Teen Host

Todd: So Shifani you were saying that you actually worked in radio from an early age. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Shifani: That's right. Well I worked on the radio at the age of twelve. What basically happened was that I used to call up the radio station quite a lot, answer questions and quizzes and all that sort of stuff and one of the announcers thought my voice was nice and so he wanted me to come and work for him. Without realising that I was twelve years old, he called me in and had me on.

Todd: So were you a little scared? You were only twelve.

Shifani: It was very daunting at first. So the first couple of days I had no idea what was going on. There was a massive microphone in front of my face and I was told to make this show fun and interesting, so yes it was very daunting.

Todd: Did you have any prep or did they just stick you in front of the mic and have you react?

Shifani: No actually there were no prompts. It was all up to me. I had to come up with stuff on the spot which was quite easy really because the topics were simple. It was mainly about music.

Todd: Like teen stuff?

Shifani: Yes, exactly or anything that people called up and talked about. It was very childish stuff but mainly geared at teenagers.

Todd: How did your parents feel about it?

Shifani: Very proud of me obviously. At the age of twelve, their daughter was a DJ, what could be better than that? So they really enjoyed it. I remember they would listen to it every single time, record it and then listen to it over and over again when they could.

Todd: That's fantastic. So were you like a little celebrity at your school?

Shifani: I ended up becoming one. A lot of my friends also did the same recording of my voice on the radio, it was a big thing to be a radio person then being only twelve. So my friends thought it was absolutely fantastic and they would take it to school and quite often play it around. So yeah I ended up getting a celebrity status.

Todd: So when you were young and you were this DJ, did you envision yourself being a DJ for a long time?

Shifani: Actually, no I hadn't. I really enjoyed it, had a lot of fun but it was a hobby. It was never something I wanted to do as a profession.

Todd: So in the future you had a child and they wanted to do this, would you encourage them to do it?

Shifani: I absolutely would because if they enjoy it and they enjoy it so much that they want to take it up as a career why not? With me it was a hobby.

Todd: Now what about podcasts? Would you encourage young people to maybe have their own podcast?

Shifani: I think that's a fantastic idea. I think it's really good to be able to express yourself and through podcasts they can do exactly that.