Hard hats on, hi-vis zipped up,” comes the portentous announcement. “The builders’ station on mornings means… the Bald Builders!” It’s 6.06 am and Fix Radio is kicking off the day with star presenters Brad and Sam, famous in the construction trade as the Bald Builders. Two men with shiny heads, beards and intricate arm tattoos, who deliver three hours of on-air geezerish good cheer to a comm-unity that needs it more than you might think.
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.
Fix Radio was launched in 2017 in the London area by then 23-year-old Louis Timpany who, after leaving Leeds University, went to work on construction sites and noticed a gap in the market. Builders – as you’ll know if your neighbours are having a dormer window put in right now – listen to the radio all day. But where was the station directed at them, the station where companies that sell things to builders could access their market directly?
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.
Not quite what you imagined? Nor me, but, as Brad makes clear when we speak, pretty much everything I thought I knew about builders is out of date. “That whole stereotypical thing of builders going to the caff every morning for eggs, bacon, sausage, chips and beans and reading The Sun, that’s not the industry any more,” he says. “I’ve seen plasterers eating strawberries during the day.” And they don’t wolf-whistle any more? “No! That went before the fry-ups.”
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.
“It’s a prevalent issue affecting our community,” Timpany says. “This is a heavily macho male culture, and men in general are not great at talking about their feelings. Also, much of the construction industry is made up of thousands of small businesses. So, you’ve often got somebody who is responsible for their business and for the livelihood of their family.”
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.”
Once Brad and Sam have left for a day on muddy sites, Mikey Faulkner introduces At Work Anthems, a mid-morning show that delivers on its promise, supplying the requisite Fleetwood Mac and Depeche Mode for successfully thwacking nails. Following Mikey, from 12 to 3pm, it’s the station’s flag carrier when it comes to the serious stuff, The Clive Holland Show. The Midlands presenter and longtime building broadcaster takes on the major issues that affect the trade and, by extension, the country. The Government has committed to building 1.5 million new homes in England in this parliament. Moreover, there is a shortage of builders.
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.”
Fix Radio does have a predominately masculine tone but it also broadcasts the excellent podcast Tradeswomen Together, presented by Hattie Hasan and Steph Leese, “For women in construction. By women in construction”.
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.
I ask Timpany if Fix can keep on growing and he replies, “There are three million tradespeople out there.” Plenty more hi-vis to zip.
Fix Radio is available on DAB and at fixradio.com
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