Alumnus Neil O’Hara (BSc Economics, 1970-73) remembers being a programme engineer on the station in the 1970s when it was based in ‘The Shed’ next to Rootes D Block.

• How did you come to be involved with student radio?

In my first year (1970/71), I lived on the ground floor of what was then called M block of Rootes Hall—the Shed stood right outside the window of the communal kitchen/dining area. I don’t remember whether I volunteered or someone involved with the station asked me to be a programme engineer, but that was how I started.

My job was to have everything ready for the presenter, which sometimes meant turning things on but most of the time I sat by a control panel while the broadcast was in progress to monitor volume. It had a kill switch in case someone said something inappropriate, but I never had to use that. I could see the presenter through a soundproof double glass panel, and we had an intercom in case he or she encountered technical problems.

On one occasion, the presenter for a pop music programme never showed up, so I had to cobble something together on the fly. We had a stash of records, mostly singles, filed alphabetically by artist in a steel cabinet, so I grabbed a couple and started playing. We had twin turntables with brakes; to cue up each record you placed the stylus on the blank groove at the edge, let it run until the song started, applied the brake and then manually backed up the turntable until the sound stopped. After introducing the song, you released the brake and the music kicked in right away. I spent the entire hour scrambling between the studio and the storage cabinet to replace one record and find a new song to play before the one I had just launched was over.

The then programme director—I think his name was Tony—heard my effort and liked it enough that he offered me a programme slot for the next term, which I called O’Hara’s Hour. It wasn’t organized around a theme—I don’t even remember creating a playlist, I just picked out records I liked from the storage cabinet and tried not to repeat too many from one week to the next. I did make use of an album of sound effects to liven up my presentation.

At the end of that year, the engineer who designed the transmitter asked me if I would stand for election as secretary of RAW for the following year. Nobody else ran for that office, so I was secretary during my second year—not an arduous job. I’m pretty sure I didn’t act as a presenter and probably wasn’t a programme engineer then either, mostly because I was living in a shared house in Kenilworth instead of on campus.

• What stands out as a favourite memory of your time there?

One presenter for whom I acted as programme engineer for stands out: Mel Hirst, an American on the business studies faculty. He had a huge collection—thousands of tracks—of original blues recordings on classic labels like Chess and Checkers. I was a fan of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac, but Mel’s encyclopaedic knowledge of early blues artists and their different styles was a real eye-opener for me.

The Shed was a primitive studio, at best. One Saturday evening, I hosted O’Hara’s Hour at the same time the Edgar Broughton Band was playing on campus. At that time, concerts were held on the top floor of Rootes Hall—the Arts Centre wasn’t open yet, although it was probably under construction. The band was so loud I could hear them inside our so-called “soundproof” studio in the Shed—at one point while a record was playing, I took off my headphones to listen to the band screaming “Out, Demons, Out”. It must have deafened everyone attending the concert.

• Can you remember anyone you met during your time in student radio?

Several first names come to mind: Phil, the programme director when I was secretary; Bob, the guy who built the transmitter, and Graham Lee, the station manager with whom I shared a house in my second year. Another presenter for whom I acted as programme engineer was Pad Hirst, who was at University of Birmingham but came over once a week to host his “Pad Hirst Disaster Programme”. Pad was an experienced host who altered his voice to create two fictional co-host characters and used sound effects to pretend he was broadcasting from unusual places, including a canal boat and an airplane.

• What were your top 3 tracks that you remember playing?

Hard to be sure at this distance in time, but I do recall playing Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum, House of the Rising Sun by The Animals and Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. Three classic songs I still enjoy.

• What message would you give to current students?

That’s a big question.

I would urge them to keep an open mind about what they do and the twists their lives may take. When attractive opportunities arise, don’t be afraid to take them.

I went into merchant banking almost by accident. I had switched from Engineering to Economics for my final year, which opened up finance as a potential career path—and I was lucky enough to have an entrée into the City.

Learn to roll with the punches when disaster strikes, too. On 9/11, I was on my way to work in a building across the street from the South Tower of New York’s World Trade Center. The first plane struck the North Tower just before I emerged from the subway at Fulton and Dey, only a block away. If I had taken my usual direct route, I would have been right underneath the South Tower when the second plane hit. I never got to my office that morning as evacuation was already in progress—but if I had not altered my route my second career as a professional writer would not have been sparked.

• About me

I went up to Warwick in 1970, when most of the buildings were still covered in the infamous white tiles. The total student population in my first year was 1,800 but the university was expanding by leaps and bounds: it was up to 3,000 in my third year. Campus was a giant building site the whole time I was there.

I signed up to study Engineering, but even at the outset I was attracted to the joint degree in Engineering and Economics offered at that time.

I preferred economics, which led me into finance. After graduation in 1973, I worked for Morgan Grenfell as an Investment Analyst for three years, then joined the corporate finance department to work on mergers, acquisitions and capital raising. The bank sent me to New York in 1980 to spend six months with Morgan Guaranty (a predecessor to JP Morgan Chase), which then owned 30% of Morgan Grenfell. While I was on secondment, they established a cross-border merger advisory team in New York, so I stayed on to be part of that.

I continued to work in finance, starting my own hedge fund before working with Deutsche Bank. 9/11 slowed the market though and I decided to try my hand at freelance writing. I found an editor of a start-up magazine in London willing to take a chance on someone who knew the financial markets well but lacked writing experience. That relationship laid the foundation for all my writing efforts, which began with feature articles for print magazines but evolved over time into online outlets, white papers for corporate clients and both writing and editorial work on two books.

After retirement my wife, Katherine, and I moved to Anacortes, where we live on the shore with a view of nearby islands and the Olympics in the distance. Katherine focuses on photography while I indulge my passion for birdwatching and hiking in the nearby North Cascades.