Hi guys,

Thanks for keeping in touch with me. This is what is happening in my life.

I'm still working with SIREN FM (Community radio station) on a voluntary basis broadcasting to the city of Lincoln. I am currently presenting a programme at the start and end of each week (Monday and Friday 11-1). I will be working with Lincoln University Languages Department in a project called Radio Lingua going out to schools with foreign students and looking forward to it very much. I'm working with four schools in the Lincoln area providing a recording and editing facility so that they can archive activities within their schools. After 21 years broadcasting to the county I am lucky to have lots of contacts who I continue speaking to and are only too willing to help me with any projects that I can come up with. For that I am so grateful. I have continued to talk to groups all over Lincolnshire about 30 years in radio and my previous life as a submariner. If you would like me to come along to your group, then please email me.

I have received many emails over the last year asking what I have been up to. I have always been happy to respond and until recently have kept a data base of everyone who contacted me. Unfortunately, in changing computers I seem to have lost the majority of my contacts so I am in the process of trying to gather it together again by sifting through hundreds of emails. If you would like to be added again, please email me here.

Best wishes to you and your families. Please contact me if I can help you in the future. I'm not entirely sure what my working week will be like but I will leave all my latest information here. Thanks for staying in touch.

Dave Bussey Contact me

"To know that you have contributed to other peoples enjoyment of life is a gift with which some of us have been lucky to have been blessed. It will never be taken away from us and, for that alone, we should be grateful"

(Ed Stewart's autobiography)

DAVE BUSSEY – THE EARLY YEARS

I was born in a nursing home in Drayton, Norfolk and left school at fifteen to pursue a career in the Royal Navy. I joined HMS Ganges, a training establishment for boy entrants, before being drafted to HMS Colllingwood, near Portsmouth for specialist training as a electrician. In 1970 I joined the Royal Navy’s largest ship HMS Ark Royal and travelled the world before being deployed on a Polaris submarine. Weeks underwater in the service of this country turned me into the man I am today, apparently.

In 1979 I left the services and pursued a career spinning discs on my “Double Decks” until an opportunity to work in Radio was offered with the opening of a new radio station in Dundee. Five years later and bored with just playing music, I looked for a move to the BBC and the chance to do something more challenging. There were periods working in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire before an opportunity to present the “Weekend Early Show” at Radio Two. It was an incredible opportunity considering my lack of experience. The highlight of the whole five years in London was on day one, walking through the doors of Broadcasting House, I couldn’t believe it was happening to me.

A MOVE TO LINCOLNSHIRE

Whilst still working in London, BBC Radio Lincolnshire asked me to join the county’s radio station full time, replacing the then Breakfast Show presenter, John Inverdale. Since then I have presented many of the stations’ programmes, run dozens of quizzes for the annual charity appeal and met thousands of people during talks that I've given to the many different organisations throughout the county.

THE HIGHLIGHTS

In 1993 I received an award for a gardening phone-in, which was the result of a programme broadcast with Daphne Ledward from her garden, but my biggest honour was to head south to London for the Sony Radio Awards in 1989 at which I received a nomination in the Breakfast Show category, the first ever Sony nomination for BBC Radio Lincolnshire. I've appeared on television just twice. The first time I presented a short film about a Lincolnshire charity and the second didn't see me on screen at all. I provided the voice for the second BBC1 series of "Dog eat dog". A great experience but confined to voicing links in a sound booth, I never did meet Ulrika Jonsson.

And now . . . .

More than twenty one years after arriving in the county, I've moved on and I'm happy spending as much time as possible playing golf, taking or planning holiday’s with friends, drinking gin and tonics, decent red wine and not worrying too much about what comes next. I take with me some wonderful memories and who knows when our paths will cross again.

I'm spending a lot of time at the University of Lincoln, presenting a two hour programme Monday and Friday from 11-1 on SIREN FM, the Community Radio Station for Lincoln. Whilst there I am happy to pass on any skills that I've picked up along the way, that the latest generation of presenters want to learn. I'm also encouraging residents in Lincoln to become Community Journalists. They appear regularly on SIREN FM to tell us about what is happening in their part of the city. This is another project I'm doing for the university. The Unviversity of Lincoln has one of the best thought of, media and journalist courses in the UK and I hope to be teaching some of the youngsters "How to do it!"

I am involved in a new university project that will see foreign language students out in the county and practicing their skills in local schools. My part of this, along with another colleague from SIREN FM, will be to commit some of the lessons and discussions to disc for further use in the language department and they will be streamed on line. Regional interest in the project means I will also be working at schools in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Derbyshire.

I'm working with four schools in the Lincoln area putting a record of their school activities onto CD. At the Chad Varah school we are producing a musical telling the story of Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans. It's one of the most interesting projects I have had the pleasure of being involved with and it was great working with the children when they interviewed Chad's daughter.

WANTED

You've listened to me for many years, how would you like to occassionally listen to SIREN 107.3FM.
We are currently recruiting a panel to listen to specific parts of our output. We would occassionally ask you to pop in for tea and cakes or complete a simple questionaire. If you are willing to chip in with your thoughts then please contact me. You don't have to be in Lincoln as SIREN FM is available on line. Contact me for more details.

The home of golf, St. Andrews in Scotland.
Just to think, I lived about five miles from the shrine for more than five years but at the time was not in the slightest bit interested in the game.What an awful waste!