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Coasting Home - Yazz

My love of radio started at a very young age where I would spend evenings listening to the radio and hound the DJ to give me a mention and play a song for me and my friends.  

Once I finished school I went straight to college to study radio - I was in my element and the icing on the cake was getting to do a week's work placement at my local radio Station. This turned into a weekend job making the tea, gathering carts for the adverts to play out, answering the phones and sometimes even dressing up as teddy bear mascots at roadshow! 

I did my very first radio show for my local radio station when I was 20 years old - it was the graveyard shift but I believe you have to start somewhere.  I was so happy to be earning my stripes and did a lot of voluntary work for a while before deciding to spread my wings.  I left that station in Fife and got myself a Saturday night dance show in Dundee.  While doing that show I put some feelers out to see if I could get work further afield and ended up covering for a station that broadcast to Paisley and Renfrewshire.  Whilst on that show a programme controller from Lanarkshire heard me and wanted to meet me - he ended up offering me my very first full time gig.  This meant leaving home for the first time and moving to the West of Scotland.  I worked there for a few years and from there I got my dream job.  I ended up doing the drive time show on a station I grew up listening to - this was 8 years after I started out there making the tea!  

I did that show for just over 3 years and then took myself to Aberdeen where I co-hosted a breakfast show - had an absolute whale of a time on that show. The early mornings were a killer but myself and my co-presenter did some really good stuff that led to us being nominated for an Arqiva Award...twice!  I was on this show for a few years and then it was a move across the water to a station in Belfast where I have been working with for the last 12 years.

For a few years I was also flying back and forth to Glasgow to present Heart weekends - loved this and was proud of myself for never missing a flight during that time!  Which is surprising because I'm a bomb scare when it comes to public transport. 

Finally a few years ago I got to fulfil a wee dream of mine to do instore radio so, when you're in doing your big shop in your local Co-op, you might hear my dulcet tones. 

And now I am on Coast Radio every Monday to Friday 3pm to 7pm!