DJ Murray puts his own spin on hospital radio
Estate agent Murray Lee, 63, has volunteered as a DJ at Pulse hospital radio station at Watford General Hospital for eight months, presenting a twohour show on Friday nights. Murray lives with his wife Barbara, 57, also an estate agent, in Bushey, Hertfordshire.
WHEN I come off air I am buzzing even though it’s 10pm and I will have put in a long day at the office beforehand. I feel I could go on for hours.
I leave with a sense of elation — from knowing that you have done a service for others. I like to think the radio station acts as a little pick me up for the patients.
Before any of us DJs — there are between 15 and 20 of us at the station in total — go on air we go round the wards and introduce ourselves and ask people if they have any special requests.
Tom Jones is always popular, as are David Bowie and The Beatles. Then I might introduce the record with ‘and here is Frank Sinatra for Paul on ward 3’, for instance.
The idea is to give patients a little boost and something else to do, other than staring at the TV — the station is broadcast through the system by patients’ beds and they listen via headphones.
I’d always had a hankering to be a DJ — I volunteered at Edgware Hospital radio station 45 years ago briefly. I came across the opportunity to join Pulse by chance in August last year when I was sitting in the fracture clinic with my 92-year-old father. I picked up a hospital magazine and saw an appeal for volunteers for the radio station.
I’d had the urge to do something to give a bit back since my mum had a stroke in 2015. She spent three weeks in Watford General Hospital, unable to speak, before she passed away. The staff were amazingly kind to her and to me. So the opportunity to help out at the hospital that had done so much for her was appealing.
I applied last December and did some training in the new system — things have moved on since my previous experience when we had vinyl singles — now it’s computerised.
I also run a Twitter and Facebook page for the hospital which takes up a couple of hours a week — that’s where I get most of the feedback, sometimes live during the show — which is great fun.
Most of the time I have 40 to 50 listeners that I know of but one night I went viral and had 700 which was an amazing buzz.
Going round the wards people thank you, which is great. That’s what I enjoy about volunteering: the opportunity to do something for others that is in complete contrast to my day job. It’s just time to give something back and I love it.