The Unexplained - Howard Hughes - Edition 472 - Special - Meet The Capital Breakfast Team!

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July 25, 2020 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:24:11

Edition 472 - Special - Meet The Capital Breakfast Team!

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	Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet by webcast and by podcast, my name is still Howard Hughes and this is still the unexplained.
	Thank you as ever for all of the great emails that you've been sending in and the stories of your experiences in lockdown.
	I think I probably shared with you a number of times that I'm now four months into it, but I think I'm still keeping reasonably sane and hopefully I'm going to reconnect a little more with the world very soon.
	Today was a very special day.
	I bought the first gasoline, the first petrol for my car since March because I haven't been anywhere.
	So it was actually a bit of an adventure to go to the petrol station, the gas station, and fill up.
	Not that they said to me, because this is London, they didn't say, where have you been, but I felt like that.
	So little by little, bit by bit, I'm feeling my way back into ordinary life.
	And hopefully before long, I'll be reconnecting with people.
	But thank you very much for all of the emails that you've sent.
	My website is theunexplained.tv.
	You can always connect with me through there.
	Now, this is a very special and very unusual edition of The Unexplained.
	It is very much a one-off.
	And it is really connected with some Zoom conversations that I had with a few radio friends quite recently.
	And it turned out that they had had weird and paranormal experiences of their own.
	If you're in London and you listened to Capitol Radio in its heyday, then you will know Neil Fox, Cara Noble, Russ Kane.
	I'm still in contact with all three.
	And we were just talking a few weeks ago.
	And one of us, I can't remember, who came up with the idea that maybe we should do a conversation.
	And we'll talk a little bit about, you know, the days that we had on radio together, which are never to be repeated.
	I don't think there will ever be an era like that.
	And also share their unexplained experiences.
	So that conversation I've recorded already with Cara, who now lives in Los Angeles, and Russ and Neil, who now live in London as I do, different parts of it.
	The unexplained stories are towards the end of this conversation, so if you don't want to hear the radio and life chat, go to the end of the conversation, the last half hour.
	That's where all that stuff is.
	So this is my conversation with three of my good and long-standing Capital Radio friends, Russ Kane, Cara Noble, and Neil Fox.
	Now, this is going to be a very unusual edition of The Unexplained.
	This is not somebody explaining how they've got a cure for the coronavirus or somebody else explaining how they were abducted by aliens, taken on board or beamed aboard a ship and shown a map of the solar system and planets we don't even know yet.
	No, it's not that kind of edition.
	What we're going to do now, this time, is something that sprang from a couple of conversations that I had on Zoom during this weird period of lockdown.
	And if I'm not seeming quite like myself lately, it's because I've been locked in a little tiny apartment for four months now.
	It is now officially four months since I started doing this, and I've been doing my podcasts, radio shows, everything.
	I even did a voiceover for an awards ceremony yesterday here, which is the weirdest experience when you're announcing things to people you can't see because the ceremony hasn't happened yet.
	So it's been a weird experience for all of us.
	But three of my friends who I worked with for years and who played a big part in my life and I played a small part in their lives, I think, we started doing Zoom sessions.
	Do you do this?
	A lot of people I know are doing Zoom sessions now just simply to maintain some kind of human contact during this weird period.
	And it's been very good because in some cases you get to talk to people you haven't spoken with for a very long time.
	In this case, three people who worked with me and I worked with them at Capital FM.
	Now, if you're outside the UK, you may not know that Capital FM was the biggest music radio station in Europe, as big as any of the big stations in America and really a world-class outfit.
	The people we're going to be speaking with on this edition, they're all peacefully listening to this now, which is amazing for them to keep quiet for so long.
	Neil Fox, a man who is, how would I describe Neil easily, the best disc jockey that I've ever known and one of the three greatest proponents of the art, if that is the word of doing chart shows that I've ever come across.
	There are three people, Casey Kaysen, known around the world in America, America's top 40.
	Alan Freeman and Neil Fox are the three people who did, in my view, chart shows the best in my lifetime.
	And I know that with Foxy because I used to watch him do it on a Sunday, the network chart or the Pepsi network chart, whatever they were calling it.
	So Foxy's here.
	We'll talk with him in a second.
	Hello, Foxy.
	You can say hello.
	Hello.
	Thank you, Brim.
	Nice to be in such good company by the Casey Casey and Fluff Freeman.
	Wow.
	That's true.
	You know, chart shows.
	I used to watch you doing that thing and I used to think, God knows how he does that because it's so exacting.
	I would not be able to do that as a man who I've proved on many occasions cannot count.
	You used to do that supremely every Sunday.
	Cara Noble in Los Angeles.
	Most of us are in London.
	Three of us are in London.
	One of us is in Los Angeles.
	Cara Noble, who was on the Chris Tarrant breakfast show with me and the third person who will be a part of this.
	So Cara in Los Angeles, how are you doing?
	Oh, good morning.
	I'm just having my morning ginger nuts.
	Oh, very nice.
	Nothing keeps me from my ginger nuts.
	Okay.
	I mean, is that how you start every day?
	You don't have breakfast like ordinary people.
	That's very good.
	I'm sure.
	Is that what we started with?
	Is that what they do in Tensil Townland?
	That's a very strange name for a boyfriend, isn't it?
	Thank you.
	Well, please, Harry has moved over there.
	Yeah, that is very true.
	And from the 95.8 Capital FM breakfast show, the fourth member of this team, counting left to right, Russ Kane.
	How are you doing, Russ?
	Captain Russ Kane from the flying eye.
	And I can see him in video here.
	He's scratching his head.
	I have no idea.
	Please, can I, Howie?
	Don't demote him.
	I mean, I know he's not been flying for long, so don't demote him.
	You can't call him captain.
	What is he?
	Commodore?
	Commander.
	No, please.
	Obviously, if you've earned the rank, you need to be in the middle of the day.
	This is the thing with life.
	But thanks, Neil, for having my back.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	I mean, if you've earned the rank, you've got to take that to the bank.
	Exactly.
	My job was to read the traffic and weather together in the studio, which was very nice with the tea and the biscuits.
	Russ Kane was the flying eye, and he spent every morning flying in a little tiny plane from Elstree Aerodrome.
	So we had very different lives, but we worked together for three hours every day.
	We did.
	And for an awful lot of time, let's be honest, when towards the latter years of the Chris Tarren Breakfast Show, when he had six months of the year off, which is true, which is very true.
	Doing who wants to do it?
	You want to be him.
	I would, yeah, firstly, I'd be him.
	And then after a time, I'd just have to be me working with you lovely people as well.
	So hence, we all got to know each other rather well, as you do when you have to wake up at five o'clock in the morning and you get to know each other at the worst times of the morning.
	And it is a strange thing, isn't it?
	That people who are thrown together in circumstances like that.
	And we all have different backgrounds.
	We've all got our own talents.
	I mean, Foxy, you've been known for years as a disc jockey radio presenter.
	Cara, voiceover, you know, fantastic voice on loads of ads.
	A bit of acting along with it too.
	Russ Boy, comedy script writing, author.
	Is that about right?
	Stand-up.
	Yes, you've done stand-up.
	God knows how.
	How do you do stand-up?
	I would die with nerves if I had to stand up and do comedy.
	That's a trick.
	That's the joy of it because it's that scary.
	But anyway, I enjoyed it.
	It was fun.
	It's like you've got to push.
	You've got to push the envelope.
	How do you get them on your side?
	I find an AK-47 helps.
	No, there's a technique, and I know you should have a lot of fun.
	How do you get them on your side?
	Well, you know, it's a long show.
	It's an hour and a half.
	It's an hour and a half show.
	So I've done it in London, did the Edinburgh Fringe last year, just jumped in there, never done it before, and then did LA, went over to Santa Monica for a few weekends over there, where obviously you write a very different script for the American audience than the UK audience.
	And I just take the mick out of myself endlessly.
	That's it.
	That's all I do.
	It's I just take the mick out of myself rather than being aggressive towards the audience.
	And they get that.
	They get the gag.
	Which, to be fair, is really easy to do.
	Take the mick out of yourself.
	Easy.
	And that's good.
	It's not a skill.
	It's a never-ending source of material.
	It's basically hold a mirror up and have a chat.
	Is that what you do just yet?
	This is me.
	Why did I agree to this?
	Yes, you're quite right.
	Yeah, but you have to have, to do that, you have to have massive self-confidence, you know, because what you are selling is you.
	So you've got to believe in you fundamentally, even though you're letting them take the proverbial out of you.
	If you didn't believe in you, you wouldn't be able to do it.
	But it's no different from writing a book, because when you've written the book, that's it.
	It goes into the public domain.
	That is you.
	And they will judge you on that book.
	The same as they would judge Neil on every single show.
	You know, you're as good as your last show.
	So you have to have some sort of self-belief, otherwise you'd be just a mumbling fool.
	And you're a Muslim entrepreneur, aren't you?
	Yes.
	Do you know, I am now.
	It's weirdly.
	I've actually haven't been doing a lot of radio for the last few years.
	The weirdly, I agreed to do, this is weird we're talking today because I agreed to do a chart for a really interesting radio outfit that starts next week.
	Here we are, another chart.
	How strange.
	The chart master is back.
	But no, the last couple of years, I've been building apps, music apps.
	I've just started a new company to do another one as well.
	But I found, you know, it's all interesting.
	It's all to do with music entertainment.
	It's what I do.
	It's what I know.
	You know, people have said, oh, it's really interesting to reinvent yourself.
	Like, I haven't really reinvented myself.
	I'm just, these are things I know.
	I love music and I've loved it all my life.
	I've been involved in music for 35 years in broadcasting.
	And so entertainment people, well, you know, Russ, whether you're on the radio or talking to an audience live, you know, you're still chatting, broadcasting, you're still communicating and connecting.
	That's what it's all about.
	And the charts, though, when I was starting in radio, you and I started at the same time, at the same place, oddly enough.
	The charts dominated everything.
	If something was number one or number two or number seven, whatever it was, it was in the top 10.
	It was a big song.
	Do charts matter anymore?
	Well, not as much because people aren't buying singles anymore in the same way.
	They're streaming singles.
	They're downloading.
	Well, no one's downloading anymore.
	You just stream singles.
	They've stopped you downloading.
	So it's obviously a very, basically a chart was always a countdown of what were the most popular songs.
	So there are still charts.
	They're done in a different way.
	They're compiled in a different way now.
	I think what is rather sad is when I listen to radio now, sort of mainstream radio doesn't actually get excited about charts anymore.
	We did all my life.
	When I was a kid, we got excited.
	When I was doing the Pepsi chart, I was excited.
	Mark Goodyear, who was obviously doing it on Radio 1 and Bruno Books before that, they were very excited about it.
	And we had this big battle on a Sunday afternoon in the UK alone.
	We had over 9 million people listen to the both of us.
	Okay, both charts together.
	That's a lot of people.
	A lot of people, you know, there's 20% of our entire nation listening to countdowns.
	But I think we both did it really well, actually.
	The chart, Pepsi chart was clearly way better.
	No, no, but no, but we obviously we did end up having the bigger audience.
	But, you know, it was a good battle, but it just showed people liked.
	People love countdowns.
	They still do.
	On TV, they still do countdowns of the most daftiest things.
	The top 30, you know, cock-ups by reality stars.
	It's always like a bank holiday special where they do it on TV or sometimes on radio, but people love countdowns.
	When we were kids, I so remember, I couldn't wait.
	And it was a joy because never in my wildest dreams did I think, and you've already mentioned him, Howard, the great Alan Fluff Freeman, who was the king of Picker the Pops, you know, when I was literally from nine years old onwards, never thought I'd be sharing a studio with him.
	I mean, it's weird how things work out.
	And you couldn't wait to record it.
	You know, you'd record it.
	You'd put your little, little, funny little tape recorder next to the radio and you were so excited to hear the chart.
	It was a really big challenge.
	It was the present time.
	I mean, we knew the records.
	We'd heard the records all week.
	But that wasn't the point.
	It was the way that they were put together and the drama of knowing you're building up to counting down to the one that's number one.
	What is going to be number one?
	And it really mattered in those days.
	And I think you're right, Foxy, about charts them being important.
	Because I can remember when I first started my love affair with London and I was coming down on the train to see my sister, get off the train at Euston.
	And the first thing we'd do is we'd walk down the Tottenham Court Road down towards the Charing Cross Road.
	And there are all those electrical stores there, which for some bizarre reason used to thrill me when I was like 17.
	But out of every door, you'd hear Alan Freeman doing, he used to do this show that he had played off two different charts.
	He'd feature two different years, wouldn't he?
	Yeah, Pick of the Pops, what was it called?
	Whatever it was, Double Top or something.
	Yeah, Pick of the Pops, take two.
	Take two.
	But you'd hear it coming out of every shop.
	And everybody was having a listen.
	But in those days, it was a London thing, which I guess brings us back, Cara, to Capital Radio, which we were all on.
	Now, people in America listening to this around the world may not know, but it's certainly clear to people in the UK that London's Capital Radio, when it was one station serving London by itself, was a phenomenon.
	There is no other word for it.
	There was nothing so big.
	There was nothing so important.
	And there was nothing so good.
	It was the loudest and the slickest and the best at everything that it did.
	And even when competition came along, the competition faltered.
	It couldn't match any of it.
	And we were all part of that in our own ways.
	We were all part.
	We didn't know it at the time.
	There was no time to think about it.
	But we all had a part of that sort of, I don't know, through the euphoxy from the late 80s, me into the 90s.
	Cara, when did you join?
	When were you part of it from?
	87 to 95.
	Then I went to Hart.
	Right.
	Yes, you defected.
	You went across to one of the competitions.
	We had to.
	And Rossboy, what about you?
	I was there 20 years, 1984, and I ended in 2004.
	Wow.
	So you're going to be doing it.
	And weirdly, we ended Neil and I working together in the afternoons.
	And I'd always promised myself that I would stop when it wasn't fun.
	And when they gave, and Neil and I have always been sort of mates.
	And when they gave Neil an instruction, don't talk to Russ.
	Russ, don't talk to Neil.
	I thought, no, it's just a job.
	It's just a job now.
	And I'm not enjoying this at all.
	And to be honest, because this car has already said, I was in a little light aircraft, a two-engine light aircraft, which had a lot of near-misses.
	And I thought, I am really pushing my luck.
	I've done 1.5 million miles.
	I've got away with it.
	Quit while you're ahead.
	And I did.
	And it was wonderful.
	I look back on 20 exceptionally happy years.
	But as I said, I wanted to go while it was still awesome.
	And when you talk about near misses, were you talking about near misses actually in the plane or near misses with your career?
	That's it.
	That's the joy of a freelancer.
	It's always in there.
	It's in the aircraft itself.
	But that was part of the thing, part of the technique.
	And I'm sorry.
	We'll get to the unexplained very soon for my unexplained listeners.
	You haven't actually said to the American listeners that we were on with a very famous TV comedian.
	Yeah, I mean, we were support to the main attraction, I guess, in our own ways.
	But that doesn't fully explain it.
	And I was thinking about this before we started recording.
	The difference between Capital and other stations is that other stations sometimes brought in people who were quite new to it all.
	We'd all been doing what we'd been doing for a while.
	We all knew our stuff.
	And we were all capable of making a living doing other things.
	We all had reputations in a way before we went there, I think.
	Am I right about that?
	I was a singing telegram.
	You were a pop.
	No, hang on, hang on.
	You had a record out.
	I've seen it.
	That's true.
	I have had a few records out.
	They were all awful.
	Well, you say that.
	I wouldn't go admitting that.
	We were all people who, and we've proved it since.
	We could all do other things.
	Before I went to Capitol, I was doing the news.
	And Foxy, you were working on Radio Luxembourg before you went to Capitol.
	Very short time.
	I wasn't.
	I'd only been a job two and a bit years, right?
	So I was a young kid, fresh out of university with this dream of being an amazing DJ.
	And I'd cut my, well, I'd really been converted by listening to American radio.
	Actually, first when I was at university, I was on a work placement for about eight months in Atlanta and heard all these great stations that were so unlike what we had in Britain at the time.
	This is mid, early mid-80s, and they're the power, the energy, the excitement.
	And they were so well marketed.
	They had so many of them and we didn't.
	And I just wanted, because I was doing a business marketing degree, I kind of listened to it excitedly as a young 21-year-old bloke, but also from a sort of business perspective, you went, this is very clever, isn't it?
	They're targeting it.
	This is a brilliant way of talking to people.
	And they were talking to me and my flatmate, Jim, who was 22.
	Everything this one radio station we listened to called Z93 in Atlanta, Hudlana, was, it just seemed to be talking to us.
	Every advert, every gig they talked about, every record they played was just us.
	We didn't have anything like that at the time in the UK.
	Capital was in the mid-80s, basically a sort of a woman's magazine on air, really, run by the ex-editor of a woman's magazine, Woman's Home.
	Radio One.
	It was a soap opera, didn't we?
	Yeah.
	Radio One was sort of a bit, getting a bit tired.
	It had got a lot of the early jocks who were still on air and probably a bit old for it, really.
	And I suppose, so I sort of came up going, I want to do this American-style radio, but in England, and that's what I ended up doing.
	And actually, when you talked about we became a really brilliant radio station, I remember as a young, well, when I was just getting into radio at Wyvern, which is this little station in Worcestershire in the Midlands of England where Howard and I started, what was interesting is I used to listen to all these great American tapes from legendary DJs like Rick Dees,
	who did the Kiss FM Breakfast Show in LA, who was just a superstar, and these guys who started up called Ross Britton and Scott Shannon, who did this show called the Z Morning Zoo on Z100 in New York, who were just the funniest, most incredible, innovative radio I'd ever heard in my life.
	And everyone that tried to call themselves a zoo after that had no idea what a zoo really was unless you had listened to the real thing.
	I mean, we had some pitiful coppice over here in the UK.
	Everyone was trying to do zoo radio, and it was tragic, really, compared to what they did.
	Well, a lot of them were trying to almost script it, weren't they?
	They were doing production, and you can't.
	You either get on with people or you don't.
	You talked about Scott Shannon.
	Scott Shannon was so into it all.
	It was so much a part of him that I don't know if you remember this in the Wyvern days.
	You could phone Scott Shannon on air and ask him to do you a jingle.
	I actually got his number when I was at Radio Wyvern and I was doing some, God knows why, I was doing some music shows.
	And I was given, this is the true story.
	I've still got it somewhere.
	Now, I didn't know Scott Shannon from a bar of soap, but we used to play his weekly top 40 or whatever it was called.
	Oh, we did.
	Scott Shannon's weekly top 40.
	So I phoned this number and I didn't know what would happen.
	He picked up the phone.
	He was on air.
	You know, he was in New York.
	And he picked up the phone.
	He said, hi.
	I said, is that Scott Shannon?
	He said, yeah.
	I said, hello, I'm Hannah Jeeves from Radio Wife.
	Will you do me a jingle?
	And he said, yeah, hold on.
	And he did a link on air.
	He said, you know, whatever it was, Scott Shannon here and now more hits.
	Okay, puts the record on, closes the microphone, says, yeah, what do you want me to say, Howard?
	He said, Howard, use that your name really?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	We went through all that.
	He said, okay, stand by.
	You're recording?
	I said, yes, I'm recording.
	He said, right, three, two, one.
	He said, hi, this is Scott Shannon here, and you're listening to Howard Hughes on Radio Wyvern.
	Howard, you are the greatest.
	He said, but I do.
	I said, that's absolutely.
	I used that for months.
	Now, the truth of it was the greatest.
	Greatest is not a word you could have used about my broadcasting at that time, or indeed now.
	But, you know, that's the kind of thing that it was.
	It was so, I won't say loose, but everybody was living it.
	That's what it was.
	The people who did it, like him, were living it.
	Well, and do you still wake up to that jingle every morning, do you?
	On the alarm?
	Of course.
	You are the greatest tower.
	It's on my phone.
	Do you want to hear it?
	It's very, very weird how the sort of transition from us being kids into ending up on like the biggest shows.
	It's quite extraordinary.
	When I was a kid at school, I was about 14, my best mate was called Nikki Horn, who went to great fix.
	And Nikki and I sheer, we didn't want to audition.
	I had no desire to go into radio.
	And we would do these shows up in his bedroom for our own amusement.
	He had this reel-to-reel tape recorder.
	And we were about 14, 15 years old.
	And we just loved the medium of radio, which totally, and it's interesting, Neil, that you say about your influence from America, because before I joined Capital, I was living in New York and they had Neil Bush up in the Chopper.
	And I listened to this on my morning commute and I said, that must be a fantastic job.
	And then just parked it, came back, did some stuff and then went to Capitol, never understanding I'd be the Neil Bush in the chopper over in London.
	But sometimes these things, I'm not saying for everybody, because there are thousands of people who wanted to do this thing that we've all done who never got to do it.
	You know, I used to come down on the train, I'd look at the DJ photographs, the bottom of the Euston Tower.
	My sister worked in a bank halfway up the Euston Tower.
	How weird is that?
	I came to work in the Euston Tower later myself.
	I'd meet my sister.
	We'd look at the photographs.
	And I was even too shy to go in and ask for a car sticker.
	Okay.
	That was how I was, you know, I was a Liverpool lad, and I thought, geez, look at those people.
	And on the front of the building, there was Kenny Everett and all of those, and Nikki Horn was there, and all of those people.
	And Foxy, you were there.
	And I just thought, gee, Wiz, that would be fantastic to be there.
	Whoever thought that I would end up doing that at some point?
	It was not consciously part of the plan.
	But I think it kind of brings us around to the unexplained stuff that sometimes our lives are almost predestined, don't you think?
	In a way?
	Yeah, they are weird.
	I remember this very, yeah, I mean, you talked about the influence of America and how we used to look to them and I used to look to them.
	And then I remember it happened full circle because part of your introduction was we became this enormous radio station.
	We were just there, right people at the right time and created some, you know, magic.
	Pardon, obviously, that was another radio station, but we created some real radio magic.
	And I remember one evening, our program controller, a guy called Richard Park, the headmaster, he brought in some guests.
	And I remember, so he brought in this guy who happened to be the program director of Kiss FM Los Angeles.
	And the week after, he brought in a guy who was the program director of Z100 in New York.
	So these are stations that I'd listened to and just thought, these are the greatest.
	These are fantastic.
	And these guys came in and they were, they literally were, they were just watching me while I was doing my show called Dr. Fox's Evening Surgery.
	And they were just, they were just saying, this is how a modern urban radio station should sound.
	So weirdly, they were now looking to London to how they should almost program their stations, which, and they had all heard of me, which I found bizarre because these are the people who I'd literally, I would have died to have a job on or just have a sniff around their radio station, you know, when 10 years earlier or five years earlier, really.
	And it just shows, you know, yeah, we're, I mean, I think we're, we're very lucky, a talented bunch of people at the right place, right time, in a way with the right boss who is a very hard boss to work for, but with a good vision, but, you know, very, an amazing vision for what that station should be.
	Although how he went around it sometimes is not to everyone's taste.
	I think that's a tactful way of saying.
	Occasions, arguably.
	But, you know, it ended up being an amazing time.
	Yeah.
	And we all got freedom, didn't we?
	A kind of creative freedom.
	You know, I went in there quite by totally by chance.
	I'd been working at the BBC in Berkshire for a year.
	I'd left IRN, LBC, in London, and I'd gone to work doing the breakfast show in Berkshire and had a terrible year and spent most of that year from even before when the radio station went on the air, I was phoning up people in London saying, can I come back?
	It was awful.
	End of the year, I left, and I started doing shifts at different places, including the Forces radio station, BFBS, who were in Paddington at the time.
	And I can remember it was a freezing cold day, and it was just after Christmas 1993.
	And I'd left the BBC at the end of 1992 and started freelancing different places.
	I was in the car driving home from Paddington.
	I was still living in Berkshire, so I had to go down the A40.
	And it was icy cold.
	And I remember putting on the car radio, and I never listened to Capital.
	In that era, I just hadn't listened to it.
	I was listening to LBC and other stuff.
	And I hit 95.8, and I was in the car, and it was you, Cara, and Russ and Chris Tarrant in the, well, no, hang on.
	It was you and Car and Chris in Lapland together on an outside broadcast.
	Russ, you didn't get to go because you never did, unfortunately.
	That was part of the game.
	You were the sheet anchor in the plane.
	And this thing that you did from Lapland, it was a special broadcast.
	It must have been just before Christmas, mustn't it?
	I thought, this is so well produced.
	They get on so well.
	It's so well nailed together.
	This is some of the best radio I've ever heard.
	It was great.
	It was just one of the best shows.
	It was amazing.
	It was incredible.
	We took six children to Lapland.
	That wouldn't be allowed now.
	No.
	And we did the same after you'd left a couple of years later.
	And I was like their uncle Howard for a week and I knew nothing about kids.
	It was a beautiful experience.
	But I was driving home on the A40 and I'm thinking, that's the kind of show that I need to be on because everybody would hear me then.
	That's what I thought.
	I thought no more about it.
	And eight to 10 weeks later, I was doing it.
	I just, I sent a tape in.
	And Foxy, you might remember, I did an audition live.
	They put me on for the whole afternoon reading the news.
	Live, it was not like, you know, going to a studio, record an audition.
	I auditioned live.
	I didn't even know what I was auditioning for.
	And then they said to me, at the end of the day, I'm putting the coat on, they said, do you want the job?
	I said, what job is this?
	They said, doing the news on the breakfast show with Chris Tarrant.
	Well, I wasn't a Chris Tarrant listener, but I thought, that would be great.
	I can do it for three months and then I can go to ITN or something.
	That was the deal.
	And I stayed for 10 years.
	But bringing us to the unexplained part of it, though, I still believe that that is a weird synchronicity that I would be sitting in my car and I'd hear you, Russ Boy, and you, Cara, and Chris, doing this fantastic show.
	And I thought, that's what I need to do.
	And something up there, I don't know whether we all believe that, but sometimes I think that if you make a sincere enough request to whatever it is up there, if there is something, the universal consciousness, God, if you want to call it that, whatever, if it's a sincere request and you really mean it, you'll get it.
	I think so.
	If you've got enough, and I'm not saying I was God's gift to newsreading or anything, but if you've got a certain amount of talent to back it up, it'll be given to you.
	You have to feel that it's real.
	If you can feel it, you can bring it to yourself.
	But I had serendipity too with mine because I sort of didn't know what I was doing with my life, but my husband worked at Capital at that time.
	So I would be brought in to help around the place, anything that they needed doing.
	Oh, Car, bring Cara and she can help.
	And one day they said, we want you to read these number plates out with Chris Tarrant on the breakfast show.
	And I was very nervous.
	I was going to go live with Chris Tarrant.
	And he was telling some story about some woman who lost her panties.
	And I don't know.
	We just, I made a little joke about panties and you liked the joke.
	And then they went back.
	I said, well, I've been looking for them.
	And you never look back.
	Seriously, that was it.
	They just, they had that one tiny moment when we both thought panties was funny.
	And I got the job, the job that didn't even exist.
	You know, we managed to go from God and the wider universe then to the panties.
	65 minutes, 20 seconds.
	That was brilliant.
	Tells you all you need to know.
	But you know, this doesn't apply to you, Foxy, but it might apply.
	The discussion anyway, this bit of it will apply, I think, to both Cara and Ross and me, the three of us.
	This word sidekick, it was often used about the three of us.
	Do you think we, were we sidekicks?
	Do you think?
	You know, it's interesting.
	You've touched on a very interesting point, if MSA.
	It's just the ones.
	Because for me, I was very happy with my role.
	And people who were not in the business were saying, oh, don't you feel jealous?
	Or don't you feel this?
	And I go, you must be kidding.
	I'm having the time of my life.
	And remember, it was only the morning paper around before I went to school because I was a full-time advertising copywriter as well.
	So the plane would land and I'd go off to work.
	So I was having the time of my life.
	I never thought of it as work.
	I just thought of it as enormous fun.
	It had plopped in my lap completely by accident.
	I hadn't gone pursued it.
	I was having just a load of joy.
	And so the thing is, if you know what your role is and what you're there to do, which is not to be subservient, but to be supportive.
	Because it wasn't the Russ Kane show.
	It was the Chris Tarrant breakfast show.
	And I think I was very comfortable with that because I just felt I was very lucky to be there and I enjoyed it.
	So I didn't have a problem with, you know, with psychic.
	I am sure that Robin and people like that on Howard Stern, who I watch all the time, I don't think they go, I'm a psychic.
	My life's rubbish.
	Hardly.
	But it's the Howard Stern show.
	And it comes with a package, as we came with a package.
	And that's what people like.
	And people, you've already said that people came to watch you, Neil, you know, and they said, this is what we want for America, we want for LA and for New York.
	People came from all over the world to watch Chris Cara and watch how the show went with how it was bizarre as though we were some sort of lab rats and then they'd go away and try and replicate it, which of course they couldn't.
	Well, they couldn't.
	A lot of the time they couldn't.
	They couldn't replicate it.
	Because Cara, you were saying so.
	It wasn't Cara.
	It wasn't Howard.
	They're different people.
	You can't audition for that.
	It's either going to happen organically or it's going to be a disaster.
	It's going to Cara left.
	They tried so, and this is the proof of the pudding, really, apart from the other radio stations which died on their ass.
	When they tried to replace Cara with all these people who were perfectly nice, couldn't do it.
	Couldn't do it.
	It didn't work.
	It's very true.
	I mean, it's interesting as a slight outsider from, well, I wasn't, well, because I got to work with you an awful lot filling in for Chris and what have you.
	But what's interesting, of course, is that what no, I suppose that the really clever hosts will realize that although it may be your name on the door, actually what makes it really good is the team.
	Like, like, you know, the greatest football team is not about a star striker.
	It's about the team.
	Someone has to stop the goals going in and someone has to score them at the other end.
	Okay.
	And to make the team work, it takes a lot.
	Only look at some of the best stories of some of the greatest bands of all time.
	They've rarely got together for the first time, you know, just together.
	What they tended to do is, oh, that guitarist came in from there.
	That drummer came in from there.
	It takes time to put a team together that just gel.
	And once you get that gel, it's seamless.
	So although technically people could call you psychics, if Chris thought you were psychics, he'd be daft.
	Now, he didn't think of you as psychics, really, because he knew really deep down it required all of you to be brilliant.
	And if you weren't, the show was awful.
	And it wasn't as good when you guys weren't there.
	I mean, it wasn't.
	It was a time and a place of brilliance, and it all just worked.
	It was a strange thing.
	I think without knowing it.
	We didn't have to try.
	We were all playing to our strengths without knowing it.
	So I realized that, you know, as a person, you, Foxy, you've probably forgotten this, but you once described me, and I wore it as a badge of honor, as the most eccentric person you knew, right?
	Because you are still wearing your scarf as you speak this time.
	And you are still.
	You are.
	I am.
	And I realized then that I couldn't change.
	So if I couldn't change, and if I had a certain amount of flair for sort of writing, and, you know, if I had a bit of a voice for reading the news, then I could capitalize on the idiosyncrasies that were just part of me without even trying.
	And, you know, I could build that into the show.
	And that's exactly what I did.
	And Chris could see that.
	So he used to take the proverbial out of them all the time.
	You know, all of the daft things that I did, if I came in wearing a silly sweatshirt, I came in once wearing a sweatshirt that said Nafnaf on the front.
	And I became how-how forever for the rest of the next 10 years.
	That's how I became how-how.
	Because I was wearing a Nafnaf sweatshirt.
	It's just one of those weird things.
	And yes, I always wore a scarf.
	And nobody knew why it was.
	And I think it's just because it was a kind of security blanket.
	Because underneath it all, I knew I was doing this great thing on this great radio station.
	And I didn't believe that I was good enough for it.
	So I was sort of covering up and hiding behind the scarf, I think.
	If we want to look at it psychologically, imposter syndrome.
	A wonderful time.
	Imposter syndrome.
	Precisely.
	I had a nickname too, and it was Cara B Cake Mix.
	Oh, I remember that.
	Did you do a commercial for cakes or something?
	Was it a little bit saucy?
	Of course.
	Saucy.
	It was, of course.
	Saucy.
	You always did saucy.
	Caraby Cake Mix.
	That was it.
	And I've no idea.
	Let's just tell your listener how gorgeous your hair is right now.
	Well, who's that?
	Me?
	Yeah, you.
	You've got fabulous.
	We can say.
	It's absolutely ridiculous, though.
	It's even sticking up at the back at the moment.
	You see that?
	I like it.
	I never knew that I could grow it like that.
	I'm not sure I'm going to keep it like that.
	No, you should keep it.
	It looks good.
	And of course, increasingly, as we both know, as we all know, radio is becoming television and television is becoming radio.
	So when I eventually go back to working in the studio, the new studio that I haven't seen yet has got even better HD television facilities.
	So you walk in there and you've got this fantastic background.
	They're going to make one for me, apparently, with flying saucers and stuff.
	But at the moment, it's like the London skyline, all of it laid out there from the top of the shard kind of stuff.
	And you've got these lights and suddenly you're doing television.
	So you're not only thinking about, how am I sounding?
	Am I doing this right?
	What's the next question I'm going to ask?
	Which is quite important.
	You're thinking, how am I looking?
	Is this the right angle?
	I don't know.
	It's funny.
	I don't know whether I think this is a good move or a bad move because radio is very different from television.
	Radio creates a very different form of communication with your listener.
	And partly it's because you're on your own in a studio.
	It could be your home where you are now, or it could be like me in my office and Russ in his lounge and Cara in a, wherever in LA.
	But we're there just chatting.
	And it doesn't matter what we look like.
	We're not worried about looking at a camera or trying, because as soon as you, the problem with Zoom, and everyone will know this during this lockdown period, once you've got yourself on screen, you can't help look at yourself.
	You can't help look at yourself at funny angles.
	It's not like being on the radio.
	You never looked at yourself because you were just talking and chatting.
	And so once I know, you know, Global have these amazing studios, everyone does now, and they look like TV studios.
	And it's funny, the more that happens, the colder I think the output sounds.
	It's interesting you say that, but I had to make this decision because I've got two radio stations, men's radio station and women's radio station.
	And I wanted to follow, I know it sounds totally counterintuitive for radio that you could see what was going on.
	And so during this moment lockdown started, we had to leave our studios in Covent Garden in London and do it from our various homes.
	And using software, we did a show every day, which we still do every day.
	And you can see it.
	And people seem to like that, but I treat it as radio.
	I treat it as radio.
	But of course, it's very interactive as well.
	So we're interacting the whole time.
	It's an interesting hybrid.
	It's interesting that it's nice that people can maybe see what you're looking like that day or in a moment.
	I think what's weird about it is that you only have to look at how the world has exploded in the podcast area, certainly during lockdown, that people enjoy sometimes just listening and using their imagination and thinking.
	So, you know, pod radio, where radio has stopped actually in many areas, communicating with people.
	It's just like being Spotify with a few people saying the same thing in between the records every time.
	You know, it's sort of become so playlist heavy.
	It's not people having fun in between the records anymore.
	It's changed very much so.
	That you kind of go, if that is what radio has become, maybe people have gone back to just listening to just the spoken word, right?
	Where you can't see anyone.
	So I'm sitting in my car.
	I'll just listen to a podcast or whatever.
	I'll sit on the tube and listen to a podcast.
	Whereas they used to listen to the radio.
	That's not a true.
	Foxy, that's a big thing.
	No, it is.
	You have to ask why.
	Well, you have to ask why.
	And there is.
	But it's interesting.
	There are intrinsic reasons, I think, that are to do with the way that radio is organized these days.
	And I think it's partly because, not that I want to sound like somebody who's from a previous generation, you know, saying it's not what it used to be.
	That's not the case.
	It's just that they didn't hear it, a lot of these people or didn't study it in the days when it was personality driven and it was only sound radio.
	But podcasts have become so, so important, and I know that.
	And any of us who does a podcast, who do a podcast, will realize pretty quickly that people have a connection with you.
	They start to get to know you through your voice.
	And if you talk, you can only, you've got to be yourself.
	More than anything else, got to be yourself.
	So I talk about things that have happened with me, the good things, the bad things, observations, stuff like that.
	And then they email me back and they tell me about their lives and how they use the podcast.
	So there are people who are doing security shifts at warehouses in Chicago and people who are in the outback of Australia.
	And you get this mental picture of people connecting with you in a way that to an extent, they're not doing that with radio anymore.
	So I think radio has got, although the video content is incredible to see it like that and to see the way that the radio works like that, if you don't know how it works, it must be amazing for you to see that.
	But I don't think we've got to get away from the fact that it's all about the spoken word and your voice, even though we can see each other now, anybody hearing this will only be able to hear us.
	So the way that they will judge all of us is on what they hear.
	We can see our expressions and all the rest of it.
	So I don't know.
	Sometimes it's not a good idea to have the cameras rolling because I can have, maybe if I've got a guest on and I want to cut that person short and get to something else because they're not delivering what I thought they might, I want to be able to press the talk back key, say to the producer, this is not going the way I want it to.
	Let's get him off and get something else on.
	And I don't really want, it's almost like, you know, seeing the backstage operations of a theater.
	You want to see the show.
	You don't want to see what goes on behind the scenes producing the show, I think.
	So I think that's part of the issue.
	I mean, trust me, with all the guests that we had coming through the surgery over the years, and obviously we were lucky enough to get the biggest over the years, as Capital did, part of the reason they loved coming in and doing radio shows was they didn't have to dress up or weren't worried, particularly, I'd say the female artists didn't have to worry about makeup, hair, and looking brilliant, because there's an image to a lot of performers that obviously people see in videos and on TV and when they're on stage, that you can't be like that 24-7.
	So the great thing about coming into radio was if it was a radio day, they could come in and just be themselves.
	They didn't have to look a zillion percent.
	They just had to sound good.
	And they didn't have to, so they could just concentrate on having some fun on the radio and relax a little bit, where you sometimes got a much better interview than if suddenly you knew if they're now, when you listen to them, they're in a studio, they've got a camera rolling, they know people are watching as well as listening.
	What they're really doing is making sure they look good.
	And so they're forgetting just to be themselves.
	And that's what radio, for me, always did really well and still does really well.
	But I don't think any of the decisions that have been, you know, we have seen in the last 10 years, this incredible consolidation of radio, whether it's Bauer or Global, particularly buying up every commercial station so that all the little stations have now just either become a heart or a magic or a smooth or a capital or whatever.
	And so all those little stations don't exist anymore, sadly.
	And none of those decisions to merge them all together, these big national brands, have had anything to do with making better radio.
	It's obviously just making it more efficient radio and making more money at the end of the day.
	Now, look, people invest huge amounts of money in these businesses and that's fine because they've got to make a profit at the end of the day.
	But, you know, sadly, definitely what has, you know, there was a guy on LinkedIn this morning.
	He was a jock up on a little station called Peak FM.
	And it's obviously one that's been a mal, it's owned.
	I don't know whether it's, I think it's Bauer that owned him.
	It's obviously become one of the greatest hits stations or a magic or whatever.
	It's been taken over by one of them.
	His breakfast show's gone, right?
	So their radio station doesn't exist anymore.
	So now people in the peak district get a radio station that's just programmed from London with someone in London telling people, say this every 10 minutes.
	Do you know what I mean?
	You kind of go, it has none of that connection anymore.
	And so although it's a good sound and it broadcasts all the big hits, what you get, what you forget is that when you guys were together with Taran, you were all Londoners.
	It was a massive station, but you were all Londoners talking about London things.
	And the focus was completely on London.
	And you knew it.
	So you knew your area.
	You knew whatever you're talking about.
	Other people had a chance of knowing what you're talking about as well.
	And that's what made it really, but you did it in a very entertaining way.
	So that made it connected and entertaining.
	So that's what I'm talking about.
	But the bottom line was the station had an audience of, what was it, 2.5 million at its peak, something like that.
	You know, one Londoner in three, I'd get on the train and I'd think, one in three of these people on this train heard what I did this morning.
	God help me.
	I can remember sitting on a train and there was a woman sitting opposite me reading a magazine with a feature about me and a photograph of me in it.
	She didn't realize that it was me sitting opposite her, which was weird.
	I mean, talk about it.
	That's the next magazine.
	That was weird, but it was that big.
	But then Capital had the luxury of having that massive audience.
	So it dragged in money, brought in money hand over fist.
	Not all stations.
	Yeah, Carol, that seemed to happen to you.
	I think, yeah, you seem to be on the front page of a national newspaper I seem to remember, weren't you?
	I can remember getting on an airplane, on a British Airways airplane, where they always hand you a newspaper and probably a daily mail, obviously.
	And there's this little feature, an unpleasant feature about me.
	thank God, it's quite small, but with a photograph.
	Oh, that's nice.
	Did you look good in the photo?
	Oh, that's awful.
	And did they spell your name right?
	Right.
	Yeah, it's funny.
	I was on the front page of a paper as well.
	Yeah, and it's not always good, is it really?
	See, that's the good thing about being an anonymous newsman.
	Tony Blackbird once said, he said, as long as they spell your name right.
	And I went, okay, well, maybe it's a bit more than that.
	But anyway.
	F-O-X.
	It's quite tricky.
	The point that Neil was making about the amalgamation of all the small stations, it takes away the warmth.
	You can't program, you can't pre-program warmth and heart, no pun intended.
	And if it is a local station, I'm thinking of the person you were with on LinkedIn, you know, in Peak FM, they know the local streets and shops and the things that are going on.
	You cannot expect someone sitting in Leicester Square or whatever is in London to know that.
	And the people feel, I think they feel betrayed.
	I think we have to ask ourselves, are we sure about this?
	Is this just because we are radio people?
	And the fact of the matter is that a lot of these people are no longer listening to radio stations, you know, young people.
	They're not consuming local radio stations content.
	They're listening to stuff on Spotify or some other online source.
	So the idea of radio like we used to do it, in a way, it's gone off the horizon for a lot of the generation that's coming up.
	Maybe that's, or you can argue that the other way.
	If you're not offering them that warmth, then they're not going to discover you.
	There always used to be that catch-22 and a member that says Chris Tarrant and me used to often sit in those program meetings with Mr. Park when we'd have the, you know, discussing radar or figures or whatever it was maybe.
	And him and I were, CT and I were both brave enough, stupid enough, whatever enough to go, so Parky, why don't we have a, you know, we go out and meet an awful lot of listeners all the time because we're doing gigs and go to functions and they know who we are.
	And the one thing they always say is, why do you guys play the same songs all the time?
	And so why don't why do we play the same songs all the time?
	Why don't we play twice as many songs half as often?
	Okay.
	And he goes, ah, it's because the listening figures are going down slightly.
	So what we have to do is make sure that when people are listening, they're listening to only the biggest hits.
	And I go, but do you think part of the reason why the figures are going down?
	And you could say this exactly the same about now, is because we are playing the same songs over and over again and they get bored, right?
	So it's which came first, the chicken or the egg?
	And you do kind of think the reason why a lot of young people probably don't listen to those stations now is because they have got Spotify.
	So they can have exactly what they want when they want, but they miss out on radio used to be very, it wasn't just about the music.
	It was it was all the stuff in between the music as well that made it entertaining and gave it that sound, right?
	The Americans call it stationality.
	Well, it's true.
	Every radio station has a personality, doesn't it?
	And you kind of, you either liked your capital or kiss or heart or magic, whatever you had.
	They all had a different feel to them.
	And if you liked the personality, the stationality, you kind of, you chose them as your friend, right?
	That was your friend.
	And they were very much part of people's lives.
	And I think where we have now is we just, with this sort of endless playlist and either win 30 grand, listen to these three songs, you know, there's very little warmth and personality and genuine connection with people that probably, or something that's just funny or well observed or just something about the jock that's just a really nice story that's personal, well told, that actually feels real.
	And I say maybe people aren't connecting with the broadcasters in the same way because those broadcasters, to be fair to them, aren't allowed by their people to connect in that way as maybe we were.
	And there was another thing we were very lucky because there was two reasons why we were lucky.
	One, we grew up in an era of personality radio.
	So when I was a kid, listening to Emperor Roscoe was so excited.
	That Saturday sort of lunchtime show, I couldn't wait for it.
	It was like an event.
	Stuff like that, Kenny Everett, Dave Cash, these legends.
	And so that was number one.
	You think, these people are fantastic.
	They're just great.
	They're funny.
	They're this.
	They're that.
	Wow.
	Right.
	Never thinking you'd ever meet them until I work with them genuinely when you're a kid.
	And then the other thing was they had choice of what they could play.
	So I always think of Rogers, a great broadcaster who passed many years ago, unfortunately far too young, called Roger Scott, who was obsessed with an act that no one had heard over here called Bruce Springsteen and introduced me and millions of other people to an act called Bruce Springsteen.
	Well, you wouldn't get that these days.
	And I used to think, wow, that's a great tune.
	I wonder what that is.
	And they'll introduce you to music that you wouldn't normally come across.
	But we have to say that we are all of a similar generation here.
	We are.
	Maybe music.
	You're gone.
	Sorry.
	I mean, all I was saying is you're about to say that too, Foxy, is that people consume music in a different way now and maybe don't see radio in the way that we saw it.
	We saw radio as a friend, something warm, a companion coming out of the airwaves in the middle of the night.
	I was one of those kids who used to have a radio under my pillow late at night.
	I'd be listening to the BBC World Service because it was educating me.
	I went to a rubbish school and, you know, well, when I was like 12, 13, it was a pretty tough Liverpool school.
	And BBC World Service under my pillow at night taught me about the world.
	That's what radio meant to me.
	I don't think kids today, if we can say that phrase, have the same relationship with radio.
	So I think everything that we've said is absolutely valid here.
	But times have changed.
	They have.
	And I've got a 13, a 17-year-old, a 19-year-old.
	And watching how they consume their music through Spotify or whatever is interesting.
	But they still want to be entertained, right?
	So what's interesting is what we have now, we've got Smartphones and we have TikTok and the way they communicate with Snapchat or whatever, but they're being very entertained through that.
	Maybe what radio needs to do is try and look at what they need to people need to be entertained.
	If radio is entertaining, right, and funny or controversial or clever, that's why LBC does well because it can be quite controversial and your face talk radio is doing something amazing and why talk radio is doing brilliantly at the moment.
	I suppose because we have, I suppose, with the music streaming platforms, another source of music.
	You know, when kids were growing up in the 50s and 60s, all they had was the radio.
	It's the only way you could get it.
	And probably actually until you stopped buying records, until we actually started streaming, until iTunes came on, that's the only way you could get music was to go buy it in a shop.
	And now there are no shops to go and buy music in.
	So now you just for $7.99 a month, you can get 55 million songs.
	It's slightly devalued music for me, but it's brilliantly clever, clearly.
	So what radio to me has to do, and I love radio, of course I do.
	We all do.
	It's like a mistress, someone said, a very powerful mistress that you'll never be able to get rid of.
	And I think that's very true.
	But I think it has to just work out how to connect to people, genuinely connect them and either educate them, like the BBC World Service did, or excite them or make them laugh or somehow make them cry.
	It's got to find that way of literally just touching them, which other forms of broadcasting, like podcasting, is finding a way of doing.
	And podcasting, let's be honest, is not some magic thing.
	It's talk radio in bite-sized chunks that you can download and listen to anytime.
	It's not like this magic thing that someone's recreated.
	You kind of, oh, it's just a talk show.
	Okay.
	And it is actually quite easy to do.
	That's why so many people are doing it.
	Cara, you're saying?
	I was going to say that what we did at Capital, which was clever then, because in a way it was a forerunner, a tiny forerunner to podcasts with film.
	We had the commercials on the radios.
	We had the radio commercials on the television.
	Listen, tomorrow morning at 8.15 and you could win a thousand pounds.
	Do you remember that?
	It was so much money.
	And those ads were really fun.
	And so people actually did see us, even though mostly they didn't know what we looked like.
	So we kind of started that in a way.
	We were very innovative.
	The whole station was so innovative in every way.
	So I'll tell you what, we've all proved that even though we weren't going to talk about radio, it's all still in our blood.
	Whatever we've gone on to do, whatever different things we've picked up from where we left off, we're all still really in love with radio, the medium.
	And I guess that's going to be forever for all of us, isn't it?
	I would say.
	I would say, from what I heard.
	Now, we've got to talk about those unexplained stories because that is why we're supposed to be communing here together now.
	And I've always had this theory that's been proved time and time again about people and paranormality.
	The most unlikely people will come up to you and say, you're doing the unexplained, aren't you?
	I've got a story.
	I remember once when I did the show on Talk Sport, this is when it was first running, and that's years and years ago, and I would have to pick up from the football show on a Saturday night.
	So we went from football and the premiership results to me doing aliens and all the rest of it.
	It was a bit of a junction.
	It was a bit of a juxtaposition to get that.
	But there was one of the guys there, and he was a former Liverpool footballer.
	I've forgotten his name.
	He said, you know what, I'm fascinated by all that stuff.
	Do you know what happened to me?
	And it turned out that even he had got a story about these things.
	I've always believed that we all have stories.
	And when we did one of our private Zoom sessions, the four of us, a few weeks ago, it came out that we've all got stories of a paranormal nature.
	So we've agreed kind of to tell them now.
	Let's go to Los Angeles first.
	And Cara, talk to me about the ghost bus.
	The ghost bus of Cambridge Gardens Labrador Grove, Notting Hill Gate.
	Well, actually, extraordinarily, in about 73, walking between a friend's house and another friend's house late at night in my hippie days, I had this experience with this bus.
	And it was so weird.
	It was so quick and fast and bright and spectral.
	And it suddenly appeared out of nowhere that I was so blown away by it that I sort of ran along with it and watched it turn down Cambridge Gardens and virtually kind of disappear, hover off into the Nothingsville at the end of the road.
	Got to my friend's place and they said, are you high?
	Well, I might have been high.
	I don't know.
	But what could anybody say?
	I just said, I've just seen this weird bus.
	Okay, end of story.
	So about 15 years later, I come across this book, which I actually have in my hand.
	It's called Haunted Britain.
	And I'm just flicking through it and I turn to one of the pages and there it is.
	Cambridge Gardens Laboratory Grove.
	A phantom bus has been reported on several occasions and more than one accident has been caused by its appearance at night.
	That is an astonishing story.
	And you wouldn't know that for 16 years.
	No.
	So I'm looking at it and thinking, oh my God, that was that crazy bus experience I had.
	So of course, what was I?
	On the radio at the time.
	Took the book in, told Chris, we talked about it on air.
	Then people kept ringing in that they'd seen it.
	So it actually caused quite a ended up doing a TV, little TV snippet about it.
	Does anybody know anything about the bus?
	You know, like from what era was it supposed to be?
	Had it been involved in an accident?
	Was it something that was maybe bombed in the war?
	Does anybody know that?
	All conjecture, but, you know, sort of 30s, 40s possibly.
	Nobody really knows.
	And it goes different routes.
	It doesn't just do that one St. Mark's Road turn down Cambridge Gardens.
	It does another route.
	Other people have seen it other places.
	I mean, I met, I actually met somebody else who's seen it.
	It's a prolific ghost.
	And from what you can remember, when you look down, I'm asking this for a reason.
	Sometimes people who see figures or specters or ghostly images, they can see them till about 75% down.
	So when it's figures of people that are seen, they don't see the feet.
	That's just a kind of haze.
	Could you see the wheels of this thing?
	Did you see the wheels of the bus?
	You know, I'd go round and round.
	Exactly.
	That's what I was getting to.
	It's very hard to say, honestly, because it was sudden.
	It was there and it was right next.
	It was like I virtually jumped back.
	It appeared so suddenly.
	and I still do think it was brightly lit, but it could have not been brightly lit.
	So, in other words, my memory isn't perfect.
	Wheels, I'm not too sure about.
	I can't go as far as wheels or whether there was a conductor.
	I can't really remember whether there was a person on it.
	You see, a skeptic might say, a skeptic would say, well, it was the 70s and herbal substances may or may not have been involved, but not the case if other people have seen this.
	You know, not everybody who's seen it has been high.
	Lots of people have seen it.
	I found an old clip actually from the TV show the other day about it because I had all my old videos transferred into little dongles.
	You'll be digitized, yeah.
	Digitized, thank you.
	No, honestly, it wasn't just a bus that was going fast.
	It was an extraordinarily weird, paranormal experience that was unexplainable.
	And that's great because this show is called the unexplainable.
	Well, exactly.
	I mean, it couldn't fit in better, really.
	But on a scale of like zero, where it's just a hazy image in the desert, to 10 where it's as solid and three-dimensional as you or me, where was it?
	I would say seven.
	It was a seven.
	Boy.
	Well, I have a feeling, because I have listeners everywhere, that there will be other people who will know about this phantom bus.
	And I don't think we should leave it there.
	You know, I don't think we should park the bus there.
	I think we should take that further.
	Okay, Russ Boy Kane, the commander, common.
	What were you of the flying eye, the common thing?
	I never liked that.
	There was something that Graham Dean involved.
	I never liked it.
	I got saddled with it.
	He thought it was terribly witty and marvellous, and I thought it was an absolute burden.
	There we go.
	Well, I think the best introduction to you was always...
	Yeah, that was it.
	That was always the way.
	So what's your story then?
	You must have that.
	right well it started off and I've got to put it into some context because as I said I was an And I was writing a film for British Airways.
	It was called Haunted London.
	So I've got to be quite honest with you.
	I had, so this was the transatlantic flights, et cetera, long distance coming into Israel.
	So I had lots and lots of ghost books on my desk, loads.
	I was completely immersed.
	And my girlfriend was over at the time.
	And suddenly, I'd finished where I was still sitting at my kind of desk.
	So she was watching TV or something.
	And suddenly this most peculiar feeling came over me.
	Now, also, the flat where I lived at the time was next to a cemetery.
	Just setting a little bit more context.
	Now, I had a very big painting, which was just flowers.
	And I looked up and there were streams of light going across this huge painting.
	So the main canvas was black.
	The rest of it was kind of pink and red.
	And I turned to her.
	I said, can you see something on this painting?
	She went, yeah, there's bars of light going all over it.
	I thought, well, that is completely peculiar.
	And then I felt this surging of energy going through my, every part of me was like tingling.
	It was bizarre.
	And she said, oh, my God.
	And I said, what?
	What?
	She said, your face.
	And I said, I thought, well, this isn't going to go well, is it?
	She said, every line in your face has gone.
	You've lost about 20 years.
	No, there's money in that, baby.
	No, there is.
	No, wow.
	I would commercialize that.
	So I thought, well, this is the weirdest, weirdest thing.
	And I felt this extraordinary tingling.
	And then a little bit later, the only jewelry I wear is a gold necklace.
	It's not even the same one anymore.
	And I could feel this thing.
	I mean, this sounds so weird, pulsing.
	And I said, try and hold this.
	Now, this was just the necklace around my neck, right?
	And I just couldn't hold it.
	She couldn't hold it.
	There was so much weight suddenly in this necklace.
	It was the most extra, most extraordinary thing.
	And then, and I was freaked out.
	I'll be honest, I was not very brave at this moment.
	And I sat on the settee and I said, can you feel this?
	And I could feel air moving.
	And we both felt the same thing.
	Because I didn't say, oh, can you feel the air?
	Because that's just putting words in someone's mouth.
	I said, can you feel anything?
	She said, oh, you mean the air that's going backwards and forwards across our face?
	This was the weirdest blooming evening.
	So do you think that it was some kind of spectral energy that was maybe emanating from the graveyard?
	I don't know what the heck it was.
	I mean, I really, really, now this sounds ridiculous, and I know I write novels and stuff, but I just wonder through all the research I was doing for Haunted London for this film, and I really went into it.
	I don't know if it kind of opens up some sensibility.
	I don't know if it opens up a portal.
	Who the heck knows?
	Portal, mate.
	I'm with Cara on this.
	I think maybe it's like, but whatever it was, and I can't explain it any more than that.
	It freaked me out, but it was so real.
	It was as real as I'm talking to you.
	Now, had I been on my own, I would have thought I dropped.
	Sorry?
	What had you just been writing about?
	Well, I've just been writing, as I said, about this.
	I was writing the script for Haunted London.
	So just going around the street.
	Was there something?
	Ghosts of Theatres.
	So long ago.
	Theatre ghosts in London, which are frequent, and Ghosts on the London Underground, bizarrely, which I then incorporated, oddly enough, into a book.
	But that's kind of what I was writing about.
	You know, famous London places that were haunted.
	As I said, mainly theatres and certain tube stations, as we call the London subway.
	And I don't know what it was, but it was, I've Never forgotten that night.
	Maybe something wanted you to know.
	And I'm a great believer in what we've just laughed about, but I think this does exist: that if you open up a portal, if you are open to it, it will find you.
	You know, and that's in a good way and a bad way.
	There are people who open themselves up sometimes by using things like Ouija boards.
	And I have friends who do that, which I would never recommend, because that opens, I think, portals to very low-level spirits and entities and things that we just don't understand, nor can we control.
	So I think if you're open to things, they will find you.
	And that is just a rule for life, really.
	And I think that goes back to the beginning of our conversation where I said that sometimes if you want a thing enough, it will come to you.
	And that's been proved time and time again.
	There are people who've written books about that, like, you know, the Cosmic Ordering Service, which I think Noel Edmonds was said to have used for, you know, the second coming of his career.
	And, you know, I'm certainly a very interested person when it comes to that book.
	And I interviewed the author of it.
	So I think there's an awful lot of stuff going on.
	I can remember if you're talking about opening portals, I was like 22, beginning of my career, sitting in a studio at BBC Brighton.
	And one of my duties was to open up the station.
	And on the BBC, it's still like that.
	You have to do it all yourself.
	You haven't got people tech-hopping you and stuff like that.
	So you go in, open the door, put on the lights, and you have to, in those days, we were opting out of Radio 2.
	And it was like half past five in the morning.
	And I'm getting the studio ready for the day.
	And, you know, I'm obviously conscious that I've got to do it all right because I'm 22 and I'm being watched.
	So there I am.
	I'm preparing.
	And I've got Radio 2 on in the background.
	And we're about to go local in Brighton, get rid of Radio 2 and put our station on.
	So I'm preparing to do this opt-out.
	And then the Thought for the Day, they used to do like a religious thought for the day comes on.
	And I've never, ever forgotten this.
	Because the guy on Thought for the Day, and I started thinking, I've never heard them talk like this on Thought for the Day.
	And he's a very posh voice.
	He said, and there are things in heaven and earth that we will never be able to appreciate.
	And as he said this, spookily in that voice, I kid you not, the clock in front of me by which I was timing everything exploded and jumped off the wall.
	And every single clock in the building stopped.
	And I did the show and ran the station on my little, I had a little digital watch, which I'd synchronized before that.
	And we did everything on the watch until they came in to fix the clocks.
	Now, I've always believed, this was one of my many BBC local radio experiences that I won't go into all of them.
	I was about to leave Brighton and I was very, very happy in Brighton.
	And I'd taken a job that was a promotion, but it was in a place I didn't want to go.
	But the boss in Brighton was not going to give me something better.
	So I was 22 and I thought, I'll show you I'll get a better job somewhere else.
	But I didn't want to go.
	I was really upset about leaving Brighton.
	And my feeling about, and the job I went on to was a disaster for me.
	You know, it put me in the wilderness for a period and I ended up on pirate radio and then back to Radio Wyvern after that.
	And that's where my career started properly.
	But I've always believed that something was trying to tell me, don't do this thing.
	But I was 22 and I was young and I was stupid and I didn't bear in mind the message.
	Maybe I'd get the message now.
	So that's about it.
	It's weird.
	I know you can see behind me, but I know listeners can't see it.
	There's a huge clock on my wall.
	Just see that huge clock.
	No, no, no.
	So I'm doing the show from here, my daily show on men's radio station.
	And in the middle of the show, and that clock's been up there for two and a half years.
	In the middle of the show, the clock falls down.
	And I said to the guy that I present with, a young guy, I said, something horrible's happened.
	And that was the day my best friend, Francis, died in Los Angeles.
	Oh, more or less the same time.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	More or less the same.
	And I said, as the thing came down, I said, something horrible has happened.
	The glass.
	This was only five weeks ago, six weeks ago.
	And I knew something awful had happened.
	And you can write that off until the cows come home as superstition.
	Of course you can.
	But of course.
	I don't think it is.
	I think there's something much more behind those things.
	Something very similar happened when my best friend seven years ago died in a boat crash with his daughter.
	It was that horrible accident in Cornwall where they all got thrown out of that speedboat.
	And so I'd had his brother on, obviously slightly hysterical, just going, oh my God, he's died and telling us what had happened.
	And Vicki and I were trying to work out to my wife, oh my God, we've got to get down and see the rest of them who have survived.
	We knew the wife was down at a hospital in Cornwall and had had to have her leg amputated after the accident.
	We're thinking, right, we've got to get down to see them because there were our godchildren down there as well.
	And we knew they needed our help.
	And what was really weird was that night in our house, this was actually down on the coast.
	We had a sort of a beach house.
	And we were sitting there in the lounge and the house was called Beachy.
	And we'd got these 3D letters that were sort of somehow wedged above the fireplace.
	They'd been wedged for four years.
	That night we're sitting there and they literally just flew off the wall.
	We were sitting there just literally debating what should we do?
	How can we get the kids looked after so we can drive down to Cornwall tomorrow?
	We've got to go now.
	And it was like he was saying, you need to go now.
	And it sounds really weird, but we definitely felt, oh my God, it's an echo.
	Oh my God, this is so weird.
	And that night we heard doors closing in that house and opening.
	There's no way they could open or close.
	We just, it was like, well, Vicky says the same thing.
	It was the weirdest night.
	It really was the weirdest night.
	So I totally agree.
	And sometimes these bad things happen.
	I think if they want to get in contact with you, then they find their way of doing it.
	And it's really weird.
	And it's your, those stories are harrowing.
	And I know, weirdly, I think I, well, I have two ghost stories, but so you can choose, do you want Second World War pilot or do you want ex-DJ?
	Let's go.
	Well, I mean, we're radio people.
	Let's take a vote here.
	Cara?
	Okay.
	I'm going DJ.
	Glassboy?
	I love Second World War.
	I'll do them both very quickly then.
	Okay.
	Quick first is, okay, at Radio Luxembourg, as a new boy.
	I was in the studio.
	The studio for Luxembourg, they've been using the same studio since 1930.
	And I'm sitting there.
	No, it's in Luxembourg at a place called Villa Louvigny in Luxembourg.
	And I was only there nine months, but I was sitting there doing this show one night.
	And the microphone's open.
	And behind me are, well, big reel-to-reel tape recorders.
	Okay.
	And in Europe, they don't have big plastic reels.
	They have these little metal spools that the tape spooled really tightly around.
	But we used to pile them up on the back of the machines when they're being used.
	Anyway, I'm doing a link and I suddenly felt this unbelievable chill go past my neck from back right to front left.
	It's like, oh, it really chilled me down.
	So much so it just made me look around to see if anyone was behind me.
	And at that moment, I saw 10 reels fly across the room.
	Boom.
	They just went.
	And you could hear them clatter, make all this noise.
	So I had so much so I had to explain on air and oh my God, a really weird thing.
	I'm talking.
	Such a weird thing's happened here.
	I've just explained what had happened.
	And I said, well, that's slightly freaked me out.
	So later on, when the next jock's coming in who had been there a long time, lovely guy called Bob Stewart.
	And I said, oh my God, the weirdest thing happened.
	And he went, ah, Barry Aldiss is saying hello.
	And Barry Aldiss was this very famous DJ who had been to Luxembourg, then went to the BBC for a bit, missed it in Luxembourg.
	So came back and lived over there and died in Luxembourg.
	And when someone showed me the next day in the office, they said, here's an old picture of the studio when Barry and all that team used to be on air.
	And they all used to have like a cubby hole on the wall.
	And exactly where that machine was was where Barry's box was.
	And he used to keep all his headphones and his stuff and his records.
	And they just went, oh, yeah, he's done that to all of us.
	And I know some of that story that Barry, I think, died very suddenly.
	It was very unexpected.
	Yeah, it was.
	So maybe part of him is still there.
	Maybe he's the villain.
	He loved it.
	And apparently, you know, yeah, really missed it.
	And the war one for Rust Boy.
	And this is partly because it has so much believability because my father never believed in ghosts or anything like this.
	It was all a load of rubbish.
	Okay.
	And he was talking to a business friend of his who ran a packaging company called Metal Box.
	They used to have a research and development factory or unit in a place called Grove, which is out in Berkshire near Wantage.
	And after they'd finished their business, he said, oh, have you heard about our ghost Roy?
	That's my dad.
	And he went, really?
	Yeah, gone.
	And he went, no, no, seriously.
	He said, about 30 people have seen the same thing.
	And basically, you know, this is built on an old Secret More Wall airfield and everyone keeps seeing the same thing in the same place.
	And it's not some like medieval monk.
	It's literally a 3D human being.
	Okay.
	It's an airman in his flying jacket.
	And it's so real, it's like in color.
	And you can see that he's got ginger hair and a pot mark skin.
	We can see him.
	So we've had police photofit people in to try and draw him.
	And amazingly, everyone's seen exactly the same.
	They go, no, that's what we've seen.
	We've seen this person.
	And then they said, yeah.
	And then we said we looked back over the archives and we worked out it was an airman in the Second World War.
	And he died when his plane was crash landing full of bombs.
	And they all died, sadly.
	And his name was, I don't know, Ginger Smith or something like that, because he got ginger hair.
	My dad goes quiet.
	And then he said, Roy, are you still there?
	And he went, that was one of my best friends.
	Oh, boy.
	And he said, he used, yeah, he said, yeah, my brother used to date his sister.
	Yeah.
	In fact, me and that bloke laid the concrete that is the runways on the aerodrome because I grew up in that area.
	That was my local airfield.
	And I helped lay the concrete on the before I could join the RAF.
	So many.
	And he said, so I know him.
	So, so, yeah, he, and I said, well, God.
	And this guy said, well, Roy, oh my God, this is crazy.
	You must come and try and speak to the ghost because from every expert we've ever talked to, there's somehow a spirit locked in this world and they can't go to wherever they should be going.
	Maybe you as his friend can help him.
	And my dad went, well, I'm not doing that.
	And I went, dad, you've got to do this.
	If it's a load of rubbish, it's a load of rubbish.
	If it's not, that's your friend.
	He's not going to do you any harm, right?
	That was the logic.
	Anyway, he wouldn't go.
	He wouldn't go.
	And I've always thought, gosh, maybe out of that fear.
	I mean, I guess, because it would be a strange thing.
	Oh, yes, I'm going to go and have a chat with someone that's dead.
	Well, that would be a lot for anybody, I think, in any generation to take.
	Those things happen.
	This is the proof.
	You did tell me one thing in one of our Zoom conversations.
	I don't know whether you want to include this on here, but you used to get invited to events that not many people get invited to.
	And one of these was a Royal Garden party at which an attendee, I think, was one of the Apollo astronauts.
	And you asked him a question.
	Oh, I did.
	Question that I've died to ask those people.
	Oh, my God.
	Look, I am a complete moon junkie.
	I'm wearing my old speed master now that was given to me by Charlie Duke, who was the 11th guy to walk on the moon.
	Okay.
	So I'm obsessed with this stuff as a little boy watching it also.
	So, yes.
	So there we are at a garden party.
	And I actually took my mum to this one because I've been to a few, which was very nice, I have to say.
	And I'm sitting there and I look across the room and there's Buzz Aldrin.
	And it's like, oh my God, mum, Buzz Aldrin.
	And no, and he's there with his wife and no one's speaking to him.
	And so I went up to him and said, hello, you're Buzz, aren't you?
	Yes.
	I went, hello, I'm Neil.
	Can I just really just chew your ear and just literally talk about the moon landing?
	So I'm just obsessed.
	And he went, I'm happy to talk about it, you know, as long as you want.
	I went, oh my God, this is a dream come true.
	So my mum and his wife and me and Buzz sit down for a chat in Buckingham Palace.
	I'm going to start talking about all this stuff.
	And I said, a couple of little things.
	Firstly, I said, I've read lots of books.
	Is it true that when you came to, so they've done all their checks on the moon, this unbelievable, you know, the world's been watching them.
	They go through the checklist, they're about to blast off after three and a half hours, and they get to the final, these are all toggle switches in the 60s.
	So very click, click, click, click, click, very old and sort of mechanical.
	And I said, is it true when he got to the last switch, the one that would actually start the motors, i.e.
	to send you back home to Earth, that it was broken?
	And he went, yeah, that's true.
	So that the switch had broken off.
	But what I'd heard was that what he did, very quick thinking, was he then got out a big pen that cost him 10 cents, broke off the clip that goes over your pocket, that little bit of metal, stuck it in the hole and pulled it down.
	And I went, is that true?
	And he went, yep.
	So that's what got them home.
	Without that, they'd still be there now.
	So that's why Buzz Aldrin was hired for that mission, because the others were maybe a little bit more methodical, but he was the maverick.
	Yeah.
	But the question I know you wanted me to say was, okay, I said, okay, so here we go, Buzz.
	And we've been talking half an hour now.
	So this is moon porn, isn't it?
	Let's be honest.
	It's getting very exciting.
	And I said, so here's the million dollar question.
	There are books out there that say the communication between you and NASA broke up many times.
	And they say it, but people that were listening in on other channels reckon it's because you were saying, oh my God, there are things across there.
	Okay, I can see something else on the moon.
	We are not alone.
	And I said, were you alone or did you see anything on those missions?
	And he went, we all saw things on those missions.
	All of us.
	He said, all of us saw things that we can't understand.
	Do you think he was joking with you?
	No, no, no, no.
	I think he was 100% serious.
	I think he and all of them have been 100% serious.
	They saw things that were unexplained, that we would call UFOs because they are unexplained flying objects.
	But there were things out there that they said they saw and that they literally can't explain.
	Thank you for sharing that.
	That's freaky.
	Do you mean like kind of a shopping cart on the moon or silly things on the moon or things in the sky?
	Things in the, he said on the way to the moon and they've all said they all were followed or had things around them that were unexplained out the windows.
	This is all the guys.
	If you read any books about them, they all seen things.
	And they're still saying that those things happen with the International Space Station.
	Sometimes the feed gets cut.
	Yeah, it is claimed.
	But of course, those people are always the people who say that there's some deliberate hand doing this.
	They're always rubbished and it's always claimed, no, no, it's all nonsense, really.
	NASA would never do this.
	And if you think you've seen something on Mars or the moon, it's the thing called pereidolia, which is the brain's, the brain's proclivity or propensity, I think is the word, to make sense out of something that doesn't make sense.
	I mean, I think I want to believe in it all.
	I really do.
	And I do think there's got to be life out there.
	You know, if you think we're a little planet, if someone, think what we've done since 1903, when the Wright brothers first flew to 1966, sorry, 1969, 66 years, man went from not being able to fly to walking on the moon.
	So if some other civilization was 100 years, just 100 years ahead of us, what could they be doing now?
	We're about to send things to Mars.
	Well, we've send them all around our solar system.
	Why would someone not be doing the same as be as inquisitive as us?
	Now, they might not, what always makes me slightly suspect is that every alien that anyone sees, they kind of look like humans, but with funny eyes.
	They look like everything that's been made in the films.
	So you do kind of think, why would life have to look with two arms and two legs and big eyes and a sort of head?
	Or indeed be something that we can see.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And so sometimes I'm a bit suspect of that stuff, but I do believe that there is something out there.
	And it's, you know, very true.
	It's a shame that when you think how many billions of smartphones there are in the world now, which have HD cameras and are brilliant, no one has yet caught what I call a really amazing bit of footage of a UFO that's clear and crystal.
	They're all a little bit grainy in a different way.
	The only one, Neil, the only one which really rocks my boat are the Phoenix lights.
	No, I agree.
	You're very familiar with that.
	I am.
	Which seems no one can come up with an explanation.
	The video is really, really clear.
	Thousands of people, not even a lot of people.
	There's usually a few drunk people in the back of a pickup.
	Thousands of people saw this.
	And in fact, there are people there.
	Dr. Lynn Kitai, who I had on the show a couple of times, not only reported it when it was happening, but some of these people say these things are still happening and that the lights are somehow emerging from the mountainside.
	And this is an ongoing phenomenon.
	And there are other phenomena like that around the world.
	This has been one hell of a conversation.
	And who would have thought it?
	You know, the four of us who worked at the Euston Tower on Capitol Radio and Leicester Square later, that we'd all have experiences of this kind.
	So you've proved my theory about everybody having a story or two or three or more handsomely there.
	Neil, Cara, Russ, thank you very much for being part of this.
	Thank you.
	Well, very special.
	Thank you, Cara, in Los Angeles.
	Thank you, Russ, in London and Neil in London.
	Special edition of The Unexplained, this one.
	Let me know what you think about that.
	Send me an email through the website theunexplained.tv.
	That's it.
	We're totally out of time.
	My name is Howard Hughes.
	This has been The Unexplained Online.
	And please, whatever you do, until we meet next here, please stay safe.
	Please stay calm.
	And above all, please stay in touch.
	Thank you very much.
	Take care.

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