I spent nigh on 20 years in the basements of hospitals. Usually located between ‘environmental services’ and the morgue, there is no less attractive location from where to present amateur radio shows. It’s a tough gig, especially when your welcoming committee is a backlog of cold storage bound body bags and your target listener is inevitably geriatric and stone deaf.

I once ran a competition for 10 weeks without a sniff of a caller. Understandably, if hospital bound, your priority isn’t calling up the boys in the bowels to win TV’s ‘The Queen’ DVD. The clues included ‘Her name is Elizabeth’ and ‘she lives in Buckingham Palace’; what is her name? I ended up giving the prize away to a lad in the children's ward who, to my shame, I may have inadvisably led to believe had won a PlayStation game.

The teenage dream was always to go on and present a breakfast show. So obsessed was I, I once, in desperation to be noticed, interviewed Ralph McTell. The segment was strained as he was sick of wannabees taking him by the hand and lead questioning him through the Streets of London.

Beyond the soundbites of ‘doing it for the patients’, jocks either use hospital radio as an aspirational stepping stone or, if long-term married, to get out of the house for a few hours to listen to the White Album with impunity. True volunteers are selfless whereas spinning Lynrd Skynyrd’s 12 inch is not akin to holding the hand of a terminally ill patient or talking down a suicidal stranger on the other end of the telephone. Despite badly edited demos and the worst jingle you have ever heard, my career peaked after being chided by Ann Widdecombe when enquiring as to her love life, and being sworn at by the massive spoon bender Uri Geller.

It is difficult to go from the basement to ownership of a national radio breakfast show. One person that has managed the transition, and is now arguably the morning jock in the business, is Christian O’Connell of Absolute Radio. To find a happy medium that appeals to differentiated target groups day in, day out is the airtime holy grail. O'Connell offers such product. The competitors, such as ‘Radio X’, have Chris Moyles who is as irritating as athlete’s foot. Radio 2 has Chris Evans who grates and shouts in equal measure, Grimshaw is a Radio 1 airwaves shiver looking for a spine to run down. In addition, his nickname of ‘Grimmers’ is neither aesthetic or endearing and sounds like a pseudonym for a pre-pubescent home based hacker.

I identify with O'Connell as he also cut his radio teeth in the basement. To be noticed he played ‘Elsie’ a heartbeat monitor which then flat lined. A similar youthful display of affliction I undertook, to my embarrassment, after dedicating ‘Breathe’ by the Prodigy to a stricken minor celebrity. The only difference being that no one heard my youthful stupidity whereas O’ Connell got sacked. To not be noticed is one thing. To shock jock whilst no one is bothering to listen is as soul destroying as being given the Spanish Archer.

I guess the test of a good presenter is their ability to not panic when things go wrong. Ant and Dec have it, Steve Wright has it, as has O’Connell. With his stooge Richie and small band of studio minions, mishaps occur frequently. Often laughed off, they are always acknowledged and have become an integral part of the show. It’s not things going awry that maketh a man, but how you vanquish the misfortune.

To my detriment, in protest at the output after he played ‘Human’ by The Killers, I recently made the mistake of temporarily switching to Tragic FM. It lasted for one morning before I started to come over all twee and began advocating the merits of Celine Dion as a force for musical good. Thankfully I have gotten rid of the long face and am again looking forward to another drive to work, mishaps, and all. As for my jingle? It doesn’t get much worse and is one reason why I never made it past the basement starting line as I implored the infirm to ‘Climb the musical trellis, with the masterful sounds of Brett Ellis’.