| Margherita is a London girl and
arriving at Capital was like coming home. "I grew up listening to Capital
Radio," she says. "People say, Wasn't it frightening, joining such
well-known presenters? But everyone here is so down to earth. It would be
off putting if the others had people doing their make-up, or star signs on their
office doors. But there's none of that--Mick Brown, for instance, finishes his
show and wanders off to get the bus home with everyone else." Margherita says that her own musical tastes varied. But she doesn't pick her own music for her shows. The Capital computer selects the records in advance from a list approved by the station managers. "The station has a certain sound, and if we all picked our own music, it wouldn't sound like Capital," she says. "But for someone who likes music, this is a dream job. I get to go to concerts and meet the bands you can hear on my show. It's great to hear the ' behind the scenes' gossip." Most people would expect that a presenter's most important qualities are a nice voice and huge amounts of confidence, but Margherita said that basic maths is handy as well. "You have to make sure that you've got an eye on everything that's going on in the studio, but you've got to be able to add and subtract and think in minutes and seconds." she says. "You're dealing with timed records, and with announcements and commercials that are also timed precisely, and you have to be ready to switch to the news at exactly the right second. If you're going over to a live event. You need to be ready, for that on time, not a second earlier or later," This isn't the sort of girl to let the rock'n-roll lifestyle go to her head. Even if she did her family would bring her down to earth. "When I started at Capital the only thing my brothers asked was whether they'd get free records," she remembers. "And my mum couldn't even find the station on her radio." Margherita Taylor is very nice and very easy-going, but very much in control. She is so much a "Capital Radio girl" that you might think she is just doing a good job for the station's publicity department, although you know what she's saying really comes from the heart. She smiles a lot, laughs a lot and is generally a great advert for Capital. |