My Time with Dubai Radio

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How does an individual, I wrote in November 1974, with no broadcasting experience suddenly find himself confronted with a 'live' microphone -- knowing that everything he is about to say is going to be transmitted to what would appear at the time to be a critical audience who are eager to spot where he goes wrong? This is what I asked myself one March evening in 1972 when I was doing just that -- for the first time. The answer is simple -- I just happened to know the wrong person at the wrong time -- and since I had already persuaded some other poor unsuspecting individual into the same position some weeks previously, I felt well and truly "hoisted with my own petard."

I had been rehearsing for a Gilbert and Sullivan concert which was to be given a month later by the local singing group, the Dubai and Sharjah Singers -- a group which because of its special characteristics was to provide many of the amateur broadcasters for the newly opened English Service of Dubai Radio as it was originally called, broadcasting on 271 metres in the Medium Wave Band. The English Service had, incidentally, taken up where the British Forces Radio Sharjah had finished some months previously -- and one or two personnel from that service had moved across to the new Dubai Radio, later to be known as DBS -- or Dubai Broadcasting Service.

But back to that Gilbert and Sullivan rehearsal. A member of the singers happened also to be Personal Assistant to the Director of DBS and programme co-ordinator for the English Service. During the rehearsal, she suggested to me that I might have a voice suitable for broadcasting and would I be interested in coming along for an audition? Such an idea couldn't have been further from my mind, but after some persuasion, I agreed to appear in Studio 3 at the Broadcasting station at 6.25 the following evening for a voice test.

The next day, I arrived at the studio at the appointed time only to find that the duty announcer had not arrived to make the continuity announcement between programmes at 6.30. I was whisked in front of the microphone which was in the sound studio next door to the control room, I was told to put on the headphones and to wait for the red light which was beside the studio clock, to go on. Over the headphones, I could hear the programme being transmitted -- "Stop Messing About" -- rapidly drawing to a close as the clock came up to 6.30.

Fortunately, someone had had sufficient time to tell me what to say, and when the red light went on, I somewhat nervously started to talk. Fortunately, it can't have come over too badly, because that was the only audition I ever had, and it was the start of two very happy years of broadcasting with DBS.

My main task was to read the news four nights a week (and sometimes more) at 8.30pm. There is nothing in broadcasting like being thrown in at the deep end, the policy being, of course, that you either rapidly sink or you swim!

One night, while I was working in the Studio, preparing the English News, not long after I had joined Dubai Radio, I was asked to see the Director General of the Station.

"Mike", he said, "We have a problem; we are not sure about the English name being used for the Union of Arabian Emirates". [The Emirates had been formed only a few months earlier out of the Trucial States]

I asked him what the name was in Arabic? He said "It is something like the Emirates of the Arabs United". So I said, "Why not call it the United Arab Emirates?"

That night, we used the name on the News broadcast for the first time. And the name became official!

So, just occasionally, I make the claim that I have named a country! I can't prove it, though perhaps no one can deny it either!

As well as reading the news, I ran a series of musical quiz programmes which were recorded in front of a small, invited audience to give them some atmosphere. We recorded about 18 programmes in total, and had the greatest of fun putting them together. When I moved on to Bahrain in 1974, it seemed quite strange to hear my voice come across the ether on occasions when I was able to pick up Dubai Radio, 500 miles away, when they were repeating one of my programmes.