At the Front Line with Colourful Radio

With Presenter Pascoe Sawyers and Cllr Emma Hoddinott

I had a brilliant time on Monday night, taking part in Colourful Radio’s ‘Front Line’ show, which aims to raise the profile of local government and the work of councillors.

Pascoe Sawyers (pictured above sitting, with myself and Councillor Emma Hoddinott from Beverley in West Yorkshire), Director of the Leadership Academy for the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) for local government (www.idea.gov.uk) is the presenter of the Front Line programme, which has now been running for the past seven weeks, going out on Colourful Radio at 8pm every Monday.

In the Colourful Radio studio

The programme is a kind of ‘Desert Island Discs’. As well as talking to me about my work as a councillor, Pascoe played three of my favourite tunes: a dance/ garage mix of Jill Scott’s ‘Golden‘, an extract from Dvorak’s ‘New World Symphony‘ and the uplifting gospel tune ‘I believe‘ by Sounds of Blackness.

The programme also heard from Mithran Samuel (pictured above on my right), who’s the Chief Reporter of ‘Community Care’ magazine. Mithran shared his views on the big local government stories of the week from his journalistic perspective.

Pascoe interviews Cllr Emma Hoddinott

The highlight of the show was meeting and hearing from Cllr Emma Hoddinott (pictured above right), who is a parish councillor in Beverley, West Yorkshire.

Emma is only 25 but has been a Councillor for four years(!!) and has already stood as a parliamentary candidate at the last general election. Emma is seriously impressive and it was really great to meet another young councillor who feels just as passionately about her role as I do. I now also have a much better idea what parish councillors actually do! 🙂

Pascoe and Joe at the decks

A huge well done to Pascoe for coming up with the idea of the ‘Front Line’ show. It will really help to demistify and humanise the work of councils and councillors.

Indeed, Pascoe’s bosses at IDeA are so impressed with how the last seven weeks have gone, they have pledged to continue sponsoring another series of ‘Front Line’ when the current series comes to an end in five weeks’ time.

To listen to Monday night’s programme in full click here (the programme will start automatically).
or to listen to an extract from the full interview go to www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=5541594

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *