For the Record with Martin Lee

Picture: Martin Lee

Show: Still Life with Pansy, Monday 11am-midday

I became a presenter in 2022, a bit by happy accident I guess. A friend put my name forward to Rich Moffat. Rich said to me “don’t worry, you’ll be great”… so I put forward a show proposal.

Before MainFm, my time in radio was limited to a couple of weeks of work experience at 3YB in Warrnambool as a teenager. Most shows were prerecorded and I got to read out the weather forecasts for the following day. But my main task was to take the vinyl copies of shows, such as the American Top 40, hosted by Casey Kasem, which arrived in the mail, and transfer them to tape so that they could be played on air as prerecords.

Still Life With Pansy, Mondays at 11am. It’s a weekly hour of talk about contemporary queer art and artists, and is almost 45 shows old. I’m not an art academic, but I really enjoy researching artists and their work, and sharing what I learn in a way that is hopefully accessible to people.

Doing radio I’ve learned that I have a lot of annoying speech mannerisms, but I’ve also learned to tolerate the sound of my own voice to some extent!

It’s impossible to choose just one MainFM presenter or show as being a standout. I’m biased towards the shows either side of mine – Hayley with Dead Air and Viv with Feijoada. Hayley’s death related topics are always super interesting, I often have too many questions for her when we cross over. Viv has a radio voice to die for, and excellent musical taste and knowledge. Amalie and Sherene on Queer and Now are also great with their knowledge and discussions around current issues.

I think community radio is an expression of the diversity of the local community, and a source of support. It’s a great way for people to connect.

I always tag artists on Instagram promos for the show, and occasionally, an artist gets in touch. Once, shortly before I was about to go on air, an artist commented on the Insta post about her work saying “this should be interesting.” The tone of the comment was unclear, but made me very nervous as the work touched on sensitive cultural issues. There were a lot of on air errors that day… All was cool though, I had a brief chat with the artist off air – she was lovely and ended up sharing the show on her own socials.

I only use Instagram to promote Still Life With Pansy. I always tag the artists and any organisations relevant to the show that week. We’ve got about 200 followers. I also upload the shows to Mixcloud.