Noelle McCarthy: An intimate friendship at a distance

Noelle McCarthy. File photo / Paul Estcourt

People sometimes ask me who I imagine I'm talking to when I'm on the radio.

"Why you, of course!" I say, because I am insecure and I want everyone to like me. The truth is, I don't know.

I was thinking about this today, when I was recording a promo for our show. Promos are hard. I want to sound extra-enticing, obviously, in order to get as many people as possible to tune in. But when your voice tends to the husky, the line between enticing and breathy is a narrow one, and I'd rather not be known as the porno-sounding announcer on Radio New Zealand.

Likewise, its no good sounding too upbeat, lest people think I'm brainless, and talking too fast just comes across as manic, which isn't good either. But if I thought about all of those things too much, I'd never open my mouth and I'd be out of a job.

So, I try to pitch it somewhere in the middle-happy, but not too happy, confident, but not too confident, warm without being cloying, that sort of thing. The challenge, and also the great joy of radio, is that you never know who might be listening, and your voice has to be ready to make them welcome, whoever they may be.

Mostly I try to sound like myself, only better. The turbo-charged, gold-plated, higher-octane version of me.

And who's getting that version? "Imagine you are talking to a dearly loved relative who is slightly hard of hearing" - that's the advice I got from a legendary presentation director a few years back, and its stayed with me, even though I don't have any relatives who are hard of hearing (or dearly loved, I'm tempted to add).

But I do talk to people like I know them and they know me, and the strange thing is that we do. We come to know each other, at least throughout the course of a show. When I'm sitting in a windowless room in Auckland, or Wellington, talking into a long stick with a hole in it. I can actually feel the people I'm talking to.

I can't see them or hear them but I absolutely know they are there. It's a two-way conversation, fuelled by imagination on my side, and by a willingness to engage on theirs. And it takes two sides to complete the equation.

Without an audience, a radio announcer would just be pointless noise, the aural equivalent of an existential joke. I used to think that my favourite thing about radio was the immediacy of it, just being able to turn on the mic and go, as opposed to the hours of technical faff required by TV, but lately I've realised that what I love most about the medium is the intimacy of it.

Radio broadcasting in its purest form is one person speaking to another, and believe me, I've done shows where I would have been grateful for an audience of one. But it remains a direct connection, regardless of how many, or how few people you're talking to.

When you're broadcasting through the radio, you are permitted into other people's lives. You're with them when they're cooking, when they're driving, when they're looking after kids, and cleaning the house, when they're painting, or trying to get to sleep at night.

People do all sorts of things while listening to the radio, if the text messages we get through are anything to go by.

And it's a unique sort of access to be with them while they're doing whatever it is they're doing.

Its a privilege, corny and all as that sounds. Radio is company; I learned that doing overnight talkback.

Those listeners, for one reason or another, were depending on me. Depending on me for company, and colour and stimulation. Some of them didn't even need any of those things, they just wanted to know that someone else was out there, when the world got lonely in the dark watches of the night.

I didn't have the emotional fortitude for that sort of dependence, and it made me deeply uncomfortable, but it did show me how big an impact a radio show can have on people's lives.

In talking through the radio, I've found not only proof that I exist, but that you exist too. It's the ultimate in real-time consolation, when it works. When it doesn't, it's just grumpy texts and everyone hating the hip-hop you're playing, but there are good days and bad days in any job, aren't there?

I don't want to change the world; mostly I'm happy just to talk about it, and think about it, and take a little comfort in communion. And I get that comfort in my job, every single day.

That's how I know I've found the right vocation, even on the days when the sound of my own voice droning on and on makes me want to scream.

It's a way of getting close, while keeping my distance, and it's not everyone gets to enjoy the emotional equivalent of having your cake and eating it.