Poker On The Radio?

Surely not!.....

Well, i am telling you, it happened! - I was invited by BBC Radio Nottingham to appear on their Breakfast Show yesterday morning (Tuesday28th March) to talk about on-line gambling, on-line poker, the pitfalls, the merits etc. - There was nothing really in it for me as such but it sounded like fun so i thought why not.

Why me? i hear you ask.....Well, it turns out that my phone number was given out to a producer or researcher or someone connected to the show by my dear old mother of all people at an awards ceremony earlier this month (she won a BBC short story competition). - Mother's huh! :-) . Not satisfied with introducing me to my girlfriend over two years ago and practically setting up a blind date, she's now pimping me out to local media. It turns out the researcher and her got talking about gambling and the recent application by Mansfield Disctrict Council to have one of these 12 new UK super casinos in the town when she mentioned to him that i had quit work to become a gambling poker playing black sheep of the family and that i would be happy to talk to them about it. - consultation not required of course - mother's know best :-)

Anyway.... Despite having doubts about whether or not to go, off i trotted to the studio and it was all quite strange and surreal. I used to host the breakfast show on Newcastle Student Radio (NSR 107.5fm) when i was at University there and i kind of had that set-up pictured (dark, dingy, full of empty beer cans, discarded play-lists, fag packets, empty cans of red-bull and a room the size of your average bird cage.) However, this was proper Radio and it was all very professional, state of the art offices, equipment, computerised jingles, plasma screens and a professional sober presenter and people that knew what they were doing.

I was introduced to the presenter, who asked me a few questions. He introduced me to the listeners and we got going. He played a clip of some American kid called Ryan, who had gone broke and had started chasing his losses and was now back waiting tables at some restaurant. We talked about his plight, the dangers of gambling on-line, the merits of gambling on-line and then we talked about my last 12 months, my story, where i used to work, what i had done prior to finding poker and how much money i had made from the beautiful game. It was all done and dusted in about 5 minutes. - I am not sure what benefit it will be to the listeners or in deed how interesting it was to the audience but they asked me to do it, i said "yes" and it was good fun.

I think you can listen to it on the BBC Radio Nottingham website 'Listen Again' feature if you have Real Player loaded on your PC.

I haven't heard it yet and haven't got real player but i am told i sounded like a sensible chap and came across well. Maybe i should ask them for a job if i go broke :-)

You can click on the below link to read the article they have done about me.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2006/03/28/gambling_man_feature.shtml