Yaas, finally, after weeks of teasing my very first holiday back to Adelaide, (remember all those useless numbers recorded on every page of my Collins Diary counting it down?) well it's finally arrived. We open this episode on the very last day before I jump on a plane and head home to my family and friends for 3 whole weeks. Obviously things don't go smoothly, there's two items I can't even find when it comes time to pack my bags, and one of them is JagMen related, so you can imagine how much teenage me lost his tiny, feeble, self obsessed mind. Naturally we need to start things off with my besties for this episode and it's a double shot with the return of TWO of my longest serving friends from my Karratha days, MJ (aka Mary the Babysitter who made her debut on Episode 7) and Natalie who sold me all of the things from JagMen clothes, to Stussy sunglasses and Swatch watches, while working behind the counter at Om Bazaar (first introduced in Episode 18). Together with me, we'll work through the meltdown before I depart for Adelaide, the 3 weeks of holidays where I filled out each and EVERY page of my diary by scrawling HOLIDAYS in capital letters, and discover what happened on arrival back in my home town. Once the holiday is over, it's back to Karratha to offer up my apologies for my lack of diary entries while I was away, then there’s the return to work, me not wanting to be on air but doing it anyway, such a trooper. I also do my holiday washing, get invited to a party, but no one tells me where it's actually being held, and it was Natalie that offered up the invite so we'll see what she has to say about that, plus there’s also horror of all horrors, more on air stuff ups, go figure. There's also a LOT of chat about how loose we were in the 80's and probably a very clear example of why most of us don't drink anymore too. So prepare for more teenage meh and ridiculousness, sprinkled with a lesson about alcohol abuse, which mostly just means we tell a bunch of horrendous stories about how messy we were, such fun, enjoy.

<p>Yaas, finally, after weeks of teasing my very first holiday back to Adelaide, (remember all those useless numbers recorded on every page of my Collins Diary counting it down?) well it's finally arrived. We open this episode on the very last day before I jump on a plane and head home to my family and friends for 3 whole weeks. Obviously things don't go smoothly, there's two items I can't even find when it comes time to pack my bags, and one of them is JagMen related, so you can imagine how much teenage me lost his tiny, feeble, self obsessed mind. Naturally we need to start things off with my besties for this episode and it's a double shot with the return of TWO of my longest serving friends from my Karratha days, MJ (aka Mary the Babysitter who made her debut on Episode 7) and Natalie who sold me all of the things from JagMen clothes, to Stussy sunglasses and Swatch watches, while working behind the counter at Om Bazaar (first introduced in Episode 18). Together with me, we'll work through the meltdown before I depart for Adelaide, the 3 weeks of holidays where I filled out each and EVERY page of my diary by scrawling HOLIDAYS in capital letters, and discover what happened on arrival back in my home town. Once the holiday is over, it's back to Karratha to offer up my apologies for my lack of diary entries while I was away, then there&rsquo;s the return to work, me not wanting to be on air but doing it anyway, such a trooper. I also do my holiday washing, get invited to a party, but no one tells me where it's actually being held, and it was Natalie that offered up the invite so we'll see what she has to say about that, plus there&rsquo;s also horror of all horrors, more on air stuff ups, go figure. There's also a LOT of chat about how loose we were in the 80's and probably a very clear example of why most of us don't drink anymore too. So prepare for more teenage meh and ridiculousness, sprinkled with a lesson about alcohol abuse, which mostly just means we tell a bunch of horrendous stories about how messy we were, such fun, enjoy.</p>

My name is Benjamin Wasley, you may remember me from my work as Giggling Ben on Hamish and Andy, or even Bad Boy Ben with the Vixen back in the 90's, but way before any of that, when I was 19, I moved from the seclusion of my bedroom at my parents house in Adelaide, all the way to the isolated Western Australian mining town of Karratha, to start work as a radio announcer for the very first time at a little radio station called 6KA. My Godmother gave me a diary to record every momentous occasion and now, 30+ years later, I'm going to find out how weird, arrogant, lame, self absorbed and closeted the teenage version of me was. To hold my hand while we revisit the end of the 80's and work our way through 365 days worth of embarrassing diary entries, I'll be joined by the people who've know me the longest, so we can have a giggle at the teenage version of me, and compare it with who I am now, and also revisit the world as it was at the end of the 80's, compared to how we're living right now.

Inside the Diary of a (Wannabe) Radio Announcer

Advertisement