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“Where were you?” BBC Radio Leeds breakfast presenter Rima Ahmed’s Yorkshire-accented question to Liz Truss has dominated national news and social media following a round of disastrous local radio interviews for the Prime Minister this week.
This unexpected exposure came in part because, like Truss, some people were surprised that local radio hosts were capable of dishing out such grilling.
For Ahmed, it’s easy to hold a politician to account when you spend every day talking to the people affected by their policies.
Before speaking to Truss on Thursday, Ahmed read a comment from Sofia in York after asking listeners what they would like to ask the prime minister.
It reads: “I would ask the Prime Minister, when will I feel hope again? I feel like I’ll never own a home, I’ll never be comfortable, I feel like I can’t get a secure job. I am a veteran of the British Army and no longer proud to be British.
This is one of the many comments Ahmed was hit with.
Speaking the morning after the interview, Ahmed said: “When you’re moments away from talking to the prime minister, you can’t get emotional. But it’s hard not to get emotional.
“It’s embarrassing to be told you can’t afford to heat your house, even though everyone’s in the same boat. But for some reason they feel comfortable sharing it with us.
“The really sad thing is sometimes I can tell they have no one else to talk to. They often connect anonymously or under a pseudonym they use for the radio.
“If they were members of my family, I would find it devastating.”
Listener engagement is “gold dust” here, she says – the number of tweets, texts, calls and WhatsApp messages popping up on the screen are a key measure of success for Ahmed and her producers, Andy Evans and Pete Allison.
On Friday, alongside a discussion of the protests in Iran, there’s a conversation about whether Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget is anti-feminist, an interview with a politics professor about the popularity (or lack thereof) of Truss, and a game where listeners guess the title of a song based on sound effects – called “Songomatopoea” and accompanied by an equally ridiculous jingle.
It’s community radio for a wide demographic – a good balance between hard news, particularly based around West Yorkshire, and fun.
But now, more often than not, that news means a cost-of-living crisis.
Evans says it’s a topic listeners have been asking more about, and being able to send messages to a radio station means people are more open than they might be when they say the words out loud.
“It’s easier to write it down in an email than to tell someone about it,” he says.
He’s the first to read messages and emails and when listeners call into the Radio Leeds breakfast show, he’s the man on the other end of the line. But it can be hard to know how to react.
Evans says: “You walk the line because you want to give people advice, but not go down the road of ‘oh, it’s fine, just put on a sweater.’ It’s a bigger problem than that.”
The team is also aware that most people in distress will not contact them, but listen to the results.
“Not everyone who is in dire straits feels comfortable calling to say that,” he adds.
The BBC’s charter requires an hour of radio talk without music every morning, giving Ahmed plenty of time to get to know his listeners.
“People listen for camaraderie when they listen to local radio,” she says.
“When they send a message, it’s like saying, ‘I’m here and I want to be seen.’ There’s something powerful about that.”
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