#radio1interns

Hey I’m Afia Kufuor, 1 of 3 of the new interns on the ‘Where it Begins Scheme’! Here’s my first blog:

Mancunian born and bred Bugzy Malone held a listening party for his new EP ‘King of the North’ at Relentless on Denmark Street.

On Day 2 of our internship Miriam and I were lucky enough to attend the launch party as we were added to the very exclusive guestlist by the absolute legend that is Hermeet Chadha.

On entry guests were able to choose from a variety of Caribbean dishes provided by Dub Plates Kitchen. This included curry goat, stewed chicken or salmon with rice, plantain and coleslaw. Thumbs up to whoever’s idea that was.

It was love at first sight when I was served boneless curry goat within just 10 minutes of arriving... and from that moment I just knew it was going to be an excellent night.

The next eye catching feature was the impressive cake made by AB cakes. It was literally a life sized version of Bugzy’s upper body, replicating the ‘King of the North’ EP cover.

The night itself was hosted by Rude Kid and guests were able to hear the album for the first time and gain an insight about the production process of each song. I can confidently say that you guys are in for a treat when the EP is made available on Friday 14th July.

Y’know when I said my life was going to get weird? It did.

So our first week entailed a lot of training on the different systems and introducing myself to many important people. Everyone is so lovely; I’ve not met anyone at all that I’ve not got on with. I got to shadow a team assistant from 1Xtra Weekends and I learnt what they do day to day, including making the montages that go out every hour (those clips that have 3 bits of songs and lots of sound effects) and I even made 8 myself that went out over Ace’s breakfast show on Saturday and Sunday (insert ‘Cheers Kev’ here). We went to lots of meetings including my personal favourite, the ‘Tea and Cake Meeting’ it’s pretty self-explanatory! Plus the Interns went on a very special ‘Cheese Run’ for Greg James’ podcast.

Now onto the fun bit, working on the different shows! I was so excited when I looked at my schedule and saw that on my 2nd week I’d be working on the Scott Mills show, I’ve been such a massive fan of the show for so long and to be able to peek behind the curtain was incredible. The team is amazing and they’ve let me do so much early on; I’ve been finding ‘Real or No Reals’, editing clips for Innuendo Bingo and compiling research packs on guests.

On to the weird parts of my time here, now so many people had told me that “no day is the same”. They were not wrong. In my first 2 weeks I literally bumped into Ricky Gervais, saw Caroline Flack and Zoe Ball get spat on (during Bingo), watched Greg James ride Matt Edmondson’s scooter round the office and heard members of Fifth Harmony doing vocal warm ups in the toilet. On top of that,  my research packs that I mentioned earlier, have been noticed by the right people. When researching Iggy Azalea I mentioned her pet horses in the notes, and then during the interview she proceeded to do an incredible impression of a “Swedish horse”. Even better, during my research of Ryan Tedder off of One Republic, I stumbled on the fact he had recently purchased a Drake colouring book. When Scott mentioned this in the interview, Ryan said “wow, you must have really good researchers, how did you find that?!” at which point everyone in the studio turned to look at me. I immediately blushed.

Finally, saving best ‘til last… I met the one and only Craiiiiiiig Daaaaavid. What a lovely bloke. He stood and talked to me and my fellow interns for a good 5 minutes after his live lounge with Blonde.

So crazy and it’s only the end of my second week, catch you in a bit!

Travis!

On Tuesday night I got see Joey Bada$$ at his London show through work (perks of the job) at 02 Shepherds Bush Empire. If ya didn't know he's an American rapper from Brooklyn who is very good and ONLY 19 years young.

Listen to Christ Conscious here >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRfQGXFRr30

The crowd was wiiiiiiiiiiild, I can't remember the last time I saw a new artist with such a strong UK fan base. Then lo and behold, he turned up to Radio 1 to do interviews the next day! Had a lovely chat and asked for a photo for the blog. The End. 

As the rather strange photo of myself looking rather erratic alongside the uber-cool Tinashe suggests, this week I got to meet the lovely Tinashe whilst working on Zane Lowe's show.

Working on Zane's show is unlike anything else I've done thus far - his show is unashamedly music-driven, and working on projects this week to do with his 100 Hottest Records vote only highlighted this. The 100 Hottest Records is an annual feature whereby Zane picks out his favourite 100 tracks of the year and invites listeners to vote for their favourite from the list; all before a week of shows is dedicated to counting them down from 100-1. 

Zane's show falls under the 'specialist' umbrella, but a cursory glance of the 100 hottest records demonstrates just how many genres and artists that Zane has supported over the year. From big pop artists like Clean Bandit, Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith to huge house tracks from Second City and Route 94, rock from Foo Fighters and Mallory Knox, Hip-Hop from Kendrick and all the sonically-strange beats and bleeps in between from the likes of FKA twigs, Jon Hopkins and Banks - every corner of 2014's musical landscape has been represented in the list. 

Apart from meeting Tinashe and Idris Elba (!!!!), who was participating in one of Zane's famous 'battles', I also got to see Zane in the studio. His broadcasting technique is truly incredible - if you ever need to watch someone make incredible radio using the studio to it's absolute full potential, look to Zane and his almost encyclopedic musical and technical knowledge! 

Alongside working on Zane's show, I also attended the playlist meeting again this week to feed back some of my thoughts on the selection of potential additions to the BBC Radio 1 playlist - both Becky and I will be heading back into another final playlist meeting in a couple of week's time. 

This morning, I also sat on the panel of a talk about young people and radio alongside other members of the Radio 1 team. Rather strangely, as I was delivering my presentation to the rather large audience of BBC employees and bosses I was interrupted, rather surreally, by a passing Jim Carrey who proceeded to crack some jokes and watch me deliver part of my speech from the balcony/corridor that looks down onto the space in which the event was being held. I can say categorically that of all the things I've experienced at Radio 1/1Xtra HQ thus far, delivering a presentation on young people and radio to Jim Carrey was by far, the most surreal. 

This weekend, I'm working on Annie Mac's show before I move to the documentaries team next week. Becky and I are also going back over to BBC3 to take part in some of their meetings as well, so it's set to be another busy week for us interns.

Be sure to keep checking back to our blog. Thanks for reading, as always.

An Update from James - My Week with Newsbeat

As I previously mentioned I was with Newsbeat last week, and my time there finished on Friday with me accompanying the lovely reporters Emily and Declan on a shoot to accompany their story on internet trolls. The final result, as presented above, is brilliant, and the process of observing the process and getting involved was equally enjoyable. To have been involved and allowed in on such an exciting project was a real honour, and finished my week with Newsbeat on a perfect note.

Whilst Newsbeat was an entirely different experience to the stuff I'd done during this internship before it, it was equally enjoyable and informative. I have a new found respect for the broadcast journalists that slave over scripts, think up story ideas on a daily basis and trek across the UK and the world in search of an exciting story for their loyal youth audience! Having talked to a whole host of different members of the Newsbeat team, including Chris, Steffan and Anna, I left my week with Newsbeat with a really clear snapshot of what Newsbeat do, who they do it for and why they do what they do. Although I won't miss the early starts (the 13.30 starts when working on Zane's show this week are far more manageable), I will miss the lovely team and the exciting news environment. 

This week, I'm working with Zane Lowe and Annie Mac with their respective specialist shows. I'm looking forward to experiencing The Musical Hot Water Bottle in person; I'm yet to check if it's OK to come to New Broadcasting House in my PJs for my shift on Sunday evening!

Thanks for keeping up to date with what we're up to!