Yvonne Lowe writes:

This will probably be the first words I say when you visit our Studio enquiring about membership of Southampton Hospital Broadcasting. If you've not been to the studios before, you will have a conducted tour with explanations of what you see (nothing too technical) and possibly be in a studio while a live show is broadcast, so you can see presenters and technical operators at work. Hopefully, we can then find a quiet place for me to explain all aspects of Hospital Broadcasting.

We are a charitable organisation, keeping ourselves on air by raising money in various ways throughout the year. Every member is expected to take part in as many fundraising events as possible and also to visit the wards at all the hospitals to collect requests from the patients for Requestline programmes, which go out every weeknight between 8.30 and 9.30.

Within the studio, you can get involved in presentation (that's the talking part), technical operating (twiddling the knobs. Putting on records CDs etc) and the library (filing and cataloguing the records). For these three activities there are training courses, one evening a week at the studio, with auditions at the end of presentation and technical courses.

Outside the studio, we take live broadcasts not only from the two main sport venues but also from The Guildhall and The Turner Sims Concert Hall. We often record programmes from Romsey or Beaulieu Abbey, St Mary's Church and quite a few other concert venues.

All these broadcasts are co-ordinated by our Outside Broadcasting team with commentaries given by our trained presenters. Newcomers with technical skills and presenters with some training will be most welcome to join these small but specialist team units, who work away from the studios, sending in their live programmes via ISDN.

Members pay a subscription each year to belong to Hospital Broadcasting and in return receive training in all aspects of radio, at a super studio as well as mixing with friendly people whose aim is to bring a little light relief and pleasure to those in hospital.

Steve Mullane writes:

Want To Be A Superstar? Sorry no can do. That's not why we are here. You can join us and even, at some future stage, be allowed to present a radio programme but we do not need any Superstars. We do, however need hospital visitors, librarians, fund raisers and technical operators. Still interested? OK. Once you have joined the Association you can apply to be on a presentation course, we need to ensure that you are 'safe' on air, ie, capable and trustworthy. Once broadcasting you are 'HBA'.

You will have to wait a while but eventually you will start the course and then your troubles really begin. The course is run by a short fat, Welsh guy with delusions of grandeur. Firstly, he gets his victims into a room and makes them scream and shout like banshees. Before they have time to settle down they are presented with a piece of paper known, somewhat disarmingly, as a cold read. This consists of five or six paragraphs of complete gobbledy-gook they are expected to read without stopping. As you can see it helps, on the presentation course and after on air, to be able to read, speak clearly and have the presence of mind not to panic. The course proper then starts, lasting six weeks. Each week a different aspect of presentation is highlighted.

Then comes the Audition in which you have to present a night's HBA programming to a suitable standard. Your judges are the listening panel. This is a group of kindly old broadcasters who, nearing the end of their careers, act as an audience for you. Make one mistake and they are down on you like wolves on the Russian Steppes. Even worse, your audition interviewee is the fat guy. He says, 'relax ... we all want you to pass'. You start and then, apparently moments later, that nice head of presentation is congratulating you on passing and you can look forward to years of entertaining the patients.

You are still not a 'Superstar', but you have become part of the team, an important part, but just one member of an Association dedicated to making the patients' stay in hospital just that little bit more pleasant. To all of those who have already been on the presentation course, whether or not you passed, and to all those poor unfortunates still to come, thank you for your time and interest. Without you HBA would be a poorer place ... and I am trying to lose weight.

Best of luck.