It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career

Ok, when I was still at uni (before I spectacularly dropped out in the final year of my degree), I was somewhat interested in a career in radio. I ended up not following through with it, due to the fact that I would probably end up a faceless disk jockey in a local commercial station, introducing awful tune after awful tune and probably ultimately hanging myself in a supply closet.

However, I did come very close to doing at least some work at Triple J, which would probably have been pretty excellent. Here is how it happened:

I was at a local bar one night when I spotted a particularly well known personality, who had his own show on 'The J's' at the time. I will give him the code name of 'Chris Taylor from the Chaser'. Admittedly, this is probably the least subtle of my code names so far, being his actual name, but who doesn't love a good name drop.

It was extremely unusual that we would get any even remotely famous people in the pub known as 'The Cambo', famous for its Wednesday night drink specials and propensity towards unbearable screamo bands. After a while of figuring out how I was going to deal with this situation, I approached him.

"Hey, I love your show," I started.

"Thanks very much," he replied, flashing me a grin.

"I'm actually doing some radio journalism courses at uni," I put forward, "I'd love if you could give me some pointers."

So, we started talking. He told me that he could probably get me work experience at Triple J, explaining that they get a lot of applications but that he would make sure to "bump mine through" (to this day I am not sure if he was doing an innuendo. I am absurdly bad at picking up on these things). To make sure this happened, he gave me his home phone number, and later, his mobile number.

I did actually end up speaking to him on the phone a few times, but, sadly, I lost the phone that had his number in it. This was a few years ago, and I never ended up doing that work experience. I am convinced that Scott 'Dools' Dooley has my career, that confusingly attractive bastard*.

I have been considering doing my own show on local community radio, but that depends pretty heavily on me getting my shit together and actually doing something that might benefit my career. We will see what eventuates, I guess.

-Smackie Onassis

*Through questionable science, I have figured out that there are about four categories of people that I sort of automatically develop a crush on. I am not sure if I find Dools attractive because he is actually attractive or because he fits into both the "kinda geeky indie boy" category and the "comedian" category. It's immensely confusing.