In at the deep end…

Did I want to dive straight in at the deep end? 

I’d been asked to get involved in running a music festival. It was 1992. I was 23. I didn’t know anything about live events. 

A London-wide music festival in partnership with the BBC was rolling into town. The Radio 1 American Music Festival was the first project for Sol Entertainment. The company had been set up by three colleagues from a TV series I’d worked on previously: Andy, John and Clive.

It was an ambitious project. I said yes.

Suddenly I found myself putting together spreadsheets, attending meetings with our PR company and dealing with producers at Radio 1. Never having worked on a project like this, and only a couple of years out of college, I embraced it with the spirit familiar to many twenty-somethings: making it up as I went along!

It had the energy of a start-up. There were six of us in total - and Andy’s baby - beavering away in an office in Camden, a fridge full of the sponsor’s (Sol) beer to fuel our long days (the baby stuck to milk).

I had to step up even more when a delayed flight meant there was no-one else available to give the presentation at the festival's launch event at BBC Broadcasting House. Which is how I found myself in a basement meeting room presenting to the controller, producers and presenters at Radio 1.

Yes, I was certainly out of my depth. Yet so many highlights of my career have come from plunging into the deep end, from training journalists at the BBC to taking the leap to work for myself. There’s been no how-to manual, just figuring it out as I went along.

Here’s John, Clive and Andy when I caught up with them in Soho this week. Celebrating three decades of going out of your comfort zone, and enjoying life at the deep end.