I'm an ex-BBC World Service, Radio studio manager,
an ex-hospital radio station manager and current training manager to Whitechapel AM.
Some bloke called Ashley on The Whitechapel AM photo shoot!
August 2016
Les Brown: “Horace Mann said we should be ashamed to die until we’ve made some major contribution to humankind. What’s your goal? What’s your dream? What is it you want to do with your life?”

                                                                                                             For me it's radio training :)

This is my TINY contribution back to humankind. Put simply it's something I love doing. I'm a one man operation so it's oh so slow going but I'll get there thanks to Les Brown :) That man is an awesome motivator! Check him out here!

About the online radio school


After five years of trying and five application forms to the BBC this was a very proud day for me! I was accepted and I passed my initial training! I stayed there for nine years. The motto is: Never give up!


Eeeeek I had hair!

When he's not drinking coffee, then he still trains volunteers for free at his local hospital radio station. He lives in South London, supports the team no one likes and is a Fisher FC season ticket holder. Ashley loves training in radio, Japan and helping volunteers succeed.
  UK Education Costs Too Much!

Fed up with the high price of radio training,  I set up The Online Radio School in 2015 to help people on low incomes. With me, students can learn at very reasonable prices. (Unemployed people can contact me for a special deal).

For too long, radio training has been overpriced. Radio isn't rocket science. Anyone can do this. With the Online Radio School, students can now learn how to interview for TV, Radio, and the Web, or learn how to be a radio DJ. Currently, I have one hundred and sixty students, and three community stations enrolled across three courses.

With changes in the UK law if you're over twenty four and want to study a BTEC in radio, it now costs £6,000. That's a disgrace. When I was unemployed it cost me £30 to study full time thanks to concessions. So my goal is to provide affordable radio training. And trust me it WILL be just as good. I offer two radio training courses and lifetime advice. At the end of the Radio DJ course, I listen back to your shows and offer constructive feedback.

My interviewing course covers everything you'll ever need to know about getting high quality interviews and my radio presenter course will get you broadcasting like a pro.

The Dream to Train
What has always stopped me from creating a radio training programme has been costs. I could never afford to run my own radio station as premises and equipment have always been out of my price range. However...now I can do it virtually!

In 2015 I completed my first course: "Discover The Secrets to Successful Media Interviews" and in March 2016 I finished my second course "The Under Priced Awesomely Made Radio DJ Training Course!"
In October 2016, I created a "Fingerpicking for Guitar" course. Here students can learn twenty different ways to play guitar chords.
Old Radio Kings days down at Kings College Hospital.
We managed to raise £10,000 / $15,600 in five years!
One of the many successful children's appeals we ran
Me getting ready to train the volunteers circa 2000
The Radio Kings office where I did er...um officey things
The old D&R Airmix desk! Damn I loved that desk!
Danish FM Radio, Hospital Radio, UK FM Radio,
BBC World Service Radio, Community Radio
Breaking into the BBC
A Story of Never Giving Up

1996
It’s January 1996 and one of my friends is presenting a radio show on a Danish FM station called Radio DÅB. She invites me down to the station and I meet a presenter who invites me onto her show just for fun. It’s so much fun talking on the radio that I fall instantly in love with radio presenting. I ask the station manager if there’s any chance of doing some work experience for the station and amazingly I’m offered a weekly one hour show on a Tuesday night. The idea is to have three hours of 'young people's' radio from 7pm to 10pm with my one hour show being in English. Wow! I now have my own FM radio show. I present the show for one year to an audience of 100,000 Danish people. I make some great friends, fall in love with the station's beer vending machine and along the way I make some dodgy radio that includes lots of mooing cow sound effects. It’s fair to say I have a lot of fun!

1997
I decide I really want to learn everything there is to know about radio so I enrol on a 6 month full time H.N.C. radio production course at Lambeth college. Because I’m unemployed the course only costs me £30 / $47. In 2015 if you’re unemployed and over twenty four the course will now cost you £6,000 / $9,400. This is a disgrace and is one of the main reasons why I set up the Online Radio School.

Meanwhile back in 1997 I love the radio course and I fall in love with the role of being a “Studio Manager” (the person who works the mixing desk). I decide that I now want to work for the BBC as a studio manager but I also realise that I need more radio experience so I join Radio Kings, the hospital radio station for Kings College Hospital, South London. It's 1997 and I’m a twenty-six year old unemployed man with no university degree.

Never Ever Give Up: Breaking into the BBC

1998: 1st BBC Application to be a studio manager is sent in.
Outcome: Application rejected. Not shortlisted for an interview.
Experienced gained: I decide I need to just keep on gaining more radio experience

1999: 2nd BBC Application to be a studio manager is sent in.
Outcome: Short-listed for interview
Result: Not hired. Application rejected
Experienced gained: I over embellished the technical side of my application form and the technical interviewer found this out. This was a massive lesson learned for me. I also realise that I could have prepared much harder for the main interview, which is where I believe I lost the job.

I join FLR 107.3FM as a volunteer newsroom assistant and stay for one year trying to build up newsroom skills. I end up presenting a Saturday morning radio show from 12 - 4am on FM radio. At the same time myself and a friend called Paul decide to present a comedy show for Radio DÅB in Denmark. We record the shows off air at Radio Kings and mail them weekly to Denmark. We co-present an FM radio show on Danish airwaves to 100,000 Danish speaking people… in English…..from London….via the mail! We do this for one year. It's pretty fun!

2000: 3rd BBC Application to be a studio manager is sent in.
Outcome: Application rejected. Not shortlisted for an interview.
Experienced gained: Just keep learning as much as you can and don’t let them grind you down.

Meanwhile I'm working very hard at being a hospital radio volunteer and in 2000 I take over the running of Radio Kings and become the station manager. I'm now the volunteer manager of a radio station that has two studios and thirty volunteers. After two years of presenting on FM radio, 6 months studying radio full time and three years of volunteering and presenting on community radio I decide to start training people in radio. This is where the birth of the Online Radio School is formed although back then I didn’t know it yet. I begin to start training all the Radio Kings volunteers in all aspects of radio. I implement a training schedule based on my H.N.C. radio course, begin a volunteer recruitment drive and with help from a guy called Dan we set up a dedicated fundraising team. It’s a very happy time for me.

2001: 4th BBC Application to be a studio manager is sent in.
Outcome: Application rejected. Not shortlisted for an interview.
Experienced gained: Nothing.

I’m massively depressed this time. I've now had over four years of hard-core radio experience and yet for some reason I can’t even make the short list for an interview. I’m beginning to think that not having a university degree is the main reason why my applications to the BBC are failing. To offset my oncoming depression I decide to focus instead on providing the patients at Kings College Hospital the best radio experience they can get. I start putting in thirty hours a week at the station unpaid. I really up the training programme to include in depth presenter training, reporter training and newsroom training. Radio Kings has now become a great radio training station as well as a pretty good hospital radio station. I work passionately on the station to take my mind off my own life, which is going nowhere. I’m now thirty years old, flat broke and I’ve been unemployed for four years now.

2002: 5th BBC Application to be a studio manager is sent in.
Outcome: Shortlisted for an interview!

This time I spend two weeks researching interview questions and writing out answers to all the questions that I imagine I will probably be asked. I record all my answers on tape and I walk around for 10 days listening to the answers on loop. I also study very hard about microphones and sound waves.

I ace the BBC technical test and I pass all the technical questions (with a little help) from a friendly BBC studio manager called Peter. Now I have the main interview to contend with. My prep pays off. Almost every question that I listened to on loop comes up in some form. I answer all questions with confidence.  

One week later I get a call from the BBC. I’ve made it in. I’VE EFFING MADE IT! Aaaaaaah!!! I rush out to the pub and get rather mangled!

Five years of unemployment, five years of never giving up and five long and hard application forms later I finally break in. I’m going to be a BBC Studio Manager. I stay at the BBC World Service for nine years, make some great friends and learn a lot more about radio.

Note: In my BBC training group there were eight of us. I was the oldest trainee at thirty and I was the only one from that group that didn’t have a university degree. None of the other trainees had any where near the radio experience that I had gained in the previous five years and none of them had applied more than twice. The best lesson that I ever learned throughout my five years of applying was..... never ever give up. Set your mind on your goal and keep moving towards that goal no matter how long it takes. You WILL make it, you just have to believe in yourself and keep on working to improve yourself. Finally.. you’ve got to have a passion for what you want to do and you've got to have drive to never ever give up. It killed me..but I made it. It will kill you but you will make it.

I manage the hospital radio station until 2005 when I finally have to give it up due the nature of my rolling shift pattern at the BBC. My training plan is responsible for three other volunteers breaking into the BBC as employees. This is something I am incredibly proud of and begins to get me thinking about running a training school one day.

Radio Kings closes down in 2008 leaving me feeling gutted. I loved that station and I owe it so much on a personal and professional level. It literally saved my life in 2001.

I leave the BBC in 2011 after nine years when redundancy comes. I realise that I have to retrain in video if I want to survive in this industry. For the next two years I invest my redundancy money into education and I study video production. I return to Lambeth College in 2011 aged 40 (now that was a strange feeling!) and I pass a one-year City & Guilds Level 3 in Video Production. Two months later in 2012 I enrol on an MA degree in documentary making at University Royal Holloway. In 2013 I get my MA degree. It's a great feeling to finally have a degree.

2014
I live in Japan in 2014, it’s an amazing experience. I discover two amazing speakers online, Alan Watts and Les Brown. Both are very different but both affect me in a very profound way.

Alan Watts in his video “What if money was no object” says: "If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is - to go on doing things you don't like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing then a long life spent in a miserable way"

WOW! This quote really resonates with me.

Les Brown in the video “Life Your Life Over” says:

“Imagine if you will being on your death bed, and standing around your bed, the ghosts of your dreams, the ideas, the abilities, the talents given to you by life and that you for whatever reason..you never went after that dream, you never acted on those ideas, you never used those talents, you never used those gifts. And there they are standing around your bed, looking at you with large angry eyes saying we came to YOU and only you could have given us life. And now we must die with you forever.”

After hearing this I decide to put into plans someway of training people in radio. I discover the PowToons software and I suddenly realise that I maybe able to train people in radio and interviewing virtually.  In August 2014 I begin work on my interview training course in Tokyo, Japan.

2015
I launch my interviewing course on Udemy. It takes me four and a half months to make and create and it almost kills me! There are days I want to give up, days I can’t be arsed but I listen to Les Brown over and over again and his words drive me to keep on moving even if it's only a small step each day. I finally launch the course. The feeling I get from finally completing the course is amazing.

March 2016
I launch my radio presenter course after six months. There are days I want to give up, days I can’t be arsed, days I want to eff it all off...but I listen to Les Brown over and over again and his words drive me to keep on moving. Les is the man!

October 2016
It kills me, but I launch my fingerpicking for guitar course.

Picture
Ashley is an ex BBC, hospital and community radio trainer for Whitechapel AM. He has a passion for beating good radio skills into naughty presenters.  Currently he runs an eight-week radio presenter course for the hospital radio station, Whitechapel AM. Many moons ago he broadcast on two FM radio stations. Ashley is on a mission to provide quality online radio training for people on a budget. He also believes that community radio is real radio because a) the DJs can programme their own shows and b) because they help break new artists and support local music. To him that’s real radio.
Les Brown: Negative People. I listen to this everyday. Best words ever spoken