC one and 3 months later I’m on air following the late great John Peel and sharing an office with Annie Nightingale. Ain’t Life strange!!

My brief was to play hip hop and r’n’b. But the BBC instigated a D list playlist which was all the hip hop and r’n’b tunes on the A, B and C playlist gathered on one. So we’d play something rally cool like Jeru the Damaja and have to then play ‘Oh baby I love your way’ by Cold Mountain or whatever those cunts were called. We were always doomed. Doomed. Doomed Doomed.

I have some funny stories like when I interviewed Snoop and the BBC wouldn’t let me do it live. They insisted that we pre-record it. So I have to go onto Johnny Walker’s show. Tell anybody listening who might be interested in Snoop — please don’t forget, Johnny played rock and roll—to call in with any questions. Snoop went through the whole thing with a bemused look on his face. And he did freestyle for me. Afterwards we went down to the Gram library which is the biggest private collection of records in the World. Snoop’s looking for some samples and so we call up some obscure records.  Snoop looks at one and says to me. ‘Shit. The nigga that recorded this don’t even have a copy.’