Year 2001 – Just along the coast, at Chichester in West Sussex, Spirit FM was looking for a full time Breakfast presenter, as they’d not had a permanent fixture on that shift for some time, so, after submitting a demo and then being chosen from among 30 or so applicants, our Paul landed the role as Breakfast show host at Spirit FM and took the audience to new heights at that time of the day. He kind of ended up co-hosting the show initially with Sam Twomey, travel lady and good friend. Paul and Sam took part in a 10K Road Race in London, in aid of 4Sight, a charity for the blind, based in Bognor Regis. Later, Caroline Kingsmill joined Paul, not only co-hosting the show, but also joining him on the odd outside broadcast or three!
Year 2004 – Itchy feet and a change of management at Spirit FM lead Paul to decide to move up North, this time to Warrington, in Cheshire. He started doing freelance swing shifts for Wire FM and for Wish Fm in Wigan. 
Later, Paul started the weekend breakfast shows at Wire whilst holding down a day job in a call centre. He then heard of a sales exec vacancy at Wire, applied and got the job. He stayed in the role for a year and had great success, in fact coming top in the whole Wireless Group at one stage, bringing in the most amount of new clients to the station. Paul then moved to Manchester in late 2005, to work for Messaging Warehouse (UK) Limited , a supplier of telephone on-hold solutions.
June 2006 until June 2009, radio beckoned once again and Paul heard of a sales role at Dee 106.3 in Chester, applied for it and got an immediate interview. Paul became Senior Sales Consultant at Dee and ran Love Audio in his spare time. Paul also DJed at a number of bars in the area including Oddfellows, Bar Lounge, Bollicini, Got Wine, Room, Fiesta Havana, Meze, and many others. Also venues like Residence in Nantwich and Congleton, Wrenbury Hall, The Coach House in Blakemere and many many parties at hotels and venues across the North West.
This is a picture of Paul with Neil Fagan, Communications Manager for Urenco UK Limited, Capenhurst, one of Paul’s clients whilst at Dee 106.3 in Chester.
Paul also comperes for Xuberance Events, such gems as the Gardening Show, which is happening on the 5th and 6th of June 2010, The Motorbike Show, which is on 7th and 8th August 2010 and the Llangollen Food & Drink Festival, which is on 16th and 17th October 2010, all at the Royal International Pavilion in Llangollen.
Paul continues to provide voice work for On Hold Communications on a freelance basis, providing the voice for their Video Business Cards and telephony services. Here’s Paul in action as voice over for their Video Business Card demo.
Paul also provides regular Telephone On Hold voice overs for SOH Express of Warrington and London. The latest of which are a series of announcements for Hoyles and also the on-hold voice of The Holiday Inn, Kensington, London and Belvoir Lettings of Wigan, to name but two! Paul also is the voice of choice of Carlisle United and indeed provides almost weekly updates to their Telephone on-hold production.
The day job from March 2010 to February 2012 came about whilst Paul was unemployed for a short time. Prescap, Preston’s community arts project, were on the lookout for a Business Development Manager. Paul applied for the role, filled in all the paperwork and thought no more about it. Then, out of the blue, one cold February morning, got the email he was waiting for, inviting him up to Preston for an interview. No ordinary interview though; Paul had to present to three interviewers as if they were clients!
“I decided to use a fictitious care agency as the client and got my friend Danny to voice up a couple of example commercials for me. All went well at the interview/pitch until it came to playing the audio…it would not play! No matter though, as a true professional, I simply said I’d play it at the end on a separate laptop.”
It must have been a good meeting because the very next day, Paul got the call saying he’d been successful and that he’d got the job. The role as Business Development Manager for Prescap is to source new revenue streams for its community radio station, Preston FM as well as five others across Lancashire.
February 2012 update: -
Due to funding constraints, the initial 3 year role soon became a two year role at Prescap and as such, Paul began searching for alternative forms of employment. After a number of interviews in the commercial radio sector, an opportunity arose within the UKRD Group, a company awarded the Sunday Times Best Place To Work award in 2011. Anyway, the long and short of it, is that Paul leaves Prescap on February 10th 2012 and will begin as Account Manager at The Bee/2BR based in Clayton-le-Moors near Accrington, on February 13th 2012. The role will be to introduce new businesses to the concept of advertising and sponsorship on commercial radio, as well as integrating their online offer with any promotions booked. Paul is looking forward to the challenge and will update this site during the next few months!
