The Eagle

For once, I was early for work. It was 8.30am, and the local Guildford radio station The Eagle was conducting its breakfast show from a bed in the window of Furniture Village. Peter Gordon, the main presenter, is someone I’ve met quite a few times and got on quite well with, being a similarly plump bloke who went to the same school as I did. He was dressed in a pink nightie. Bev, his sidekick, was in a little blue checked number. I envy their job – talk into a microphone for 4 hours a day, and go on special trips to a bed. I passed the shop several times, as a fox would check out its prey before launching into a shop and wrecking a radio broadcast. If it weren’t a fox. As I passed the shop, I frantically waved at the presenters, looking as if i may have been having a mild epileptic fit. Unnerved, they waved back. Encouraged, I parked my car at the next available lamp post and manoevred myself into the store. The mid-advertisement link had just finished, and as the two presenters turned their attention to my nervous figure, I began to feel a little ill. What if they wanted to interview me as a fan? What if I managed, in my utter shock, to let slip an expletive or two? All, of a sudden, Peter burst into life. “And look who we have here, a fellow Cranleigh School-er, come and say a few words.” Christ, this was it. Onlooking eyes burnt into me as I strolled to the bedside cabinet, bent down into the microphone, and commented in my best radio voice, “Looking good Peter, in a rather unmanly way.” And then I forgot to think. Pointing at his sidekick Bev, I remarked, “You’ve been wanting to get into bed with her for a while, I’d have thought.”
And that was it, cut off in my prime, as I was about to launch into a new career as a radio DJ and take the world by storm.