When Jordan North was trying to make it in radio, one of his first jobs at a station was answering callers. “I was given four shifts a week and was buzzing about it,” he recalls. “It meant I could pay my rent, and didn’t have to work behind a bar.” Then, one day, the editor turned around and told him he was down to two shifts. “Turns out she had given [the other two] to her friend’s son, who didn’t even want to work in radio.”
It was a useful, if brutal, lesson for the lad from Lancashire who had newly arrived in London, a city which felt both enormous and isolating. “I’d never been in such a busy place,” he says. “But it was also really lonely because I didn’t know anyone. There were times when my housemates were away and I remember thinking: ‘I’ve not seen a single person.’ It was tough. And yeah, I really had to prove myself.”
So, that is what he did. There was a Facebook group that stations would post on when they needed cover and, North says, he took every shift going. “I worked every weekend. I’d work till one in the morning and be back in at eight. It was tiring, but it gave me a good grounding.”
More than a decade on, North, now 36, is one of the most recognisable voices on British radio: a former Radio 1 presenter, one half of the arena-touring podcast juggernaut that is Help I Sexted My Boss, and now co-host of Capital Breakfast with Chris Stark and Siân Welby – a show which achieved a significant bump in its multi-million listenership when he made his much-discussed move from the BBC two years ago.
