Poor old builders, so often the butt of jokes. They have builders’ bums and builders’ tea to put up with but also, more worryingly, tool theft, unpaid bills and, increasingly, mental health issues. No wonder they’ve formed a broadcasting huddle and now have their own station.
Eight years on, Fix Radio broadcasts nationally and delivers ultra-focused advertising slots for builders’ merchant chains and van manufacturers, reaching more than 800,000 listeners a week. It’s a small but burgeoning broadcasting phenomenon and to find out more, I’ve joined Fix’s community of listeners, many of whom, if their messages to the station are to be believed, have names like Guys and Dolls characters. I’m thinking, particularly, of Mickey the Squeak, doing “second fix joinery” in Yorkshire. Perhaps Mickey was in the crowd at this year’s inaugural FixFest. The one-day music festival in West Sussex had the expected commercial linkups with power tool makers and trade suppliers but also offered vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free food stalls for hungry plumbers.
If builders have moved with the times they have also, according to Louis Timpany, come under far greater financial and psychological stress. Some of the FixFest proceeds went to the Fix Radio Foundation, a charity that assists tradespeople in distress, and there was a set-aside area at the festival offering help with mental health issues.
The Bald Builders are also family (Brad, 40, and Sam, 30, are brothers-in-law). Shouting out to chippies scraping frost off windscreens while most of us have yet to poke a tentative toe from under the duvet, the pair broadcast from a studio they made themselves. If they sound like builders, it’s because they are. As soon as the breakfast show finishes, they’ll be off to work, “doing up” houses. “We’re cut from the same cloth as our listeners,” Brad tells me. “We understand how hard it is when it’s cold and raining, because we’ve got the same job digging footings and foundations.”
On Holland’s show today they are covering the fraught subject of whether this shortfall means there need to be more on-site female “tradies”, Fix Radio argot for tradespeople. Not every male caller has been enthusiastic and a frustrated Mike the Electrician messages from Manchester: “The reason more women don’t get into our industry is because of some of the things men who have called in have been saying.”
During my day with Fix, meteorological conditions have been a regular source of comment. The elements have been too dry and then too wet. Render cracks, cement won’t set. Wood heats up and warps, then wood is soaked by rain and won’t cut. “These are the joys,” as one caller puts it, “of working in the UK weather.” Listening to talk of the newly chilly mornings, of plugging heatable gilets into car USB sockets, I realise this is a station that has a palpable bond with its listeners.
Fix Radio is available on DAB and at fixradio.com
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