In my previous post, I talked about how a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of being one of the guest speakers at a day-long forum for breast cancer patients. It was a day of revelations, epiphanies and really delicious chocolate slice.

At the same venue as the forum, the ABC was wrapping up a week of broadcasting from my home town, with live broadcasts of its morning tv and radio shows. I was enormously excited to see the ABC Queensland newsreader Karina Carvalho in the flesh. I do believe that as well as being an incredibly talented journalist, she is also the most beautiful human being I’ve ever laid eyes on. Jimmy Giggle was also there, apparently he is a bit of a thing in the pre-school mums set, but I could never get past that high-pitched voice and the annoying owl side-kick. Anyway, I digress.

During the forum lunch break, I was approached by a bloke in an official-looking ABC polo shirt, and asked if I was Julie from Boob in a Box. Before I could answer, my fellow guest speaker Susie excitedly told the bloke, who turned out to be ABC Southern Queensland’s breakfast radio host David Iliffe, that she likes to wake up with him every morning. Realising that my fifteen minutes of fame may be rapidly dwindling, I interrupted that particular love fest to assure David that I was in fact Julie. He then asked if I’d be willing to be interviewed for his show. It took me about four milliseconds to agree.

I have always held a deep desire to be a radio announcer. Given that I don’t have a journalism degree, or want to drive a black thunder and give away icy cold cans of coke, or hold rabidly right-wing views about refugees or dole bludgers or single mums, that particular dream is highly unlikely to ever become a reality. So the next best thing is to be interviewed on the radio by someone who asked such interesting questions that I pretty much instantly felt like we were just two people having a chat (apart from the giant fuzzy microphone that is).

I was very excited when David told me that my interview would be played at 7:15am the following Monday morning, but considerably less excited when at 7:20 the following Monday morning I realised that instead of listening to the radio I was arguing with Hugh about whether he should eat the rest of his breakfast or not. He thought not, I thought otherwise, and I missed hearing my own dulcet tones on the radio. Other people heard it, and told me I didn’t sound like a total dickhead, but until I heard it myself I wasn’t convinced.

David kindly sent me the link this morning. I don’t sound like a dickhead, but boy do I have the rising intonation at the end of sentences thing nailed. David assured me that half the population do this, and that he hadn’t noticed until I pointed it out, at which point I realised why my friend Susie liked waking up with him every morning.

If you’d like to hear me talk about cancer, and this blog, and you my lovely readers, in my frighteningly Strayan accent, here’s the link: https://soundcloud.com/abc-southern-qld/how-the-boob-in-a-box-blog-has-helped-woman-with-breast-cancer