Welcome to my news page. I’ll be updating it regularly. Well, quite regularly.
Recent news
I am getting better. It’s only been a year since my last update.
Time does go quickly though. For instance, I’ve now completed five years as a lecturer in Multimedia Sports Journalism at UCFB.
The job continues to be both demanding and rewarding. Money is tight in the higher education sector, which means no staff recruitment. In turn, that means lots of work for me and my small band of colleagues at UCFB.
Of course, the students deserve our best efforts, and the ones who move into the industry and flourish make all the hard work worthwhile.
I don’t deserve too much sympathy, because as well as my UCFB commitments, I’ve also taken on other work. I’ve just completed my first year running the “Introduction to Sports programming” module at the National Film and Television School. This was a step up from the workshops I’ve done there in the past, and I really enjoyed it. This was entirely due to the students – just 9 of them, but all smart and committed. I’m sure I learned more than they did.
In the first half of the academic year, I also delivered a module on “Inclusivity in Sport” at Bath Spa University. This meant weekly trips down to their beautiful campus, which may have been a bit too much at my age. Once again, the teaching was fun, but I’ll be sharing the workload with a colleague next year.
Just to prove what a glutton for punishment I am, I have also recently completed a teaching training course. After learning how to do the job the hard way, it felt like the right time to embrace the theory, so I enrolled on the PgCHPE course at the University of Staffordshire. Along with people from all sorts of professions, I was led through the course by the brilliant Duncan Hindmarch, and while it was a challenge to fit it in, I’m glad I did it.
Writing an academic essay certainly took me back, but my grades weren’t too bad! It won’t make any difference to my career prospects at my age, but I feel like it gives me some validation as a teacher, if nothing else. Sadly, I won’t be able to attend my graduation. It clashes with my son’s ceremony from the University of Sussex, and that’s the one that matters!
As for working in the industry, there’s no getting away from the fact that I’m now a lecturer who does the odd voiceover job. That’s mainly because there’s only the odd voiceover job to do these days.
As I write this, the World Cup has just started. I worked on three tournaments for HBS, the host broadcasters, providing scripts and voiceover on news reports, previews and features. As I understand it, all of that is being produced using just interview clips and match commentary this time.
I still do some work for IMG, on international and EFL highlights, and on TNT Sports’ Europa League and Europa Conference League coverage. Of course, I had to miss quite a few shifts last season because I was watching the mighty Crystal Palace march to European glory.
I’m still grateful when a VO job comes along, and I always enjoy it. I had a particularly fun few days back in February working on Winter Olympics highlights for Warner Bros. Discovery, and even after all these years, I’m still impressed by how quickly talented editors and producers can create a quality show, even when the event they’re covering is still going on.
Thanks for reading this update and see you again next year!