Breaking into sports broadcasting: From local radio to 5 Live

This week, Mike Sewell joins us to discuss his 30-year career as a sports broadcaster. From manager interviews at Fakenham Racecourse to covering football matches for BBC Radio 5 Live, he offers his advice for those looking to get into the industry

Participants

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Prospects
• Mike Sewell - sports broadcaster

Transcript

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts Prospects. I'm your host, Emily Slade and in this episode I speak to Mike about being a sports commentator.

Mike Sewell: My name is Mike Sewell. I'm a sports - predominantly a sports broadcaster, voiceover artist and an occasional host, and I've been doing that for. Just over 30 years. 

Emily Slade: Amazing. So let's go right back to the beginning. What does your educational journey look like? 

Mike Sewell: Quite chequered, certainly after school. I went, I was at school in Norwich, a fairly straightforward education. I was pretty average at everything apart from woodwork and metalwork. I excelled in that and my grandfather was a draughtsman. His father owned a furniture shop in Norwich. And after a couple of years of learning how to do these things, I thought I want to be a cabinet maker. I want to be a furniture maker like my great grandfather. And so that was always my focus towards the last year or two at school. But I couldn't get an apprenticeship. Anywhere. So my next best option was to go to City College to do a City and Guilds in furniture making. That within four months, by Christmas, I realised it wasn't for me. It was too machine LED. So I stopped it. Thought. What am I gonna do next? And like, a lot of people ended up with a job at Norwich Union as it was, Aviva, as it is now, spent three years there, but all the time during that I realised I wanted to do something different and I'd always had a passion for football. I mean like a lot of boys, I used to run around the garden commentating but I never thought it was a job. I always thought it was for something else, you'd have to be born into it or know someone in high places. So I didn't really go along that route and I had the fortune of being able to go to America to study. But again, it only lasted a semester and I came back again, was tempted back at Norwich Union. So for 1/3 time I was thinking what am I going to do and then? It's quite interesting where we're sitting now is literally across the road from where I had probably the most important conversation I've ever had in my career. Friends of mine used to live in one of the flats here and we were chatting. This was the time that I was back after America. And he was saying, what do you what do you enjoy doing? I said, well, I love my football. I'd love to be a football commentator. I like. I enjoy radio. And he said, well, I work at hospital radio in Norwich. Why don't you try that and basically that conversation sparked me into action. I did hospital radio. I went back to college for 1/3 time, did a media course. They were very. There weren't many of them about. I think it was the first year actually that did it. And I said to myself, I'm going to finish this course, I'm going to, I'm going to finish it and then even during that course, I got the opportunity to do some stuff at Radio Norfolk and well, I don't wanna say the rest is history, but yeah, it got me. It got me going.

Emily Slade: Yeah. Amazing. So you got your foot in the door with BBC Radio Norfolk. Was that on a freelance capacity? 

Mike Sewell: What happened was I was at City College. I think it was the second year of my two year course and we had to have a placement for three weeks. And so I thought, well, I'm going to go to the radio and there was Radio Broadland at the time and Radio Norfolk. But Broadland I don't think did any sport. So I went to Norfolk, spoke to the editor who was a guy called Roger Ryan. And he chatted to me. He even made me do a voice test on the mic and said, can you just read this script for me? And I've never read a script other than the odd thing at hospital radio. I've never read read a proper sports bulletin. So I read it the best I could. And he said he said, oh, that's alright. It's quite good. He said anyway, come in Saturday we do a Saturday show. You can sit in the gallery. You can watch the show. Go out and see what we do. So I thought, oh, great. So this is voluntary, but this would have been ahead of doing the attachment. So he said, yeah, you can do the placement. So I went in on a Saturday and I walked in the door. And Radio Norfolk used to be a Norfolk tower in those days long corridor and I didn't even get to the end where he was and he said stop there, he said you're going to cover a match. Here's a phone. And in those days mobile phones were like concrete blocks with a with a handset on top. And he said you're going to cover faking them against Brightlingsea. The league and I went. I've never done a game in my life. I haven't done no preparation or anything. You'll be fine, he said. You sound alright. Here's the keys to the pool car. There's the thing and I got sent to Fakenham and I went and it was a cold February day. I hadn't planned for it, so I wasn't even dressed right and I literally got there and I'd never had them been more scared in my life of. Going live on the radio, hiding in corners so none of the people there could see me and I finished the day and I thought, oh, what a relief I've done. And he rang me and said, can you do a couple of interviews for us? And can you get the man of the match and the manager? The man of the match happened to be an ex-professional who was pretty well known at the time. Guy called Luther Blissett. And he was my first ever interview post-match and he was great, the manager was great. And I got through the day and then I worked from there and basically I did games every week and then I did the placement. But the interesting thing is, 20 years later, I was commenting on a game with a co-commentator who was Luther Blissett. The first guy I ever interviewed. And I told him the story. 

Emily Slade: That's like wonderful. Wow. So that is like a full baptism of fire. 

Mike Sewell: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. But it was the best thing that could have happened, yeah. 

Emily Slade: Of course. Do you think that kind of thing still happens today? 

Mike Sewell: Yeah, I think it probably does. I don't know if it would be quite like you're walking in a door to do something else and someone sends you out, but certainly in local radio you go in, you start doing local football and you gradually work your way up. That was always most of the people I worked with further down the line in network radio had come that route either through commercial. Author. The landscape is really different now because there was very the Internet was around, but it was in its infancy. There was no streaming online. It was literally radio TV with the mediums and TV. They didn't do it like Radio Norfolk did, for example. So the jobs were quite limited. And it wasn't, and I think most people didn't even know that was a job necessarily. You wouldn't think, oh, I'm going to become a. This is why I didn't do anything until I had the conversation across the road. And a lot of it comes down to luck. My timing was good. Mm-hmm. And, OK, I volunteered my time for a long time to get paid or anything, but that is that. That was always the way. And for me, I think now it's slightly different because you can go in via a different route because you can use social media to get in. You can use streaming. You can do it for free. You could go to. A local football club with a laptop. The microphone and justice offer to stream it for the club for nothing, but you get yourself out there. I always think that's a really good way, because in my day it was always like watch the telly, turn the volume down and commentate. Now you can go to the game. Any local club and as long as they're happy, you sit there and commentate on their team. That would be a good way for me. But I think now there are more inroads than there were then, but there wasn't as much competition then. Now the competition is fierce because people realise I can do this. As a job. 

Emily Slade: So tell me a bit about your time in local radio and then where you went next. 

Mike Sewell: Well, at Radio Norfolk, I mean it, I have to say it's still even 30s was the best place I've ever worked. I learned so much. I was obviously passionate about it and I wanted to learn and they were very good at allowing you to just go in the studios late at night when they've opted to the regions or the network, I'd sit there for an hour. Records cut tape in those days. Yeah. I used to splice tape and then you'd be playing in records. I'd be talking to nobody, but I'd be recording it, and then I'd go home and I'd listen to it. I think that was good. That wasn't so good. I'd listen to people in those days. If you're local to Norwich, you'll have heard of Roy Waller, Wally Webb, all those guys who were good DJ slash broadcasters. And I did everything at Radio Norfolk. I'd whenever anything came around. Can you cut some tape? Yeah. Can you drive this presenter to Kings Lynn to the office? Yep, no problem. Can you go and do a simil rec? I don't know if they do simil wrecks anymore. Bit too complicated to explain, but can you go and interview this? So I do news. I do, sport. I do phones, weather rep and reads off the travel everything in addition to eventually getting the spot. Puts mourning bulletins, which the guy, Roger Ryan, who I mentioned before, who said that he stepped away. Guy called Matthew Gudgeon stepped in, and I took Matthew Gudgeon's job, and then for probably two years I did early sports bulletins, but I knew at that I knew as I was going along as much as I loved being there. And I love my hometown. From city. I did have a pangs to work at network because I loved what Radio 5 Live did, they were Radio 2 when I was young, but Radio 5 Live in their sport and I thought I wanna work there eventually. And I knew my path that Radio Norfolk was quite was blocked because Matthew Gudgeon, great great broadcaster. He was going to stay a fair while. Roy Waller was the established commentator and a personality. So I thought really, if I do want to progress. I need to go elsewhere, otherwise I'd have to wait and be patient. And so after three years. Is. I applied for a job at BBC Northampton, so another local radio station and surprisingly got it. I didn't expect to get it, but I got it and it was good. Because. I became the editor and we had a great patch because we had a professional football club, 2 semi-pro clubs, a rugby club, professional rugby club, the cricket and Silverstone race track. So we had the British Grand Prix. So I had a lot higher profile stuff. In that region. And I did three years there and yeah, I'd worked my way. So I was learning all the time and I got a really by the time I left Freddie on Northampton in 1999, my understanding of everything from the bottom through to. Editor was really good and I and I've always had that. Feeling that if you can learn from the bottom when you get to the top, you know what it's like for those people coming through at the bottom. You have a really good understanding of what they're doing rather than be like, I don't know, short tempered or impatient and saying no, you need to do that. You think ohh. I know that takes a long time. I know that. Do you see what I mean? So it's a bit old fashioned I suppose in this current age, but it worked for me. 

Emily Slade: No, it's very important. And you mentioned like you love football, you've wanted to commentate on the football, but it also sounds like you had a grasp of the other sports as well. And was that things that you, you would just go out and learn the terminology and all of the different rules and things for sports that you weren't perhaps? Even as passionate about. But you knew you needed to get a grounding of almost anything that was going on. 

Mike Sewell: Yeah, I always liked motorsport motorbikes. Particularly and because we had the British Grand Prix, I had to be up on the Formula One, but at the time I think I was quite into my Formula One. It was sort of post Senna days, which were the, I think with the halcyon days. So it's Michael Schumacher and people like that. It was very high profile, that came quite naturally. But the one sport that didn't come naturally or two sports. And were cricket and rugby, and of course they were big in that patch. Luckily, I had two people that were doing it. The cricket guy was very well known and he was ex. I left. I left him to it. Rugby, my editor said to me. He said, look, he said, I like the way you commentate on football. He said. I wanna see, hear you commentate on the rugby and I went I don't know anything about rugby. I said, I can comment on someone running down the pitch and the ball being front, but technicals, I don't know. So one day it was a professional game. This was Northampton Saints against Newcastle they had the guy that was doing it sat next to me with prompt cards. 

Emily Slade: Wow. 

Mike Sewell: So I was fine with the action. But I didn't know when a penalty was being awarded or an offside, I mean, or the I don't even know the terminology now and he sat there, prompting me amazing. And it was incredibly stressful for me. And I was. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I just didn't wanna screw it up. And he said afterwards he said no, you did well and I said I can't do that again. I said just not now. I need to do something where I feel natural and I've grown up with football. I know the terminology. If I'd grown up with rugby, I'd be the other way around, I said. But it's not for me, so I didn't do another game. That's the only rugby game. Never did. But yeah, it, I mean, you know what it's like when you do interviews and you get sent to do a certain task, you have to, you have to basically learn about it in the space of half an hour before. You leave the office or on the way there in the car and you listen to something or you're running around your head. I mean, at Radio Norfolk, I had nine months on the news desk and they gave me the National Health Service figures for Norfolk. I can't believe they gave. Me. That job, and I just. I was bamboozled. I couldn't do it. And I thought I'd done it. And then the editor, Jill Bennett, said. Speak to the health correspondent at Look E just to make sure everything happened. And I spoke to him and I was completely off the mark, which you have to learn on the job. 

Emily Slade: And lean into your strength, but also be willing to pick up on anything that's going really. 

Mike Sewell: Yeah, but you like I say, in those early days at Radio Norfolk, you have to be prepared to learn because actually, when it comes down to it. Those horses for courses, things you do those means to an end really benefit you. That nine months on news, I'd say I didn't enjoy. Pretty much any of it apart from maybe one job yet what I did it made I edited quicker. I turned things around quicker. I packaged up quicker and you learn it and it was all useful for the future sports stuff. 

Emily Slade: Hmm. So what happened once you left local? 

Mike Sewell: When I left local at in those days, the end of the 90s, Five Live were offering and the BBC were offering a lot of attachments at network level, particularly at what was it's actually BBC Sport or there's it's a sub department, BBC Radio Sport, part of BBC Sport. Which provides support for Five Live, all the networks actually the radio side. And then there's TV Match of the Day and all the programmes look. And Focus and Final Score and all those things. But I was predominantly radio sports, so they had jobs, attachments going, I applied and I got well, I didn't. I actually went for a production. Unfair. And I did the interview. I did the board as they called them in the BBC. You know about boards, you're in front of a committee almost normally, two to three people in the norm, so it's quite intimidating, especially at network level. So you're coming from local, you need to be, you need to be on it. And I did the interview. I thought it went well and then I got a call back saying you did the interview well, we were really happy with it. But you wanna be a broadcaster. And in those days there was very much a split. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. 

Mike Sewell: Nowadays it's a bit more fluid, but in those days, especially at 5 Live local really was different. You do everything 5 Live, you're either broadcaster or you're a producer. Or editor. If you went up high, there were a few people that merged between the two, but not many. And he said you want to be a broadcaster and I said yeah, I wanna be a commentator. I wanna read bulletins. So I want to interview people and do features? He said. Well, this is a production job and if you do this job, you'll be a producer and you may get the odd chance, but it won't be. Killer. He said I we've got some broadcaster jobs coming up, attachments in a few months time. They said we're not gonna offer you this, but we'd like you to come forward and go for that. So I was thinking, oh, I'm being palmed off here. But true to his word, I did the interview and I obviously did a good enough interview and I got an attachment. So I was nine months there. It went really well. Again, I sort of having sort of stepped up a level. You're going back a bit, so you're doing all the the bulleted late night bulletins, early bulletins. But I worked on Five Live, Radio One, Radio Two, the Today programme on Radio, Four, on Radio Four World Service. And I mean, I was on the Chris Moyles Show and things and Steve Wright, I'd go in the studio with Steve Wright, Simon Mayo. These were things I was in London. I just think this is incredible and a great time, but then there was a little bit of a blip because after the nine months they had permanent jobs going and there were three permanent jobs and I was with three at people on attachment. And someone else would come in in the meantime, on an attachment, and that person got one of the permanent jobs ahead of me, which was a bit of a disappointment on my part. And they said to me. You're going to have to go back to local radio. So I fought my corner and I was very, very resistant to it. I said I'm not going back. Like one because I wasn't going to learn anything. I wasn't, and I thought if I go back, I'm out of sight, out of mind. So to the editor's credit, he said OK, I'll have a look around, see what we can do, and they basically got me an attachment on the World Service, which is in the same room. So I was still seeing the same people, but I worked on the World Service, which was again really good. Cause you're broadcasting through the night, doing lots of different things. You got 10s of millions of people listening to you in Africa. So I did nine months of that. And then at the end of that. I've got the permanent job I wanted, and then I spent. Well, in total I spent 12 1/2 years at BBC Radio Sport, which was primarily Radio 5 Live. 

Emily Slade: It's important, I think, to see how much you sort of have to you go up a rung of the ladder and then you have to stay on that floor for a bit and then you go up another rung and you stay on that floor for a bit and there might be times where you have to go back down again. But you can. Yeah, I think that's very important. 

Mike Sewell: And also because you don't. I don't. I didn't wanna get to a level where I there's a gap in the middle where I feel lost. You always have moments where you you think ohh gosh I've really flying by the seat of my pants. But in general terms I wanted to have that background all the way through and all those things that happened were all beneficial. In the long run, and I would always say. Like with anything, just take the chances. I'll be honest, I was. And I do have regrets where I was resistant to some things. Like they wanted me to do more television, like on screen, stuff with bulletins and that. And I resisted that because I was very much a radio person and I regret it now because with everything that there is I. I have done presentation but not as much HMM and I probably missed opportunities that I should have taken. But then again, I was lucky. I had a lot of opportunities. I never thought I'd get.

Emily Slade: So staying here for a bit. What advice would you give to people looking to enter into sports commentary? 

Mike Sewell: Commentary in particular. Yeah, I think like I said there, it's very hard just to walk straight into anything and I know and this is not. I'm not being critical of media courses or anything like that, because now they're the broadcast journalism. Of course, here at the EA is excellent. And they're brilliant. Grounding for what? I didn't really have that. They're great grounding it doesn't. It doesn't necessarily mean that if you spend three years there and you don't do. Anything as on the side and experience on so, you're gonna walk straight into a commentary job at Radio Norfolk or any local NBC station. A lot of those jobs now are tied up for years. It's very hard to break in. The best, I would always say the best advice is to. Go to a local football club with your laptop with a phone, have a streaming service if you can afford it, and just say to the club doesn't matter who they are. Even if one man a dog, watch them. Just say can I come and do your games and put it on the stream? Cause they'll say well actually my granddad can't come there. He'll listen to it on the, he might only get 10 people. But the main benefit is that you can do it and then you listen back and I would always say that I listened back religiously to what I did for years and years and years. I don't do it so much now, but I listened back and I was picking out what was, you know, you all you'll have habits, you might say the same thing, have the same phrases, you make notes. You can't do them all at once. That you work through those notes gradually and then. And every comment you do, I'm going to work on not humming too much. I'm going to work on not leaving dead air. I'm going to work on not saying the same phrase over and over again and then gradually you work up to a point where you can put a show, reel together and go to a local station, go to a I mean, there's all these other fan based things now and say look. I can commentate on there. Can I have an opportunity? EFL are doing lots of commentaries now and there are young guys coming in getting opportunities there. So it's. It's a good grounding and you can make your mistakes there. You wanna you wanna make your mistakes there where few fewer people are listening. That's the best option. And you're gonna make mistakes. And I made mistakes at network level. I made. I made Boo boos. Where you you get pulled into an office and say why did you do that? Why do this? So you're always gonna make those mistakes but make those basic mistakes. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. 

Mike Sewell: At the beginning, when very few people are listening, but it, especially with the competition that's out there now. You've gotta try and get yourself ahead. So do as much. Even if you're on a three-year broadcast journalism course at the UCLA or Lincoln or Derby or somewhere, still spend your spare time and I know it's difficult, but if you're single or you, you haven't got children or anything, use that time to get yourself ahead and put yourself in the shop window. 

Emily Slade: And you think there's still room for everyone in this industry? You don't have to have played football in the early 2000s to be a pundit. 

Mike Sewell: No, no. Well, I I always think that I think there's a defined line between a commentator and a pundit or an analyst or a co comms or a competitor a summariser, as they call them at BBC. Because commentary is an, is a bit of an art form. I don't wanna get too high in high falutin about it, but it is a bit of an art form. And it's not something you can just learn on the spot. There are people there who've got a natural talent for it, but they still have. To take it. Still takes years to get yourself to a certain level, and I'm trying to think I there was a there was a guy in local radio who used to be a professional footballer, but. If you look at all the professionals, ex-professionals who are in the high profile jobs and TV match the down. That how many of them are actually commentating, holding the commentary together? Because it's one thing to be the analyst and the code cons is another thing to actually hold it together. And know how it all works and I can't off the top of my head. I can't think of anyone in a high profile position. Who's been a high profile footballer? Other than the ones who are analysts and summarisers, because really they're used for their expert analysis, I've not played professionally. Mm-hmm. I know football, and I've played it, and I know the INS and the outs, but I've never been in a professional dressing room, I've never been coached by a professional. So their knowledge is really the add on to what you want to add on. I don't mean you. Know. What I mean complements what you do. You're providing the. You're the action man. And they're the experienced man, and the two come together. And when you get really good commentary teams, it can be a great, really good listen. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. Brilliant. So you've talked about being staff members for various companies, but you're now primarily freelance. Yeah. And was that a conscious choice? 

Mike Sewell: Yes and no. BBC Sport moved to Manchester, Salford back in 2011 and while I was still staff when they announced this, probably a couple of years earlier and everybody was thinking, Oh no, I've gotta move to Manchester, but luckily for me, I was working on the road doing matches and press conferences around London and the Midlands. And so I wasn't included in the move. So I was fortunate, so I stayed, but as soon as the move happened, the BBC then said we need to make some more redundancies and we're going to trim down the commentary team, which is only about 13 or 14 commentators. Ash reporters and I looked at it and thought, oh, that doesn't bode well for me because in that group were people like John Murray, who's now the BBC's chief football correspondent there with Conor McNamara, Alastair Bruce Ball, Darren Fletcher. These guys were all more established commentators and doing more commentary than me I was. I was doing commentary, but not to the same amount or level as they were getting the higher-profile games. And I looked at the list and then I I was a bit surreptitious, but I managed to get through to HR because I wanted to know what how many they never said how many spots were gonna be taken up, how many roles were gonna be lost. So I managed to find out through HR in a roundabout way that it was gonna be four, probably four, possibly five. Have a group of 14 so. What's that? That's. That's not very good odds when you're up against people like John Murray. That and I looked at it and I almost did it like a Premier League table. I listed out subjectively. I listed out who I think would stay and I was in the bottom four so I almost knew what was coming. So I thought, do I wait? Do I let them? Do I let them decide with the risk, with the possibility of not going, or do as I, as I think having read the situation? Make my own decision. So I am denied for weeks and weeks and I thought and I wasn't happy at the time because things have changed a bit and I wasn't getting used as much and doing quite the same because I'd done some really good stuff and I wasn't quite getting as much as that. So that also gave me an inclination that maybe my time is coming to an end. So I made the call myself and I thought I'm going to take voluntary and be in control of the situation so. I went in, made it easy for them to redundancy, but. I was incredibly fortunate that. As soon as I left, I left at the end of the - I left at the end of the 2011/12 season. Did a game on the last day at Norwich. Left, you can't work for the BBC for three months. After a grace period, because you've got taken redundancy, you can't work as a freelancer, but I managed to get a job with UEFA. I did the London Olympics and I did the Paralympics. As a freelancer, I had a brilliant summer and then I picked up some new stuff. 5 Live took me back. And until I say the last couple of years didn't really look back and it, I was very fortunate, timing is timing is key with a lot of things as as good as you might be, as reliable as you might be, as hard working as you might be. The timing makes a massive difference. I think of the number of times I've picked up things. Can I tell you it's just one particular story? Yeah. When I went, I made the decision to go freelance. And there's a friend of mine, family friend of mine. Not close friend, but someone I know who's a who, who has been. I don't think she is now. She might be now, but she's a production manager. Quite well respected, worked to IMG and a few other companies and she was at UEFA. And over the years when we bumped into each other at church gatherings or wherever family things she'd always say ohh it has it gone at the and I said it's OK and then I got to the last two or three years of the BBC where I said I wasn't overly happy and I remember calling her and saying look, I'm thinking I might. This was before the redundancies. I might go freelance. I said it's a big call because obviously I've got a regular job and I'm still doing a reasonable amount of stuff, she said. Well, obviously she was at. UEFA. European football's governing body, she said. Well, when you do get in touch, she said, let me know because obviously I know people and all this. So I said I will. And I made the decision and she was the first person I called when I made the decision, I called her. And talk about timing. I rang her and she said she said your call could not have been better time. She said I've just had a meeting, just finished a meeting with my boss. We are going to this was for the 2012 Euros in Poland. We're going to do a an audio. And provide audio. For broadcasters around Europe and we need someone to look after that hub, just a team of three people, you you be in that team, it won't. It's not a broadcast job as a production job. Do you think you could do it? I went. Yeah, she said. You'll get training on it. Let me talk to my boss and I'll get back to you within the hour she came back, she said you got the job. Six weeks in Poland, all expenses paid, per diems. Meal vouchers are good. Fee. He'd heard of me because he listened to Five Live. So and obviously she vouched for me, saying that she's known me. For. Years and he, he I didn't even speak to him. He gave me the job and is, I mean that that's just incredible fate, but it does prove that timing can make all the difference. Some. There's been things I've missed along the years that I don't know of. And and I've tried to get things. I've tried to get there. There was one particular avenue I wanted to go down and it never worked. Mm-hmm. And other people that I know, similar position managed, I'd say there are four of them, and it all paid off for all of. Them and they. All managed, but it's just timing, a lot of it's timing and you. 

Emily Slade: Yeah.

Mike Sewell: Try not to be too hard on yourself if things don't come off, it's difficult because you always think it's must be me. They don't like me, but a lot of it is like it just doesn't fit at that moment. 

Emily Slade: Yeah, absolutely. Any myths that you'd like to debunk? 

Mike Sewell: Any myths? Ohh what I what I would say is. And I'm. I'm not. I'm not saying I have had some very fortunate encounters with well known people, and I've been in positions I can think of loads of positions where I've been in a moment like Formula One I did for a season. I was the pit lane reporter and it was the first season that Fernando Alonso won the world title and I just so happened to be right in front of his car as he pulled in, having won the championship, all his crew came out and I was in the crew with Alonso 15 feet from me standing up celebrating the title. You just find yourself in these moments, pitch side at FA Cup Finals. On the pitch at FA Cup finals with Jose Mourinho or someone like that. Those are the glamorous things, but you don't get those without doing the hard yards. Initially, the voluntary stuff at the beginning, learning everything, the cold days at Fakenham, the falls, the pitfalls, the late nights at Radio Norfolk, splicing tape just to learn how. To do it. You don't walk into that, you don't walk on the Wembley pitch, you don't walk onto the track at Silverstone and do that. So there are it it. It can be great and I've been incredibly lucky to do that. But I know that I wouldn't have been had that opportunity if I hadn't done the other stuff before and hadn't had the luck and the timing. So many things come into it. All I'd say is if you're starting out in this industry. Some of the most important things, clearly you work hard if you don't work hard in this industry, you won't get very far anyway because people won't use you. You work hard. You also have to be an affable person. You need to be able to get on with people, because if again, if you don't get on with people, if you're an annoying person, I mean, there are people in the industry, but. You have to be pretty good at your job. If you're not easy to work with, so being easy to work with reliability is massive. At the beginning. Availability when you get down the line, you can turn stuff down. You can because you want to be taking everything because a lot of people that book you. Our production people. And they have a lot of work to do. They've gotta fill crews. They've gotta fill rotors. And I'm not saying they just put anyone in, but if you're someone says, yeah, I'll do that. And you do it well. They'll come back to you the next time, entitled. And. And. Arrogance, not confidence. Arrogance are probably the worst things you could come in with because you won't get very far and ohh and the only other thing to say is that like I mentioned when I started out the jobs were fewer. It wasn't considered a normal job and most people weren't really aware of it as a normal job. But the competition wasn't really there. The the the opportunities weren't there either, but so it was a bit of luck. Now the opportunities are vast and you can even start on your own this this sort of podcasting and streaming you can do that yourself because of technology which we didn't have back then, but the competition to get to that higher level of like commentary to be on the networks. He is so, so fierce. Even now with my experience, I struggle to get on certain things. I don't. I certainly don't walk in. To doing commentary jobs for people. I don't get responses from people. That's how I just want to be honest about it. I write to people. I contact people I don't even get an acknowledgement and I've got 30 years of experience and I've been a network and I'm not saying I should be given a job. All I'm saying is that's how hard it can be. So I can't imagine how hard it is at the bottom. And you're coming in out of uni, having done, maybe done some of your own stuff. You've gotta be you've gotta be. I think the if you've got the passion, you'll keep doing it, you'll run out of steam. If you're not passionate about it. If you wanna do it for the money, you're probably not you. I wouldn't bother because it takes a while to. Get. To that level and you have to be in a certain band to be able to earn a good living out of it, because the majority of people probably earn a reasonable living. Or a part time or country. It's a hard graft. And it's layers of working your way up. It's not, it's not an overnight sense that there are people, I guess on YouTube and that who become overnight sensations, but those are few and far between, especially with commentary. It's not something you can just go and pick up. And I always it always makes me laugh. I've had people in the past saying you're a football commentator, your microphones show up coming on the game and I went. If only you knew. You spend years getting to that level and even now we most commentators will spend anything. From half a day, a minimum to a day and a half, two days preparing for a commentary. If they're doing something high profile, there's a lot of preparation involved, but in terms of getting into the industry, you've gotta you gotta take the hits you've got and try not to take it personally. And the the the last thing I'll say subjective nature of it. If you're going to be a broadcaster, I think if you're a production side, it's less. It's less of a problem, but subjectively, if you're an on air voice or on screen person, you have to remember that we've all got different tastes. Your favourite broadcaster might be someone that I don't rate my favourite broadcaster be someone you don't rate, same with commentators and I think. All the commentators at those higher levels, they're all good commentators, but it's a taste thing, and if you've got an editor who makes a decision, they have the key. And that's what's can one be frustrating? And it can get to you, but ultimately there's nothing you can do about it. So that's something to bear in mind, especially when you're starting out, don't be deflated or demoralised by that, because ultimately someone out there, if you if you're good and you have to. Be good at it. Someone out there will like what you do and you'll get there, but it's a it's it could be a long haul. It could be a lot. Paul, good luck. 

Emily Slade: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Mike Sewell: No, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. 

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Mike for their time. For more information on becoming a broadcaster, head to Prospects.ac.uk. For a full-length video version of this episode, check out our YouTube channel @future you pod. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you as always for listening and good luck on your journey to future you.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

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