The Metro Radio group in Britain even makes its presenters sign an undertaking not to divulge disc jockey secrets learnt on the group’s training schemes.However, courtesy of Fairburn who picked it up from a former Metro trainee, I am now able to reveal exclusively one of those secrets.”You are 10 minutes from the end of a four-hour show,” Fairburn tells the class. To this end, today’s DJ will almost certainly be invited to spend valuable tanning time at seminars absorbing the accumulated wisdom of American masters of disc jockery.Dan O’Day, an American breakfast-show presenter generally regarded as the Pavarotti of the turntables, hosts weekend schools (next one: Heathrow Hilton, 8-9 July) at which topics such as “Positioning The Characters on Your Show” and “Telephone Rapport – What it is and How to Achieve It” are earnestly discussed. if she agrees to come home with me it’s not long before we are climbing the stairs to my king-size bed.”Times have changed, says Paul, and now you may need to learn your craft a little before ordering the king-size bed. “I have a special table and as I take a girl’s hand in mine, or look deep into her eyes, the lighting is lowered by an attentive waiter to cast a seductive glow…

We went into radio in the Seventies, when the role models were people like Tony Blackburn, who never felt the need to go to disc jockey school.A suntan, a fast car, and a king-size bed were all the disc jockey needed, according to Tony, whose modestly titled 1985 autobiography The Living Legend included this fascinating insight into the public service broadcaster’s leisure-time pursuits: “I invite all the ladies in my life to the same Italian restaurant in west London where the waiters understand how to create the mood of love,” writes Tony. “If you are an interesting person, you will be a more interesting disc jockey,” says Fairburn “So don’t just hang around radio stations. Get a life.” Which is a touch ironic, because if we had a life, we probably wouldn’t be sitting in Birmingham on a Wednesday afternoon taking notes.For some of us, of course, it may be a little late for all this. The people who are really going to hit you don’t tell you first.” This is not altogether encouraging, but interesting to know, and we dutifully take it down.We also note Fairburn’s tip number one: “Get A Life”. “Class, repeat after me: ‘It’s 21 big minutes before the hour of three o’clock’.”).But it is never too late to learn, and Fairburn passes on a vital hint for potential phone-in hosts: “Don’t worry if someone phones up and says they are going to thump you They won’t. About half are disc jockeys from small commercial stations, the rest being the type of young chap – they are invariably male – unfailingly, and a little unfairly, derided in the radio business as anoraks: single-minded enthusiasts who in any other branch of entertainment would probably be welcomed.Two of us grizzled veterans are clearly there for the satirical possibilities of disc jockey school (Lesson Five: The Time check.

I have been spinning platters for nearly 20 years, and this teach- in, a Radio Academy festival fringe event, is the closest I have come to anything resembling training.There are 25 of us at Heart FM in Birmingham to hear Jenny’s 10 top tips and those of Heart’s programme director Paul Fairburn. I’m always forgetting to switch mine off, although luckily as yet nobody has rung me while I’m on air.”
If Jenny were to practise the prescribed pre-programme denial (as my American friend would no doubt put it) and present her show from the edge of the seat, perhaps that mobile phone would start ringing a little more.But then the Americans, who can lay claim to having invented the dark art of disc jockeying, have always been more earnest about the business than us. Maybe urgent and exciting is not what the BBC is after, then, because Jenny Wilkes, afternoon presenter on the BBC’s station in Birmingham, positively insists on a trip to the loo before a broadcast It is number 10 in her “Ten Top Tips to Presenters”. Under the heading, “Remember The Little Things,” Jenny tells a class of young hopefuls: “It is easy in the rush before a show to forget the little things like going to the loo, or switching off your mobile phone.

Never go to the toilet before a programme, an American disc jockey once told me. His theory was that a full bladder lends the voice a certain understandable edginess and makes a show sound more urgent and exciting. Is Bailey’s own voice coarser and sometimes not up to the challenge of sustaining those high notes, or is this careful master of vocal portraiture merely detailing the slow slippage of a star he has actually flaunted his act in front of? It’s a pretty disturbing thought: that the fake and the authentic might be heading for the same middle territory, though from completely opposite directions.. But even this poses an interesting question, for the same might justly be said of the Streisand recordings. “Second Hand Rose” is a triumph that goes beyond impersonation into a rare state of being, as do “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” and “Happy Days Are Here Again”, perfectly realised frauds that wittily oblige the audience to imitate a Streisand audience – “We love you, Barbra!” “You’re terrific baby, the best!” “Bravo!”- though at considerably cheaper prices.It’s on tunes like “Somewhere” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye” that conviction is lacking (though not vibrato). The rule of thumb here, perhaps, is that the older the Streisand song, the more realistic the rendition. Which is what you’d expect from Jim Bailey, “musical illusionist” Illusionist, please, not drag queen.