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“It’s like the Hotel California, you can check out but you can’t leave.” A reference to the classic Eagles track and also the words that Mark, the editor and boss of WHYS, wrote in my leaving card when I departed the programme in 2006. Unsurprisingly I’m back. It’s a special programme to work on and it’s great to be a full time fixture on the show again.

I’m something of a rarity at the ������̳, I’m a local. I grew up a couple of miles from Television Centre, the corporation’s London HQ. When I was a boy I used to play football in the park underneath the building’s main studios, never in a million years did I think I’d end up working here.

Like most people on WHYS I’ve worked on other World Service programmes and also at the ������̳’s domestic radio station 5Live. Aside from all the donuts in the office one of the best things about working here is the amount of travel. Meeting listeners in far flung cities is such a pleasure. My most memorable trips are Mexico City during the swine flu outbreak, Denmark to interview the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, the World Cup 2010 in Soweto and recently Sierra Leone.

A Few things you need to know about me….

---Outside of work I spend as much time as my ankles will stand playing football. I’m what you might call a good old fashioned centre back – big and brusing - most of the time I don’t play football, I just stop other people from playing it.

--I like a tune and spend a lot of time listening to new music and going to gigs. Best gig ever? Possibly Arctic Monkeys at Benicassim in Spain?

--I have a huge sweet tooth, particularly when tired. You’ll know when I’m flagging because I’ll be chomping my way though a bag of fizzy cola bottles.

---I enjoy photography. I took many of the pictures on our Flickr stream in Mexico, South Africa and Sierra Leone. It’s amazing what photoshop can do.

Thanks

Ben