Live Performance on BBC Radio Merseyside with Billy Butler

It’s here; the day is upon, the final county, our home county and where it all began. Last but certainly not least Merseyside and our adventure has brought us full circle and into the city of Liverpool. We will look back with great memories of this Sing For Your Supper challenge and a hint of sadness that the adventure is over, though we will take what we have learnt in-particular the insight into Trussell Trust Food Banks and the experience along the way, rest assured as up and down the country volunteers are working hard to provide front line services to those in need, that we can be certain of.  The day before was the big build up to the final event and this was in the form of a radio live show/interview with the one and only Billy Butler (it’s a Lemon, no it’s a plum) on BBC Radio Merseyside. We had been pencilled in at 2.30pm. Arriving promptly we sat and waited in the reception area, whilst waiting we saw the new Bishop of Liverpool who was being ushered in for a pre recorded interview, the Bishop speaks passionately with regards to the ongoing need for Food banks and should we manage to grab him we may of had common ground to strike up a conversation, sadly he was taken away for the interview before we could get to him…I’ll get you Bishop….

Some moments later we had been called in ourselves and sat down in the studio to meet Billy. The last time we had been on the show was at the beginning of the tour in April and much had happened since. Billy is a fantastic interviewer and has a very natural way of talking to guests, he has a great sense of humour and his show is very popular with the people of Merseyside. We chatted about the tour, the divide between rich and poor, capitalism, politicians and of course our recent “Sing for your Supper” busking challenge. Playing two live songs for the show, an original song about life on the road “Silly Things” which is now available on Itunes and since we are less than a week off Christmas we performed a Christmas song . We performed our own version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” which is one of our all time favourites, with fantastic lyrics. Both songs went down well went down well, apart from a dodgy ending on the Christmas song brought about by a case of nervousness and last minute changes to the song (big mistake and never again)

Strange things radio shows, you can play to a big audience and be fine but an intimate show can really test you and you need to be well rehearsed and confident with your selected pieces. Luckily it was not too noticeable but the finely tuned ears of Billy meant he did indeed notice and he stated “need to work on that ending” ooops. After the show we posed for a quick picture with Billy in his makeshift Christmas frame and his producer helped us out. Thanks for having us Billy and team it was a great honour to be a part of the show and you really did help us to promote the Trussell Trust food banks. We are looking forward to our final busk of the tour tomorrow in Liverpool and are hoping that the sun will be shining on us.

Leave a comment