Imagine if you’d started doing the thing you love doing, as a kid. Maybe you did, if you’re a musician who started playing as a kid and made a career out of it, or maybe you always loved animals and work with them now, or you always built stuff and are working an engineer… I knew aged 16 I wanted to work in radio and set about working my way up the daunting media ladder, for free.. making the wrong decisions at times and the right ones at others – thankfully. But this isn’t a post about my career, it’s a nod to my 7-year-old son who amongst numerous auditions this year recorded his first job for Cbeebies, none other than Mr Tumble.
I’ve put my son Phoenix in front of a microphone all of his life as I just loved capturing the sounds he made and as he’s got older, his character has certainly developed into one oozing confidence and he’s taken to the voiceover world like a pro. This session was a lot of fun and he really did make me proud. Hilariously Phoenix offered up his own points for direction and also requested snacks like a true diva! We’ll keep an eye on that side of things.
He wants to be a zoologist and loves animals and I just want to give him as many skills as possible, and if the voiceover world is something he can dabble in over the years and see how he finds it, who knows whether it will be something he wants to continue with when he’s older, but I know it’s something that he can do which is a bit different and he can have fun with it. Giving a child the message that work can be fun is also something important I hope to pass on. Who knows what opportunities may pop up in the most unexpected of places – so seize them and see what might happen.
It’s certainly not the kind of life lesson I got at school and I don’t think my son is, but if I can add that bit of magical thinking along the way, I hope it helps him be ambitious in all he does. One of my favourite quotes is to shoot for the moon, if you miss you’ll land in the stars. That’s my hope for this little legend.