Ouch Podcast #65 – February 2011
bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast

Presented by Mat Fraser and Liz Carr

The Ouch Podcast is a download from the BBC. For more information, and our terms of use, go to bbc.co.uk/ouch.

MAT	Thank you for downloading our show. In this edition are you going back to work? Ever considered setting up your own business - could be the way forward. Two disabled businesswomen join us later to tell you how they went about it. 	
LIZ	Also your emails. Music from the Wasted Day Collection and disability chat you don't often hear elsewhere - except down the pub when me and Mat are there. 
[Jingle: From the BBC in London it's the Ouch Talk Show with Mat Fraser and Liz Carr]	
MAT	Favouritism, Liz.	
LIZ	Yes. 	
MAT	I am beginning to suspect that some of us are cripples, some of the great disabled, I think we get extra favours above and beyond what perhaps we think we should get because of our impairment. 	
LIZ	Like generally or when we're growing up, or from whom? 	
MAT	Certainly at school I can remember that I was made a prefect. When I went to school in New Zealand they were very progressive and liberal. 	
LIZ	I never knew you went to school in New Zealand. 	
MAT	Only for a year and a half. 	
LIZ	Where do these things come from? 	
MAT	Well it was my Dad came as as gay and so my Mum, in a very minimal reaction, moved us to the other side of the world. Anyway, there I was in the new progressive liberal school and... 	
LIZ	And normally they want to send over to... No it's fine, yes. 	
MAT	The point being they were like "Ah." They obviously thought, "Okay what's ch--... okay, make him a prefect." I had no prefect qualities whatsoever. I was a pretty bad prefect as it goes. I was totally favouritised because of a disability that's what I'm getting at. 	
LIZ	It's interesting isn't it because I don't know, I've got an older brothers, he's six years older than me, and I once had this conversation with him...	
MAT	He's non disabled?	
LIZ	He's non disabled yeah and I had this conversation with him and I said, "You know have you been affected did you think that I was treated better than you?" And he never actually replied to that. He said he would and he never did. And it's interesting I did get more attention because I needed more things, if you know what I mean? So in terms of like my Mum had to assist me to go to the loo and get dressed and things like that, and I did physio every day, so my Mum would help with that. And he was sort of off doing things because six years can be quite a, you know, if you're ten and he's 16 he's off... 	
MAT	Oh it's a world of difference. 	
LIZ	... you know a world of difference. So in that sense I think I did. And I know at the moment of course I still get more Christmas presents than him. I mean I do I just... that could be because at least I go at Christmas do you know what I mean and brothers once they've left the coup.	
MAT	Yeah. We were actually talking about this in the meeting earlier and we don't often do this but I wonder if we should... 	
LIZ	Shall we bring him in? Damon... 	
MAT	Can you get Damon in?	
LIZ	... would you come in? 	
MAT	Because he had some good stuff to say I thought. 	
LIZ	Yeah. This was relating to one area where I'm getting a slight bit of favouritism maybe is Wills. I know. 	
MAT	Damon, hi. 	
damon	Hello. Damon's the producer, listeners. 	
MAT	Yeah our boss in other words. 	
LIZ	Hello Damon. 	
Damon	Hello. 	
LIZ	He's the one that cracks the whip.	
Damon	Can you hear me in the control room? Am I alright? 	
LIZ	They're nodding. 	
MAT	They're nodding with a fearful look in their eye. 	
LIZ	Damon won't know he's blind. Hello Damon. 	
Damon	Hello.	
LIZ	Thanks for coming in. 	
Damon	Thank you. 	
LIZ	Favouritism for you I was just starting to mention about Wills, but we were saying when we were talking about it is in the production meeting, what's your kind of experience of it? 	
Damon	It's a really difficult thing to talk about isn't it? I mean you mentioned there that your brother wouldn't talk about it with you. And I've got a sister, she's a very similar age to me actually, she's just a year and a half younger. 	
MAT	Non disabled?	
Damon	Yeah, no she's not disabled, you have to ask these questions don't you? 	
LIZ	He's dying to know. 	
MAT	I want to know if people are normal or not? 	
Damon	Well she's not disabled but variously in recent months I think she thinks she's got MS, Lupus - a whole bunch of things but then that's... 	
MAT	Has she been looking at the internet?	
Damon	She works in an MS clinic. 	
Liz	So now she thinks she's got it. 	
mat	Oh no. 	
Damon	So she thinks she's got MS. 	
LIZ	She thinks it's catching. 	
damon	Yeah. But I think it's a very difficult thing to talk about. My grandma, who unfortunately passed away last year, would also give me more money at Christmas and birthdays, I mean, significantly more money. 	
LIZ	And why? Because... why? 	
MAT	Why? Do you earn less than your sib?	
Damon	No. I'm not going to go into my wages here but I think I earn... 	
MAT	But let's put it this way, listeners, he works for a massive corporation called the BBC and he's a big time producer and director - that's pretty loaded I think. 	
Damon	Big time producer and director.	
MAT	Yes of the Ouch podcast Talk Show. You're up there with Cameron Macintosh. 	
Damon	But my sister it's just a given. And at the other end of the scale we have Wills at an early age, the family would leave me money. I was partially sighted when I was younger and I went blind when I was 13. And always when people died you know I would get a thousand here, a thousand there it would gradually lump up. And I... 	
Liz	And your sister didn't get any? 	
Damon	Didn't get anything and I got a tidy sum as a down payment on a house before I'd even started work. 	
MAT	Was she bitter? 	
Damon	Well this was the thing we never talked about it. We have never talked about it. I really hope she's not listening to this show now. 	
Liz	You don't think our siblings listen do you? 	
mat	Will we get one of those angry email from your sister?	
liz	Anonymous.	
damon	But it's a terribly difficult subject. I mean how do you address that issue?	
MAT	I know it's different for me because conversely because I'm famously I'm a thalidomider who got compensated my non disabled sister, my mother recently told me when she was redoing her Will, is going to get pretty much everything and I'm going to get nothing because 'I'm okay'. So I've got completely the opposite experience. 	
LIZ	So disability's coming in there... 	
MAT	The disability yeah... 	
LIZ	... it's a disadvantage. 	
MAT	In my family it's a financial disadvantage.	
LIZ	I've got the same as Damon, I've got the same as Damon because if there is anything left when my Mum and Dad go then they've said to me that they're giving me more. And they said it's because the costs, everything costs you a little bit more. 	
mat	Well that's different. I think that's not, I don't know disability pity or something, but that's just a pragmatic understanding of how it expensive it can be to have an impairment. 	
LIZ	But isn't that just what Damon's gran and old aunts and whatever did, you know, they acknowledge that it is hard to get on the... whether it's the property ladder or bring... 	
MAT	Is it that, Damon?	
damon	Well it's not.. 	
MAT	Or is it just pity?	
damon	It's opportunity as well. You know when you're disabled, I know it's really hard for us to accept and we don't talk about it, but we have less opportunities as disabled people available to us, I think. And I think it's the wisdom of the old isn't it? When you get old and you're writing your Will you do think about these things and you know more about life I think. My aunts and uncles who left me money knew what was going to happen to me later in life better than I did. And so when I was a bit confused that I was receiving this money something quite important was going on towards my future.	
Liz	With my parents it was twofold; it was about the extra costs of being disabled and they also said, "And you're unlikely to get married so you won't have another family's money to come to you because you'll probably be single." But I am slightly nervous now that now I'm not single that they're going to reduce the amount that I get. 	
mat	Like the Government? 	
liz	No. Actually what was interesting though is I felt really bad... I wanted me and my brother to get exactly the same, I absolutely did. And my parents were no like, "No I think it's fine" and we cleared it up and we said that they should talk to my brother about it, and they did talk to my brother about it and he was all fine - everybody was fine about it. Funnily enough it was just me that thought, "Actually I think that's a bit weird and I think..." A bit like Damon said it's a bit that sort of pride and that kind of I'm not sure I want to acknowledge that we can be a disadvantage I can't imagine that I'd ever be in a position to buy a house or anything like that. 	
Mat	I've heard it said, Liz, not that I particularly have this opinion myself, but I've heard it said that a lot of disabled people who say, "Well I don't think of myself as disabled" actually that's what's going on in their head as well. 	
liz	So you mean I don't see myself as disabled?	
MAT	Anyway... 	
LIZ	Is that what you think? 	
damon	Do you think of yourself as disabled, Mat? 	
liz	Do you?	
mat	Yes I do. 	
LIZ	It's only because you get lots of gigs that way?	
damon	Why?	
mat	Why? Because one I was at the International Thalidomide Conference in Nijmegen in Holland in 1992 and I said to someone, "You see I don't think of myself as disabled because I can do this" bang "and that" bang. And she went, "No, no, no you've misunderstood the word 'disability'" and actually for the first time laid the social model of disability on me, after that point I had to accept I was disabled because yes I have been treated in a different way, in a more negative way, because I'm different by society. That's brought us down hasn't it?	
liz	It always does. But always to be brought up by a wonderful email from one of our readers...	
MAT	Hooray!	
liz	This is fantastic, Jen Richards from Reading, "What is the name of your favourite disability?" Any takers just to start?	
mat	Let me have a think, let me have a think.	
liz	She says that hers is Alice in Wonderland syndrome where people perceive things to look bigger or smaller than they are, as Alice did in Wonderland. 	
mat	Like a horse. Apparently humans are often scared of horses but they shouldn't be because apparently a horse...	
liz	Are they really tiny?	
mat	... no they're not, they're not in real life, no. Apparently a horse sees everything five times bigger than it really is. So you're a hulking great giant coming at them. No wonder they've got that frightened expression.	
liz	No wonder they buck... I'd be kind of normal size when they look at me then.	
mat	Yeah. You can be like an equal to a horse, Liz.	
liz	Thank you. 	
mat	Any other emails?	
liz	And the other emails, yeah we have. Kim Kilpatrick in Canada she loves us. Who else have we got?	
MAT	Bill Mayer in the States thought we dissed disability campaigners.	
damon	Oh he wasn't impressed with you. This was off the back of the New Year show.	
LIZ	What did we say, what did we say?	
MAT	But we are disability campaigners. 	
damon	No we had Peter White didn't we and Tanni Grey Thompson in to talk, and if you haven't listened to that listeners, by the way, go back and listen to it, it was an interesting show. 	
mat	It was testosterone fuelled in Mr White's case that's for sure.	
liz	But I thought it had some really good stuff... 	
mat	No it was a good... 	
liz	... campaigning stuff. 	
damon	He felt that by the fact that you were saying disabled people just aren't standing up for themselves was a bit of a slight on all the campaigners out there.	
LIZ	That are doing it - okay fair enough. 	
mat	That is a fair point. And as always throughout history it's the small minority that cause the big majority to get the change so we thank them one and all for their stalwart efforts.	
LIZ	Sorry about that Bill. And Ian Head in Kent says he hopes we escape the cuts. 	
mat	The paper cuts?	
LIZ	Maybe. 	
damon	BBC cuts. 	
mat	BBC cuts.	
liz	The snip snip cuts.	
mat	Ooh. 	
liz	Excuse me.	
mat	Damon, are you, because you're a man of prolific child rearing, have you ever considered?	
damon	The snip. This is just because we mentioned the word 'cut' you're asking me are we really that desperate for something to talk about? 	
mat	Well I'm not having it done thank you very much because I've heard it hurts afterwards.	
damon	Can I talk about... 	
LIZ	Listeners, please... 	
damon	Can I talk about something?	
mat	Anything you want, you're the boss.	
liz	It's your show!	
damon	Alright, good. [silence] It's all right I was just testing it out a bit of silence there because it really is my show isn't it? 	
liz	Oh yeah.	
damon	Ah brilliant.	
liz	We're scared. 	
damon	I was on the tube the other day, I was sitting there on the way to work, I had my iPod on and one of the ear buds fell out of my ear.	
liz	Right. 	
dAMON	And I was just about to reach up and put it back when this guy next to me reached up and put it back in my ear for me.	
mat	Oh my God.	
dAMON	What do you think? I didn't know what to say or what... 	
liz	What did you do though?	
dAMON	... or what to do. I didn't. 	
mat	The sheer emasculation alone is hideous.	
dAMON	I didn't but you know he obviously thought I wasn't able to do it, despite the fact that I'd put them in in the first place. 	
MAT	Maybe he thought your mum had done it at home. 	
damon	I just thought it was a gross invasion of personal body space.	
liz	It is. 	
damon	Someone had their fingers in my ear. 	
LIZ	It's quite intimate. It's when next time somebody gets a cotton bud and starts to clean them first that's really invasive. 	
mat	Good job you weren't near the toilet. 	
damon	I'm glad you backed me up on that, I feel better. 	
liz	Good. We should get you in more often, Damon, this could be like a confessional for you. All the things that happen to you in the couple of weeks before we do the show.	
damon	That might help me actually.	
LIZ	It might. 	
MAT	And I don't know if anybody's ever told you this but you have a wonderful voice for radio. 	
damon	Thank you very much. Thank you. Can I go now?	
LIZ	You can go. 	
mat	But you can tell us if people want to email the show what should they do, Damon?	
damon	Oh. They should... 	
liz	In your dulcet tones.	
damon	... email us that's ouch@bbc.co.uk and either Dan or Emma or myself will read it and then pass it on to Mat and Liz. 	
liz	And if you want to hear more of Damon Rose on the radio then let us know that too. 	
mat	That's right. 	
damon	No, no you're alright. I'm going back to my booth. 	
MAT	Thank you boss.	
LIZ	Thank you Damon.	
damon	Thank you.	
liz	Thank you. 
[Jingle: If you're looking for info about this show you can find it in the show notes, there's links to things we mention, gossip and more. It's all on our blog which you can find via bbc.co.uk/ouch. That's bbc.co.uk/ouch.]
Joining us now we have two disabled businesswomen. In the studio with us we have Vanessa Heyward. Hello Vanessa.	
Vanessa	Hello Liz.	
LIZ	And Liz Jackson on the phone from her office. Hi Liz.	
liz JACKSON	Hiya!	
mat	We only have about ten minutes guys and we think our listeners are going to be particularly interested in other disabled people who started up their own businesses, especially as many of us are having to think of a new option at the moment with benefits reforms just around the corner. 	
liz	Yeah an important time. So, Vanessa, you recently won the Stelios award for Disabled Entrepreneurs 2010 - wow congratulations!	
Vanessa	Thank you very much. 	
liz	Absolutely. So tell us about your company and how did you get to win the award?	
Vanessa	Well my company is called Tiny Mites Music. We provide music, movement and drama sessions to pre-school children and babies. We work in 80 different day care nurseries and over 36 holiday parks in the UK. All the music is original; it's jazz, salsa, rock & roll, disco songs and it's all written on children's key stage learning and their early years foundation stage. I entered the Stelios award - I had no idea I was going to win it - and it was an amazing evening and when they said I'd won it was quite a shock actually you know. 	
MAT	So Liz, you're probably best known as that blind woman who gave away thousands of quid on the Secret Millionaire show. But you run a telemarketing business, tell us a little bit about it.	
LIz jackson	Yeah I run a telemarketing company called Great Guns Marketing. We're just about to go into our 13th year of trading now actually so I feel a bit old. But we predominantly supply telemarketing services in the business to business arena working for brands like TomTom are are biggest client but we work with Microsoft, the Institute of Customer Services, Price Waterhouse Coopers - those sorts of folks helping them with getting their salespeople out on sales appointments. 	
liz	It's such a big thing setting up your own business I mean what brought you to the point where you thought, "Yeah, you know what, I'm going to do this"?	
liz JACKSON	I started work when I was 17, I was pretty naff at school and went straight into the workplace as a YTS student, and sort of fell into telemarketing and absolutely loved it; worked in an incredibly entrepreneurial environment and caught the bug really. So when I was 25 having had a fantastic career of setting up telemarketing departments here in the UK and the US...	
mat	So were you blind by then? 	
liz JACKSON	No I wasn't. I went blind the year I started Great Guns. So I made the decision to start the company as... I've got RP which is a degenerate eyesight condition, so I did have tunnel vision and night blindness throughout my career. But when I started the company that started to deteriorate at quite a rapid speed. 	
MAT	And, Vanessa, how did you go about starting your business because I mean at one point you were on the West End singing and dancing and being a professional actress? 	
Vanessa	Yeah. 	
mat	What was the transition, you know what made you decide and how did you do it?	
Vanessa	Well after my diagnosis when I was 25 I continued to work as... 	
mat	Of er?	
Vanessa	Multiple Sclerosis. 	
mat	Oh MS right, okay yeah. 	
Vanessa	Yeah. I continued working for a good three years in theatre, not dancing but singing and doing big band gigs with my Dad who's a professional trombonist actually. And after a little while... And then I got married and had my children and it was then that I wanted to start my business. And I went to this little group which was for children and when I got there I was thinking, "Oh music for children this has got to be really exciting" and I was looking forward to it. And when I got there it was just mums sitting there having a coffee and they're going, [singing] the wheels on the bus go round and round.	
MAT	Oh we like that song don't we disabled people don't we? 	
Vanessa	And all the kids walking off the other way you know which is just so boring. And I thought, "Ooh I think I could do a bit better than that." And I was looking for something that I could make into a business because I was a single mum, I needed to earn money and that's what inspired me to begin Tiny Mites Music. 	
mat	Guys is that what the essence is - "Ooh I think I could do a bit better than that?" You see something and you think I can do better than that - is that where it starts that entrepreneurial thing? 	
liz	Is that how it was for you, Liz?	
liz jackson	Yeah I think it was. I think you know I outsourced to telemarketing companies as part of my job role and saw service at not the levels that I thought it should have been delivered at. So yeah I thought I can do better than this and started my own company. So I think a lot of people don't actually come up with an innovative idea, they're generally just wanting to do something better than somebody else who's already doing it. 	
liz	And Vanessa do you think... Could you complete this sentence for me - Being a disabled businesswomen is... 	
VANESSA	Oh my God! It's just like being an able bodied businesswomen - you've got to have passion for what you're doing, you've got to believe in what you're doing, you've got to work hard at it and you've got to have a very strong sense of self - no matter whether you're disabled or not disabled, you've got to cling on to an idea that you really believe in and really work on it. 	
mat	But Liz don't you find the negative expectations or lack of expectations around both women and disabled people combine to make it that you have to work four times as hard to be seen as half as good?	
Liz jackson	I've never experienced that I don't think. I mean certainly, you know, I never see myself as disabled you know because disabled to me is like saying you're not able, and I'm more than able. So if I'm competing against other salespeople in the same category I generally win. So if anything I see it as advantageous. A woman is definitely better than being a man in any environment - we are.	
LIZ	Obviously being at the BBC we have to say... 	
LIZ	... that there are other genders that are superior as well, women and men are equal.	
mat	And whilst I might agree with you perhaps that isn't always the case in an all men sauna perhaps. 	
liz jackson	Perhaps not. But I mean in terms of my business which is all about communications women are very good at communicating. So for me that's always been a strength. I don't think anyone would write about me or even read about me if I wasn't blind so I think in terms of PR if you can make it work as a disabled person you've absolutely got the, you know, head and shoulders above able bodied people who do the same thing. 	
liz	What they call it in business or marketing - your unique selling point. 	
liz jackson	I think it certainly can be yeah. 	
mat	Have you found that Vanessa?	
liz jackson	I think you can be inspired by it?	
mat	Sorry to interrupt Liz. Have you found that Vanessa that your disability's helped be part of your unique selling point?	
VANESSA	Not particularly the only thing that it's really helped me with is with the Stelios Award, and previous to that it hasn't really, no. 	
liz	What does it mean winning the award, what do you get? Did you get financial support or business mentoring support - what's it led to? 	
Vanessa	Well I won £50,000. 	
mat	Kerching! 	
liz	Lordy! 	
Vanessa	So that's amazing. 	
mat	Tax free?	
VANESSA	I don't know. I asked them whether it's tax free and they said they were going to get back to me so I'm not sure.	
mat	Hm okay. 	
Vanessa	It's a difficult question. 	
mat	Still it's still a nice bit of bunce. 	
Vanessa	Very, very nice. And it means my business can now springboard. I've got some money into franchising my business which is what I'm going to work on this year so yeah it's meant a lot. 	
liz	It's a time at the moment where there's pressure on disabled people a lot of the spotlight on disabled people getting into employment. Do you think self-employment is a realistic approach for disabled people to take? 	
Vanessa	Yeah I do. Because obviously whether you're disabled or not we've all got abilities, we've all got things we're good at. And if you're good at something and you're passionate about it self-employment is definitely a good choice I think from my experience was the only choice for me. 	
MAT	Do you agree Liz?	
liz jackson	I come from this as, you know, I don't know if I'm coming from the same stance but being an employer of 100 people and pretty much never getting CVs from the disabled community I'm quite excited that it's opening a talent pool perhaps taking away you know benefits and making it more of an urgency for people to work, for me it's given me a talent pool to fish in. So I'm quite excited about people getting CVs over to us at greatgunsmarketing.co.uk to have a look at.	
MAT	Beautiful. I always like a woman that can plug without being asked to. 	
liz	Beautiful. 	
MAT	But I'm surprised that you don't get any applications from disabled people - how can this be so? 	
liz jackson	Well you know I have to say that I think the benefits it is a trap often. You have to earn a certain amount of money perhaps for it to make it worth your while going into the workplace. And I think if your confidence has been stripped away perhaps it's easier to sit inside your comfort zone than it is to step outside. And so perhaps those are the reasons. But you'd have to say that perhaps given where I am that people might think I would be more approachable as an employer, but certainly I haven't found that. 	
LIZ	Do you think you know self-employment is one route, do you think it's just easier to be on pay as you earn, have a formal job from a disability point of view for example? 	
liz jackson	You know working and being self-employed and working from home I think you miss out on the amazing social connection that you have. I mean the word 'company' means being together and I absolutely love being around the team that I work with. I have some of my best friends now at Great Guns and I enjoy the banter and the excitement of being within the workplace. And I think it can be quite isolating to be working from home. So I'd very much encourage people to try and get into the workplace, learn a trade, learn some skills before thinking about becoming either self-employed or starting a company. 	
liz	And just before we go if you had a tip, a piece of advice, for anybody thinking about starting up in their own business what would it be, Liz?	
liz jackson	Have a good look at yourself and make sure it's what you really, really, really want to do, because when it's good it's really good and when it's 'orrible it's really, really horrible. 	
liz	I can imagine. Vanessa, how about you?	
mat 	Top tips?	
Vanessa	Well I think as I said before, go for something that you really love doing, that you're passionate about, that you feel you can work hard towards and that you have a really strong sense of self about doing that particular thing. Use your passion and go with that. Do what you're good at. 	
LIZ	Vanessa, Liz, it's been fascinating thanks for joining us and good luck. 	
MAT	Thank you. Good luck. 	
Vanessa	Thank you very much. 	
liz jackson	Bye. 
[Jingle: If you have a question of predicament that's burning a hole in your brain and you'd like us to help then email the show now ouch@bbc.co.uk, that's ouch@bbc.co.uk. If you don't you might explode! Fact.]	
LIZ	Unsigned artist time again and we have Jade and Tim from the Wasted Day Collection joining us from our studio at BBC Radio Humberside in Hull. Hello!	
tim	Hello!	
jade	Hi!	
liz	Hey thank you for joining us. 	
MAT	Now the Wasted Day Collection is a very interesting name. Can you tell us a bit about it? 	
jade 	I'll do my best. It's sort of a bit of a joke really from times that you have to stay in bed a lot and hang around on your medication and unable to do anything productive. So we try and do a lot of things on wasted days. So it's along that sort of parody really. 	
liz	Jade, you're fairly new as a wheelchair user. 	
jade	I am. 	
liz	And how are you finding the differences as a singer, is it harder to sit down...	
jade	Yes... 	
liz	... and sing? 	
jade	... it is. Yeah it's immensely different. 	
MAT	Why? 	
jade 	Well normally from years ago I'd be mincing around on stage with a microphone, I'd be able to run around - run around the stage I've never really run around a stage in my life - but you could sort of dance a little bit and things like that and so you get a full lung full of air when you're stood up. But now sitting down it's difficult to get your breath. 	
mat	Oh so this is more about the actual physical ability of singing... 	
jade	Physical side yeah. 	
mat	... rather than the presentation of the song?	
jade	Absolutely yeah. 	
mat	How long have you guys been playing together? 	
tim	About six years now. 	
jade	Yeah about that. 	
liz	And how did you come together? 	
tim	Well Jade was doing a gig at the Polar Bear I think it was the last Daisy H gig.	
Jade	Daisy H gig yeah. The old band I was in. 	
tim	And my friend Martin who knows Jade as well and said you know, Jade's looking for a guitarist to do some music with. So at the gig I approached her and said, "Would you like to form a duo?" And well within a few days Jade said yes. 	
liz	I like the way you waited a few days, you kept him on tenterhooks there didn't you?	
MAT	Now you do internet gigs, tell us about them? 	
jade	Well what it was is a friend of ours used to run this radio station called Red Bear, unfortunately due to the recession it's had to close down. We were doing a lot of webcam - it always sounds a bit ominous when you try and explain this, it's the cleaner side of webcam use... 	
mat	I wouldn't know what you're talking about. 	
jade	Yeah I bet, I've heard your shows. And it was basically I feel quite safe in my living room so we tended to make the living room into a gig space really and it was a lot easier than getting out and about and falling off a stage, or if I was ill I could just come downstairs for that. 	
liz	I love it. 	
jade	So yeah and it was... 	
MAT	Nice, don't have to travel home... 	
jade	... like a chat thing and so it was a really nice forum really to be able to sit in your own living room and perform and get your music out there. And there was quite a lot of people that used to perform on that radio station as well. But, unfortunately, we used to have to start our gigs at about 3:00 o'clock in the morning and finish them at about 8:00 because they were over in America and Canada, so we were making ourselves a little bit ill to try and keep that audience weren't we? 	
tim	Yeah. 	
jade	So we've sort of come back on that and we've been more concentrating on recording things and writing and stuff. 	
mat	It's cool I think it's a way forward for a lot of bands is the internet gigs. Okay. Well we're going to go the quick fire questions now. 	
jade	Okay. 	
mat	Are you ready for them guys?	
tim	Yeah. 	
jade	We'll try our best.	
liz	Okay. So we're going to start with Jade okay? Question one; if I were a character in Alice in Wonderland I'd be... 	
jade	Teapot. 	
mat	Tim, five a day or one a day? Veg or fruit we mean. 	
tim	One a day fruit.	
liz	Jade, New York or Paris?	
jade	Oh New York. 	
mat	Tim, King's Speech or the social network? 	
tim	Social network. 	
liz	Jade, my favourite music genre is...?	
jade	Anything I like. 	
mat	Tim, I'm the kind of guy who'd... ?	
tim	Take a girl out and show her a good time. 	
liz	Ooh! Jade, if I were Minister for disabled people I would...?	
jade	Shout a lot louder than they are doing and protect our rights as disabled people because they're being really, really quiet and I'm disgusted!	
mat	Wow! Tim, my teenage crush was on...?	
tim	Jennifer Lopez. 	
Liz	Jade, TV or internet?	
jade	Internet.	
Liz	Of course. 	
mat	And finally, Tim, if you like the Wasted Day Collection you'll also like...? 	
tim	Jethro Tull. 	
mat	Wow! 	
liz	We don't hear that often on the show, I'll be honest, fantastic. Now look how can we find out more about you? 	
jade	You can look us up, you can google us and you can find us on a podcast called Wasted Stateside which is free from iTunes. And you can buy our merchandise now off the Reverb Nation site you just keep looking for Wasted Day Collection and you'll find us now, we've got an album called Candy Head available now. 	
Liz	You're quite sorted aren't you and quite a following. 	
mat	Very good. 	
Liz	Brilliant. 	
mat	Okay. Fantastic. Well look it's the end of the show now but we're going to play out with one of your songs after this little roll call. The production team today were Damon Rose, Dan Slipper, Emma Tracey and Michael Bacon. Rowena Nicholl was Access Facilitator General. And we'll be back in two weeks' time with a Talk Show special where Liz will be joined by - eh - two teenage presenters! 	
liz	I know. Until then, goodbye. And Jade and Tim what's the track you're going to hear? 	
Jade	 It's Barbarian in Pink.	
liz	Brilliant. 	
mat	Thank you. 

[playing music]