It’s not every day that a conference speech turns into a spontaneous cheer and round of applause, but I watched that happen on Wednesday.

Absolute Radio’s new drivetime presenter, Geoff Lloyd, was in Stockholm to do a presentation in the Swedish “Radio Days” about personality radio. I heard nothing but good feedback afterwards – notably so, since it was Geoff’s first, ever, conference speech. Speaking as a former radio presenter, while you think nothing of speaking in front of hundreds of thousands of people every day, it’s a little different when you can see a hundred or so eyes looking back – while he apparently felt nervous, you couldn’t see it on stage in a large cinema, which I found an intimidating place to speak earlier that day.

Geoff said a lot of interesting things around personality. Of course, we all agree that great personality is the main thing that differentiates the radio experience from the iPod experience; but one thing really struck home.

“Don’t take anything onto the air”, he says. (This is me paraphrasing and possibly making it up). “There’s a temptation to be as inclusive as possible with your phone-in topics. Some programmes do crappy things like ‘What’s your favourite chat-up line’, or ‘What would you do if you won the lotto’? Instead, if you ask really narrow questions, then you’ll get some great stories back. And only put the good stuff on; if you train your listeners, they’ll rise to the challenge of creating great content.”

He tells the story of when a competition contestant, at 11.30, said “fuck” by accident. This is a no-no in UK radio, and can, if not handled correctly, result in fines or worse. Geoff’s way of dealing with this was firstly to apologise (however ridiculous that might sound), but second, to say how offended he was by hearing the ‘f’ word on the radio – to an almost ludicrous degree. His listeners called in and emailed. One claimed to be crouched in the shower, trying to wash off the dirty horrid word and make himself clean again. Another claimed to be so disgusted by the word, they were physically ill. A third said that he was relaxing, listening to the radio, after a hard day – he and his 7 year-old child had robbed the disabled man next door, squeezing through an open window and stealing his television, VCR, and medication; on arriving home, they’d been preparing their heroin while listening to the radio. This listener was incensed at the ‘fuck’ word, while injecting themselves with hard drugs. “You have stolen my 7-year-old’s innocence”, said the email.

You’re unlikely to see Geoff speaking on personality radio in other conferences; I get the feeling that he spoke mainly because it was a good excuse to see some friends. But I wish he was speaking at more. He was engaging, exciting, interesting – he made the audience laugh and applaud. Just like his radio show, he instantly connected with the audience, projecting a real, honest persona that’s unusual in a world of fake plastic personality. A Swedish friend of mine said that he was so impressive, he could carve out a living for himself as a fulltime consultant. His first gig, too.

Geoff’s drivetime show starts on Monday on Absolute Radio.

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