I've loved radio since I was a very small child. I remember listening to BBC Radio 2 with my mum during school holidays - I particularly remember the jingles and was struck, even then, at how cool they sounded. Jimmy Young, a heartthrob singer turned DJ, used to feature a daily recipe slot preceded by an introduction of “what’s the recipe today Jim" from a character he called ‘Raymondo’ - Raymondo had a curious high pitched voice presumably created by speeding up the playback of the tape he was recorded on. These are my earliest radio memories.

I had a wonderful teacher at junior school who, after I’d tried to explain the difference between AM and FM radio (in the hope that the tiny school might invest in a new radio so us kids could actually ‘hear’ the BBC schools broadcasts!) did his research at the library, as one did in the days before the Internet and treated us to a recreation of one of Marconi’s radio experiments...that was it - I was hooked!

At the age of 13 - and I’ll cut a very long story short here, I had some experience on children’s television, then, when I was 15 or so I entered the world of community radio as a teenage presenter in Hereford, a city in the West Midlands of the U.K. I just adored broadcasting - and I was still fascinated by those jingles!

In an act of incredible selflessness, my parents, realising that radio, sound and studios was clearly going to be my future - or rather ‘was hopefully going to be my future’, moved to London in order for me to be near the beating heart of the industry.

In spite of my careers teacher telling me a couple of years earlier that me finding a job in any area of ‘the business’ was nigh on impossible, I found a ‘start at the bottom’ job as a lowly tea boy in a music publishing company in Soho which had a recording studio attached. I had a wonderful time there, and even got to work on some radio and advertising jingles! My career in recording, mixing and sound post production was started.

Some 4 decades later, after founding own studio, I’m the proud winner of 3 British Academy Awards and have been 6 times Emmy nominated for my work in film and television sound, but my love for radio has never dimmed. I’m fascinated by the huge diversity of music, sounds and voices now available through digital radio.

During the 2020 lockdown in London, my good friend Ian Dean and myself met up regularly, observing distancing of course. We spoke at length about music, sound and radio. The conversations were a source of comfort to me, a distraction from the news and the gloom surrounding us all.

We were reminded of our love of radio and our organic intolerance to prejudice in music and the arts, as well as in life in general. We hatched a crazy plan to launch a radio station that we would enjoy listening to. A few months later and with the participation of our friend, the legendary music producer Tom Allom, MWPR was born.