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… RCS Master Control crashed while I was producing a show.

But!… no! I’m not going to talk about that… I’m going to go back to February this year, to something I forgot to blog about back then – when I was doing work experience – helping out on Breakfast with Bernard & Keith on i105-107.

I was doing some office work, lining up phone calls for the lads, putting together the “best of bits” for ad breaks later in the day and contributing a little bit on-air – including this one time, when Keith – after remembering that he’d forgotten to pay for the €40 worth of diesel that he’d filled up on at the local petrol station – sent me down there with my mobile so that he could talk to the manager… live on air:

The phones were actually down in the station on the day, so we couldn’t ring the service station – but in the best tradition of “making the best of a bad situation”, I drove down to the service station and rang Bernard on his mobile – and he held his phone up to the mic. I reckon it came out quite well!

Larry Gogan – the legend of Irish radio – now confined to the weekends on RTÉ 2fm – is well known for the “Just-A-Minute Quiz”… a quickfire general knowlege quiz that, as the title suggests, takes just a minute to complete.

Today’s contestant, Ryan Kinealy from Galway, was clearly taking the piss out of Larry – pretending not to know any of the answers, repeatedly asking the veteran broadcaster for the next question, really pushing it at one point by asking “can I go on to Google for a sec?” (with Larry somewhat angrily replying “No, you can’t!”) and even looking for a third option in a “true or false” question.

This made for very uncomfortable (but pretty bloody funny) radio. I think Larry handled it as well as could be expected! Check it out:

Aside… What was the contestant saying at the end there before he got cut off? Sounded like “Cock balls! Cock balls! Cock balls! Ha ha ha ha …” to me… (!)

I should have had these clips in the “Irish Blog Awards 2009 – The Interviews” post, but didn’t get time to do much more (’cool’) editing … that is, until now:

This is John Williams… and no, he’s not the famous composer known for his movie scores, white beard and slightly Richard Attenborough -like looks… – although he has, like his more famous namesake, done work on television scores and various other audio productions in his capacity as a sound engineer.

He’s also one of Ireland’s most prolific twitterers. I nabbed him for a few words last Saturday night during a smoke break, and this is what he had to say for himself:

[2:54]

Also out in the smoking area (isn’t it always they way… the fun times happen out in the bleedin’ freezin’ cold!) was bubbly Cork lady, Catherine – from MyMunster.com – who spoke to me briefly about the site (they connect Munster rugby fans world-wide) and about why she was there at the Irish Blog Awards 2009.

[1:21]

Unfortunately, the only words I got out of event organiser and blogging supremo Damien Mulley (while the recorder was on, anyway), were the following:


[00:08]

… so I wandered off and interviewed Rick then.

… and yes, this is the last of these interviews (sadly)!

Sod the oscars – the rebel county was the place to be this weekend at the 4th annual Irish Blog Awards in the Cork International Airport Hotel. I was in attendance and it was a crackin’ night!

Massive kudos to Damien Mulley for organising an incredible event. There’s loads of photos online already, and I’m sure, plenty more to come.

I, along with many others, was posting updates and pictures to twitter (mostly under the tag #iba09) including the results as they happened! (Full winners list is now online). After the awards ceremony itself, I was wandering around with my recorder, looking for victims to be interviewed briefly – and I nabbed the following:

	Suzy Byrne (Maman Poulet) – winner, Best News & Current Affairs Blog & Grand Prix winner, Best Blog (05:23)
	Grandad/Richard O’Connor (Head Rambles) – past winner & nominee for Best Personal Blog (02:36)
	Rick O’Shea – Past winner, 2FM daytime DJ and Irish Blog Awards MC (03:26)

Thanks a million to these three for the interviews. To the others I was chatting to and recording, many many thanks also!… I just haven’t gotten around to editing that little mountain of audio down just yet.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting new people and catching up with people I’d met before. The hotel itself is awesome and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Jason is absolutely right to want people to write up a good review for it and, of course to vote for Rick in the Meteors!

I’m sure there’s loads of IBA’09 stories yet to be told – including the tale of the Ryanair plane-load of speed-tweeting bloggers stuck on the tarmac in Dublin – and the various anecdotes of the Twitster (Twitterers playing Twister) on a bouncy castle while the DJ pumped out the tunes … but I’ll leave those accounts for other bloggers to report on. I got a LOT of sleep once I got home today… now I’m off to get some more.

Was working on some recordings – doing stuff for college… writing up scripts and jotting down ideas… when this silly advert came into my head, and I couldn’t shake it until I recorded and mixed it.

Just goes to show … sometimes I really DO have too much spare time on my hands!

Anyway … stupid as it may be… here it is – it’s a made up advert for a completely made-up company – “Orson Carthy’s Horse and Cart Emporium”.