Latest / Corie Sheppard Podcast / Alex Jordan: The Voice That Raised a Generation

Transcript

Alex Jordan: The Voice That Raised a Generation · Corie Sheppard Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_03: Why three rhythm sexes in the same place?
0:02
SPEAKER_03: Then DJ on top.
0:03
SPEAKER_03: DJ on top with three rhythm sectors.
0:05
SPEAKER_03: It's like for someone who loves music, it's like no over here.
0:10
SPEAKER_03: I cannot get my rhythm because everything is like a cacophony.
0:14
SPEAKER_03: It's gumption.
0:15
SPEAKER_03: It is gumption.
0:16
SPEAKER_03: I'm not comfortable.
0:17
SPEAKER_03: There's no part of me that's comfortable.
0:18
Corie: But people know you as a CPL lady, that's nothing.
0:21
SPEAKER_03: Sure, certainly in this market, Ternantebago in Guyana, um very much the CPL lady.
0:27
SPEAKER_03: I think uh uh Jamaica, Barbados crossed the rest of the region, they know me for a little bit more than that.
0:31
SPEAKER_03: I've done a few Olympics.
0:33
SPEAKER_03: But people associate me with sports TV in this part of the world.
0:36
SPEAKER_03: I think people are very impacted by my voice.
0:39
SPEAKER_03: That's I that's my takeaway.
0:41
SPEAKER_03: I think people think the voice sounds assertive and sounds believable.
0:47
SPEAKER_03: And I also think I've got an a personal energy that draws people in.
0:54
SPEAKER_03: I don't have children on my own, but I raised a generation.
0:56
SPEAKER_03: You know, people still come up to me and say, oh my god, every drive to school.
0:59
SPEAKER_03: Me, my mom, my little brother, we were locked in, and you know, I'm proud of that.
1:04
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I want to talk about a lot of things.
1:06
SPEAKER_03: I love sports and I will do it for as long as they'll have me.
1:10
SPEAKER_03: But I feel like there are deeper, more meaningful stories that I'd like to tell.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: As you can tell, I have interest in many things, and I I think by this age as well collected a lot of wisdom, and I'd like to share it.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: You are no like us on the Corey Shepard, Corey Shepard, Corey, Shepard, Corey, Shepard Podcast.
1:31
Corie: Mommy, look at through.
1:33
Corie: Don't miss this one.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be sexy.
1:40
Corie: Hi, before we get started, we wanted to take a moment to ask you to support the channel for free by liking, sharing, and subscribing.
1:49
Corie: Those are the three things that we realize you're not doing as much as you all say you're enjoying the conversation.
1:53
Corie: So please, we appreciate your support.
1:55
Corie: Let's get into today's conversation.
1:57
Corie: Welcome to the Cory Shepherd Podcast.
1:58
Corie: Welcome back to everybody who's been listening.
2:00
Corie: Thank you for all the new people tuning in.
2:03
Corie: I have with us today a guest who I'm not sure how to introduce.
2:06
Corie: I have a long list of things.
2:07
Corie: I have athlete, journalist, presenter, personality, executive.
2:13
Corie: I don't even know what language to introduce her in because I understand she's talking multiple languages, so I want to welcome to the show, Alex Jordan.
2:19
Corie: How are you?
2:20
Corie: I'm great.
2:21
Corie: I'm wonderful.
2:22
SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for having me, Corey.
2:24
SPEAKER_03: It is nice to have you here.
2:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:25
Corie: I know you're in and out for short windows, so I appreciate you taking your time.
2:28
Corie: My pleasure and my honor.
2:30
Corie: I promise you a story.
2:32
Corie: You did promise me a story.
2:33
Corie: I have to do it at the beginning.
2:34
Corie: It's the most embarrassing thing ever.
2:35
SPEAKER_03: I feel like I feel like we should start there if you want to explain to your audience.
2:38
SPEAKER_03: Not me taking over the podcast like it's the Alex Jordan podcast.
2:41
SPEAKER_03: It is.
2:42
SPEAKER_03: He said to me, I said, is there anything I should prepare?
2:46
SPEAKER_03: Any angle or whatever?
2:47
SPEAKER_03: He said, no, no, no, don't worry.
2:48
SPEAKER_03: We're starting with how I know you, just to show people how far you've come and we'll go from there.
2:53
SPEAKER_03: All right, let's do it.
2:54
SPEAKER_03: And since then I've been like, how do I know you?
2:57
Corie: Yeah, let me know now.
2:58
Corie: I can't remember, right?
2:59
SPEAKER_03: No, as typical, I'm sorry.
3:00
Corie: Because there's the most chance and random encounter.
3:03
Corie: It must last about three seconds, but it was very embarrassing, right?
3:05
Corie: Okay.
3:05
Corie: So spare my blushes.
3:06
Corie: And the editors do well with this story, right?
3:09
Corie: One time I was in Mocha and I came with some guys to play some golf.
3:14
Corie: And as just as we were walking out of the clubhouse, you were crossing the bridge to come back over.
3:18
Corie: So in my mind, I was like, hey, we won't from TV, you know, the CPL lady.
3:22
Corie: I was like, hey, yeah.
3:23
Corie: And then you walk up to me and you say, Where's Brian?
3:26
Corie: No, you say, You saw Brian, but we have a Brian in our group.
3:34
Corie: Some Brian Go Paul event and get.
3:37
Corie: Hero man, hero man enough.
3:39
Corie: So when I say, You saw Brian, I said, Brian, easy, Brian.
3:43
Corie: Like I said, look, Brian, that's a random question to ask you, anyway.
3:49
Corie: Well, I guess you were walking up, everybody was there.
3:52
Corie: I don't know if Bravo wasn't doing the tournament then.
3:54
Corie: I talked about some years ago.
3:55
Corie: Well enough.
3:56
Corie: This is before COVID for sure.
3:58
Corie: And listen, I point you to Brian and very graciously went over as if you're walking there and say, Who is this buffoon?
4:06
Corie: It's only after I say, wait, maybe she met Lara.
4:10
SPEAKER_03: I don't have any recollection of that, and I'm not sure why I would have been looking for Brian.
4:14
SPEAKER_03: Maybe, maybe the school was in the past.
4:15
SPEAKER_03: He was on the course, he was on the course.
4:16
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:17
Corie: Everybody was on the course.
4:18
Corie: Okay.
4:19
SPEAKER_03: That's not so bad.
4:19
SPEAKER_03: I'm not supposed to remember you from that.
4:21
Corie: No, you wasn't supposed to, but I felt like all on the first T box are watching it, and I say, I want to go and tell her I'll make a mistake.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: I was mad.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: It's a small issue.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: Nice, nice to meet you properly.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: It is.
4:31
Corie: We remember each other this time.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
4:33
Corie: So listen, I was telling you looking into you and looking into bio and so on.
4:36
Corie: It's like so much different areas that you're involved in.
4:40
Corie: Yes.
4:40
Corie: Like people know you as a CPL lady.
4:42
Corie: That's a thing.
4:43
SPEAKER_03: Sure, certainly in this market, Trinan Tobago and Guyana, um, very much the CPL lady.
4:49
SPEAKER_03: I think uh uh Jamaica, Barbados crossed the rest of the region, they know me for a little bit more than that.
4:53
SPEAKER_03: I've done a few Olympics.
4:55
SPEAKER_03: But people associate me with sports TV in this part of the world.
4:58
SPEAKER_03: But I do do many things.
5:01
SPEAKER_03: I do many things.
5:02
SPEAKER_03: I have many interests uh across the board, and I'm a Gemini.
5:06
SPEAKER_03: And I don't know how much you know about Geminis, but but we're you know multi-hyphenates.
5:11
SPEAKER_03: So we're really interested in a lot of things and we excel in different things, you know.
5:15
Corie: So it's who you are generally, like your interests?
5:18
SPEAKER_03: That is my that is my nature, you know.
5:20
SPEAKER_03: Um as a as a youngster, you know, I played three national sports for Barbados as a junior, you know, as a youngster.
5:25
SPEAKER_03: So I was always interested in different different different it was swimming, um, squash and golf.
5:31
SPEAKER_03: Sorry to sound like a posh girl like that.
5:34
SPEAKER_03: I am a person of the people.
5:36
SPEAKER_03: Um, but uh we don't we don't choose where we're born.
5:40
SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, yeah.
5:41
SPEAKER_03: I played as a you know, my dad was a very very big into sports and very big into us.
5:46
SPEAKER_03: I was the last of three.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: I am the last of three.
5:49
SPEAKER_03: Um having multiple interests, right?
5:52
SPEAKER_03: He was a bit, he's a renaissance man, right?
5:54
SPEAKER_03: He learned the humanities, etc.
5:57
SPEAKER_03: He was, you know, a Greek and Latin scholar, but then he went on to do physics, chemistry, biology, and become a doctor.
6:02
SPEAKER_03: So he believes in education for the sake of it, for understanding the world that you live in, the context of your world.
6:09
SPEAKER_03: And then he doesn't just believe in sports, he believes in competing in sports, to learn to lose and to learn to suffer and to learn to get back up and you know, carry responsibility of your role on a team and all of that.
6:21
SPEAKER_03: So we were put through the paces.
6:24
Corie: Three real different sports, right?
6:26
Corie: Yeah.
6:27
Corie: So it just was athletic from small.
6:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and in fact, there's a connection to Trinidad with that because yeah, I guess we were athletic, and even if we weren't, off we had to go.
6:35
SPEAKER_03: Um I think back, my sister and I were telling my mother about that recently.
6:39
SPEAKER_03: My father's 10 years gone.
6:40
SPEAKER_03: May he rest in peace, the great Oscar Wenville Jordan.
6:44
SPEAKER_03: Um, we were telling her, you know, we were very small when we were going to swimming.
6:48
SPEAKER_03: So before school, huh?
6:49
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
6:49
SPEAKER_03: You're getting up at 5:30, these days hardly light outside, and then you're doing like 50 laps to warm up.
6:56
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's hardcore.
6:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm six and seven years old.
6:58
SPEAKER_03: My first time away from my parents was to come to Trinidad for a swim meet.
7:02
SPEAKER_03: I see.
7:03
SPEAKER_03: It's actually a great story.
7:04
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
7:04
SPEAKER_03: Tell it.
7:06
SPEAKER_03: So I stayed with my family in Trin City, my uncle and auntie.
7:09
SPEAKER_03: And it was great, but you know, it's hard that age to be away from your parents.
7:12
SPEAKER_03: So I think I felt a little bit of that.
7:14
SPEAKER_03: But I was the eighth and I'm the breast throat champion of Barbados.
7:17
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
7:18
SPEAKER_03: So I thought it was a big deal.
7:20
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, we come to Trinidad and it's time for the race now.
7:22
SPEAKER_03: I'm nervous, but I'm sorry.
7:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm national champion of Barbados.
7:27
SPEAKER_03: And then we were standing on the blocks.
7:29
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, unusual.
7:30
SPEAKER_03: I don't know the pool, I don't know the people, but uh, off we go.
7:32
SPEAKER_03: Swimmers, take your marks.
7:36
SPEAKER_03: Perfect start.
7:38
SPEAKER_03: Pull, kick kick to the surface.
7:41
SPEAKER_03: And I really feeling in good rhythm.
7:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, well, this is the race of my life.
7:45
SPEAKER_03: I feeling good about this.
7:46
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, perfect form down the road.
7:48
SPEAKER_03: There's only one lap, right?
7:48
SPEAKER_03: We're eight to 25 meters or 50 meters or something.
7:51
SPEAKER_03: And then I finish strong, too.
7:53
SPEAKER_03: You know?
7:54
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
7:54
SPEAKER_03: And when I get up, people toweling off, eating, talking to the parents.
8:00
SPEAKER_03: It's place purple ribbon for the HA.
8:04
SPEAKER_03: I that was the greatest shock of my life after that.
8:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, not a customer.
8:08
SPEAKER_03: Brother, that's the fastest I can swim.
8:10
SPEAKER_03: That's my best day.
8:12
SPEAKER_03: Eight out of eight.
8:14
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Trinidad, for humbling me early.
8:17
Corie: Not bad, not bad.
8:20
Corie: Sports will do it.
8:21
Corie: You said it's no one is the thing with youths now.
8:23
Corie: We like that ability to win, ability to lose.
8:26
Corie: You know, that's so much of what you could learn about life in general.
8:29
SPEAKER_03: Ability to feel nervous.
8:31
SPEAKER_03: I find Generation Next always saying, oh, it gives me anxiety.
8:36
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, it does.
8:38
SPEAKER_03: And that's part of life is to feel that, to work through it, and to get to the other side, and then you have small win.
8:44
SPEAKER_03: Anxiety is part of life.
8:45
SPEAKER_03: Nerves, you know, that's just Yeah, pranks are excellence kind of thing.
8:49
Corie: Like people people talk about it here all the time.
8:51
Corie: Where if somebody was here last week saying if they don't feel nervous again, they're gonna stop performing, they're gonna stop singing.
8:56
SPEAKER_03: It's just all part of it.
8:57
SPEAKER_03: It is, it is, and it's life.
8:58
SPEAKER_03: Life is hard.
9:00
SPEAKER_03: Like, brother, you think like life is simple?
9:02
SPEAKER_03: Like if you if you just if you don't feel discomfort, you don't practice yourself into the discomfort that is coming.
9:10
SPEAKER_03: It's it's always why I say golf is the game of life.
9:12
SPEAKER_03: Because the best golfer is the golfer who reacts best to the trouble.
9:19
SPEAKER_03: It's not a case of if there's gonna be trouble.
9:22
Corie: There's gonna be trouble.
9:23
SPEAKER_03: There will be trouble.
9:24
Corie: I can tell you there's a lot of trouble.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: So, how you react?
9:28
SPEAKER_01: The same thing with life, you know?
9:30
Corie: Same thing.
9:31
Corie: Like when I tell people about you talking about interviews and stuff before we start, and I say, nah, I have Alex Down as one of the greatest interviewers, because you gain a lot.
9:38
Corie: I'm fortunate to have people here who have great stories.
9:41
Corie: We could select them in advance, we could record them before edit out my buffoonery, like so wrong, Brian, and all that.
9:48
Corie: And you don't have that luxury in live no live TV.
9:52
Corie: Live TV.
9:53
Corie: So in CPL in general, let me start with the with the fans, right?
9:56
Corie: Yeah, you go into these fan zones, they throw to you, and you go.
10:00
Corie: How do you know where you're gonna get out of this person?
10:02
Corie: You handy Mike then?
10:03
SPEAKER_03: You don't know.
10:04
SPEAKER_03: And in fact, there's there's an elevated fear because you know that there's been the sponsors product passing around, right?
10:10
SPEAKER_03: So Caribbean fuel.
10:12
SPEAKER_03: Caribbean fuel, correct.
10:14
SPEAKER_03: So there's an added um thing.
10:16
SPEAKER_03: Here's the thing: um, I carry my own vibe.
10:19
SPEAKER_03: So it's not a show.
10:20
SPEAKER_03: I enjoy the vibe, I enjoy the music.
10:22
SPEAKER_03: So by the time I get in there, I'm feeling good.
10:25
SPEAKER_03: So I'm hoping, first of all, to communicate that to them.
10:27
SPEAKER_03: So it's not they're not gonna feel bad or whatever.
10:30
SPEAKER_03: But I also love people.
10:32
SPEAKER_03: Back to being a Gemini.
10:33
SPEAKER_03: I love people.
10:34
SPEAKER_03: So if I was uh walking the road out here or on the on a bus somewhere, or I'm most likely gonna be like, How was your day?
10:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:42
SPEAKER_03: People hate to see me coming.
10:43
SPEAKER_03: Generation next definitely hate to see me coming because I want to engage you at every corner.
10:47
SPEAKER_03: I love people.
10:48
SPEAKER_03: So it doesn't matter what they say.
10:51
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to enjoy it, try to say something off the back of it.
10:54
SPEAKER_03: Actually, most recently on this year, season 14, I a little girl, uh-huh, I heard, I said to her, How are you enjoying?
11:02
SPEAKER_03: She was the cutest thing.
11:03
SPEAKER_03: She said, I'm having such a nice time.
11:06
SPEAKER_03: And when she said that, I thought she was gonna wrap up.
11:08
SPEAKER_03: And I'm thinking, who's next?
11:10
SPEAKER_03: Where do I go next?
11:12
SPEAKER_03: And she said something else, but I had switched off in my brain.
11:15
SPEAKER_03: And I said, carrying on.
11:18
SPEAKER_03: And then when I saw the cut, she says, I'm having a nice time, and I am amazed to meet my favorite, Alex Jordan.
11:27
SPEAKER_03: And then on the video, you see me go, um, right?
11:30
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, can we find this little girl?
11:33
SPEAKER_03: So, in that example, I was doing something very unprofessional.
11:37
SPEAKER_03: I was not staying in the moment and listening to her, granted, very hard to hear, right?
11:42
SPEAKER_03: Trinidad, especially.
11:43
SPEAKER_03: Trinidad, can speaking of which, can we have a discussion?
11:46
SPEAKER_03: Can we have a discussion?
11:48
SPEAKER_03: Why three rhythm sections in the same place?
11:50
SPEAKER_03: No, it's important, it's important.
11:52
SPEAKER_03: Why three rhythm sections in the same place?
11:54
SPEAKER_03: Then DJ on top.
11:55
SPEAKER_03: DJ on top with the three rhythm sections.
11:57
SPEAKER_03: It's like for someone who loves music, it's like, oh, no, over here.
12:02
SPEAKER_03: I cannot get my rhythm because everything is a cacophony.
12:06
SPEAKER_03: So, in that fanzone, I can't hear anything.
12:08
Corie: Yeah, ticker neither.
12:09
Corie: We can't get a rhythm neither looking like it's a tickier can't get your truth.
12:13
Corie: I'm not saying anything about that.
12:15
Corie: You stay in neutral.
12:16
Corie: Yes, correct.
12:17
Corie: So the energy is not a put-on, that is you.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: No, that is my nature.
12:21
SPEAKER_03: I actually always joke with my mother that if I were a young woman and born in this era, I would have got a diagnosis for sure.
12:27
SPEAKER_03: I would be on some kind of ADHD or on the spectrum.
12:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
12:31
SPEAKER_03: When I was born, they would call it hyperactive.
12:33
Corie: Yeah, they're just supposed to say hyper.
12:34
SPEAKER_03: You're just hyper, yeah.
12:35
SPEAKER_03: I was always hyperactive.
12:37
SPEAKER_03: And in fact, I tell people all the time in order to prepare myself for TV, I have to bring my energy down.
12:43
SPEAKER_03: When I look back at the first few years, I'm looking at my things, thinking, can you stand still?
12:48
Corie: Oh, I suppose.
12:49
SPEAKER_03: Can you stop moving?
12:50
SPEAKER_03: Why is your face moving like that?
12:52
SPEAKER_03: Why do you have to use every part of your body to communicate?
12:54
SPEAKER_03: You know, I have really worked over the years on appearing a little more composed because it's not my nature.
13:01
SPEAKER_03: My nature is to be like one of them, yeah, yeah, just to be so full of energy all the time.
13:05
Corie: And when you're out into these sands, you have time before you start talking.
13:08
Corie: When the truth are you?
13:09
Corie: You know Richard, or?
13:10
SPEAKER_03: No, actually, on this leg, this year, it's been a little different where I we have the half, I do the flash interview, which is whatever the outstanding player from the first innings, and then I've been staying down.
13:22
SPEAKER_03: So I go in around and then by the by over three or four, then I've had a little time.
13:26
SPEAKER_03: Back in the another season, you would go back out and then you'd just come down for it, and that's hard.
13:31
Corie: Yeah, it's a cold start.
13:32
Corie: Yeah, a cold start.
13:34
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
13:34
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
13:35
Corie: Yeah, so is it different when you say, okay, so you're with the fans, it doesn't matter what they say.
13:39
Corie: In other words, you're gonna carry whatever that two minutes is that you have.
13:41
Corie: Yes.
13:42
Corie: Is it the same interviewing players on stuff?
13:43
Corie: Because you all have a short window as well when you're either the price given at the end.
13:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:48
SPEAKER_03: Is it similar?
13:48
SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, I think it is similar because you don't know what the player's gonna say.
13:52
SPEAKER_03: And some players, a lot of players, don't love being interviewed, which seems strange to me.
13:58
SPEAKER_03: I think, like, you've done the hard work.
13:59
SPEAKER_03: Now is your crowning glory mode.
14:01
SPEAKER_03: Oh, it does.
14:02
SPEAKER_03: But you you'll be amazed at how many players actually would rather not.
14:06
SPEAKER_03: And then, of course, if you're just a young or developing player, you're fearful of the camera.
14:11
SPEAKER_03: And then, worse yet, if you don't have tremendous facility with language, you're frightened.
14:16
SPEAKER_03: And I so sometimes what I try to do is just have a quick word with the player beforehand, especially if they're a youngster.
14:22
SPEAKER_03: And I always encourage my guys to be like, don't think it has to sound pretty enough, speak dialect, pretend you're talking to your friend.
14:28
SPEAKER_03: That people just want you to communicate, the way in which you communicate, they want to know you.
14:32
SPEAKER_03: Furthermore, don't even ask my question.
14:34
SPEAKER_03: If I ask you about um, we had some rain earlier, that it impact the surface, and you don't want to answer that, you can be like, you know what?
14:41
SPEAKER_03: Actually, when I woke up this morning and saw that rain, I was worried, you know, but from the I'd call my mother.
14:45
SPEAKER_03: That could be the story.
14:47
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
14:47
SPEAKER_03: All we want to do is know you a bit more.
14:49
SPEAKER_03: So um, players are as challenging at times.
14:53
SPEAKER_03: I think the worst and most painful interview of all time in my whole entire life was one was one with Kyron Pollard, in fact.
14:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it was last season.
15:01
SPEAKER_03: It was the last game that had been played at Queen's Park Oval before we started this year.
15:06
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
15:06
SPEAKER_03: And it was Antigua and Barbuda Falcons against TKR.
15:09
SPEAKER_03: The Falcons most unfortunately beat TKR again for that season.
15:15
SPEAKER_03: Which was which was strange because they were Falcons were bottom of the table, and of course, TKR, the Giants they are.
15:21
SPEAKER_03: So I knew it wasn't gonna be easy.
15:24
SPEAKER_03: But if I could find the footage of that interview and play it for you, you wouldn't believe your eyes.
15:29
SPEAKER_03: Like, I wanted to die a thousand deaths.
15:32
SPEAKER_03: He just didn't want to be there, hardly said anything, I wouldn't give me a little eye contact, give me one-word answers, and I was like, okay.
15:40
SPEAKER_03: And then yeah, real, real hard.
15:43
Corie: I guess you still let it keep your energy up and absolutely.
15:45
SPEAKER_03: I just kept thinking, well, the world is watching.
15:47
SPEAKER_03: They're seeing me ask the questions.
15:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and they're seeing him not respond.
15:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:52
SPEAKER_03: So this will be what it will be.
15:55
SPEAKER_03: And just like in anything, less like anything, TV is a set of moments, like radio.
16:00
SPEAKER_03: I come out of radio.
16:02
SPEAKER_03: Some are good, some are terrible.
16:05
SPEAKER_03: And people pretty much forget.
16:07
SPEAKER_03: You know how I know that?
16:08
SPEAKER_03: Because people tell me they think I'm really good.
16:10
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, yeah, okay.
16:13
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for that.
16:13
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for that.
16:14
Corie: Yes, we think you're really good.
16:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no.
16:16
SPEAKER_03: Uh-oh.
16:17
SPEAKER_03: I have I can also be very bad.
16:19
Corie: Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.
16:21
Corie: You say so.
16:22
Corie: Yeah.
16:22
Corie: I asked because I remember seeing, I want to say it was the Australian Open where there was a uh somebody had to interview Federal who was having a like a breakdown after a game against Nadali.
16:30
Corie: Remember?
16:31
Corie: Yes, I do.
16:31
Corie: Yeah.
16:31
Corie: Big Federal fan.
16:32
Corie: Oh, yeah.
16:33
Corie: So you see moments like those when somebody loses on some.
16:35
Corie: Is it how you manage you know, navigating them moments?
16:39
SPEAKER_03: Gosh, I'm trying to remember who it was.
16:40
SPEAKER_03: I've had some really nice emotion.
16:43
SPEAKER_03: Them, them there, I just walk up in them.
16:45
SPEAKER_03: I like them bad because I'm a woman and I'm emotional.
16:49
SPEAKER_03: And if I can elicit some kind of feeling from somebody in the moment, for me, that is skill.
16:58
SPEAKER_03: Because people are self-conscious and they know they're being watched, and it's an interview set up, and you might lose the actual human moment.
17:05
SPEAKER_03: And in fact, that is what I live for.
17:07
SPEAKER_03: As a sports fan and as an interviewer, I'm like, boy, if you can just get them in that moment.
17:13
unknown: Who was it?
17:14
SPEAKER_03: I wanna I I feel like it was a Guiana Amazon Warriors coach years ago.
17:18
SPEAKER_03: We've had two or three having the cry.
17:22
SPEAKER_03: And the skill I think for the interviewer is to allow.
17:27
SPEAKER_03: You always want to fill, you always want to rush and put in another word.
17:30
SPEAKER_03: And but if you can just have the courage, it takes courage, to pause.
17:35
Corie: And live.
17:37
Corie: Like life.
17:38
Corie: Yeah.
17:38
Corie: I mean in live TV, that pause must be even more difficult.
17:41
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna make.
17:42
SPEAKER_03: In fact, I'll give you a quick story from breakfast.
17:43
SPEAKER_03: I was at with at breakfast this morning with my producer, and we were talking about one or two of the viral moments we've got this week.
17:50
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
17:50
SPEAKER_03: Um, Glenn Phillips catch, unfortunately, of a TKR player.
17:55
SPEAKER_03: Um, and of course, Hetty's Sentry.
17:57
SPEAKER_03: Sorry, guys.
17:58
SPEAKER_03: Sorry to keep throwing off.
18:00
SPEAKER_03: But he was making the point because obviously TV production's huge, and many cameras, and what the director chooses to cut, and who's got the live shot, and who's got the reverse angle.
18:09
SPEAKER_03: And he was saying that our team, our camera team, did so well to get that Hetty moment.
18:15
SPEAKER_03: Because what they did was they watched in, you got the celebration, but they stayed.
18:19
SPEAKER_03: So then they got the Romario, right?
18:21
SPEAKER_03: And even after the Romario hug, another pause, and then you got the real emotion out of Hetty.
18:29
SPEAKER_03: So a lot of cameras would have cut by then.
18:31
SPEAKER_03: Right?
18:32
SPEAKER_03: Um, it takes awareness and it takes courage to hold on and just leave space for the human moment, you know?
18:38
Corie: Makes sense, it makes sense.
18:39
Corie: They were killers for having an interview about interviews, right?
18:41
Corie: They'll say I'm just trying to suck all your knowledge, but just one more question.
18:45
SPEAKER_03: You know what my mother told me early?
18:46
SPEAKER_03: I have a very unusual mother who is Australian and amazing, and she's always told me, which is not a West Indian way.
18:52
SPEAKER_03: I'm not West Indian this way.
18:54
SPEAKER_03: You know, she says, you share your knowledge with everyone for free.
18:59
SPEAKER_03: You share your knowledge all the time, every time.
19:01
SPEAKER_03: It takes nothing from you.
19:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
19:03
SPEAKER_03: In fact, it just gives to you.
19:05
SPEAKER_03: Okay, good, we'll take it.
19:06
SPEAKER_03: So you'd you ask me anything you want, right?
19:08
Corie: Perfect.
19:08
Corie: I heard this in an interview one time that the it the the for journalism, for presenting, for interviews, how much how important general knowledge is?
19:17
Corie: I want you just to talk about that a little bit.
19:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, gosh.
19:21
SPEAKER_03: Very important for interviews and very important for life.
19:24
SPEAKER_03: How you do one thing is how you do anything.
19:27
SPEAKER_03: I was I think lots of things.
19:30
SPEAKER_03: When I was young and uh my brother and sister were very gifted as well, and they got very good A-level results.
19:37
SPEAKER_03: And my mother told my father, I think we should not let Alex have to force to follow those results.
19:42
SPEAKER_03: And I ended up going, got a scholarship to go to something called the United World College, and I did my international baccalaureate instead of my A levels.
19:50
SPEAKER_03: So A levels is three subjects intense or whatever.
19:52
SPEAKER_03: I B is three higher, three subsidiary.
19:55
SPEAKER_03: You do six.
19:55
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
19:56
SPEAKER_03: So from even 16 years old, I wasn't into the specializing.
20:01
SPEAKER_03: At 16, I want to keep my knowledge really broad, and that's the metaphor, I think, for everything.
20:06
SPEAKER_03: Even now, people say, why do we need a degree?
20:08
SPEAKER_03: I want to be out and I want to be making money.
20:10
SPEAKER_03: Life is about dry, I lose, I lose years, and my degree doesn't guarantee me a job.
20:15
SPEAKER_03: A degree is not for a job, right?
20:17
SPEAKER_03: My belief is that learning uh about broad things, about yourself, about your culture, about the context of the world that we live in is for life.
20:26
SPEAKER_03: It's to teach you how to think.
20:28
SPEAKER_03: You you learn how to learn, and then that is not just an academic thing.
20:32
SPEAKER_03: That is something that you can apply to your everyday skills in your everyday life.
20:36
SPEAKER_03: And I think being a good interviewer is that guys, remember that what I think what is most extraordinary about me is I haven't I never played cricket.
20:45
SPEAKER_03: I went to and you show my age here, went to sign up for cricket in secondary school, and he said, No, no, no, rounders for girls.
20:52
SPEAKER_03: You have to go to rounders.
20:53
SPEAKER_03: And uh I went and I mash out rounders easy, huh?
20:58
SPEAKER_03: And West Indies missed out on my talent.
21:00
SPEAKER_03: Imagine that.
21:01
SPEAKER_03: So sorry about that.
21:01
Corie: Imagine that.
21:02
SPEAKER_03: But then I've gone on to become a cricket commentator, which is unbelievable if you think about it.
21:08
SPEAKER_03: But I always I I attribute it to my access and my facility with language and my knowledge of a broad range of things, including culture and how people interact and many sports and geopolitics and you know how things fit together.
21:27
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
21:27
SPEAKER_03: Um, I think we've moved away from these humanities.
21:30
SPEAKER_03: I believe in a humanities education.
21:32
SPEAKER_03: Learn the geography of your region, the history, how people speak.
21:35
SPEAKER_03: Learn, you know, learn the be curious.
21:38
SPEAKER_03: Curiosity is is is, I think, my greatest gift.
21:41
SPEAKER_03: Um, so yes, all around and general knowledge is a gate is a gift for life.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:47
SPEAKER_03: You Trinidadians, back to back to you all.
21:49
SPEAKER_03: All right, let's see.
21:51
SPEAKER_03: A couple of years, a couple of years ago, maybe four or five years ago from CPL, I my family in Trinity, I was up there on a day off.
21:57
SPEAKER_03: So we had dinner and we watched the news.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: And then right after the news, Primetime TV was a telenovela in Español, no?
22:05
SPEAKER_03: And I turned to my cousins and said, You guys now live in a bilingual country.
22:09
SPEAKER_03: Did you realize?
22:10
SPEAKER_03: I'm here to tell y'all, this is now a bilingual country.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: Y'all speaking Spanish or what?
22:14
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna soon have a Spanish newspaper?
22:16
SPEAKER_01: Billy has your Spanish.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: And Billy's like, hola!
22:21
SPEAKER_03: And I thought to myself, you see?
22:24
SPEAKER_03: Are you ready for trying to try and like you come do some work?
22:26
SPEAKER_03: You know, Joal Espanol, si me quieres, and even something like that.
22:29
SPEAKER_03: When I was at school, how many times the people in my class will say, Miss, when am I gonna use this?
22:35
SPEAKER_03: Miss, I'm never gonna use this.
22:36
SPEAKER_03: Why did I have to learn French?
22:38
SPEAKER_03: Corey, you're using your geography?
22:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:42
SPEAKER_03: You're using your chemistry?
22:43
SPEAKER_03: For sure, you're using your languages.
22:45
SPEAKER_03: That's another example of you just keep things broad.
22:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:49
SPEAKER_03: Um, the world is a big place.
22:50
Corie: If you're a business organization or brand looking to reach an engaged and growing audience, the Corey Shepherd Podcast offers opportunities to sponsor, partner, and advertise.
23:00
Corie: You could check out the email address in our YouTube description or via the link in our bio on Instagram.
23:07
Corie: We need the money.
23:09
Corie: Like uh Max and House, you remember that?
23:12
unknown: Yeah.
23:12
Corie: Maybe you should talk about your time in Jamaica.
23:14
Corie: Uh I know that you did radio for a long time in Barbados.
23:18
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I did radio in Barbados, and then I did radio in London.
23:20
SPEAKER_03: I had a radio show on the BBC in London.
23:22
SPEAKER_03: That was my big break, actually.
23:23
SPEAKER_03: BBC was before you went to Jamaica?
23:24
SPEAKER_03: That's a good question.
23:26
SPEAKER_03: Uh, let's think.
23:26
SPEAKER_03: Let's think of the order of things.
23:28
SPEAKER_03: The order of things was off.
23:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was in London.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: My first break.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: Let me tell you my break.
23:32
SPEAKER_03: Because it has again, it has to do with Trinidad.
23:36
SPEAKER_03: Y'all have always been good to me.
23:38
SPEAKER_03: It's so funny.
23:39
SPEAKER_03: I moved to London to become a TV presenter, was the idea, right?
23:42
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to be away from what was my fairly famous father in Barbados.
23:47
SPEAKER_03: I didn't want people to think I was getting anywhere because of him.
23:49
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to branch out on my own and do my own thing.
23:52
SPEAKER_03: Well, I worked for years in London and nothing wasn't happening.
23:55
SPEAKER_03: I was hard to get the bricks and all these things.
23:57
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, one Notting Hill carnival, I just go out on the road out of my own, fire two rums, walking down the road, enjoying myself.
24:05
SPEAKER_03: And then I saw Peter C.
24:06
SPEAKER_03: Peter C Lewis from Ecstatic Family.
24:09
SPEAKER_03: And he was there, and there's some guys with the cameras and things, and I said, Peter C, I mean, what are you doing here?
24:15
SPEAKER_03: He goes, Grilled.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: We we start in a station called Synergy TV.
24:19
SPEAKER_03: Again, aging myself.
24:21
Corie: Yeah, just know what we're missing.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: You push because it's um yeah, you too.
24:28
Corie: Oh, so nowhere to come.
24:30
Corie: You look at there, you look at there.
24:32
Corie: Let me or Alex?
24:34
SPEAKER_03: What do you mean me or Alex?
24:35
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
24:36
SPEAKER_03: You don't see that you're the problem.
24:37
SPEAKER_03: I am doing it.
24:37
Corie: I saw relaxed over this way.
24:42
Corie: That's the end of it.
24:43
Corie: Right.
24:44
Corie: Yeah, you put me where you need me.
24:46
Corie: That gun?
24:47
Corie: Yeah.
24:48
Corie: He will move the mic just too.
24:49
Corie: Sorry, I'm about to.
24:50
Corie: Again, pass the mic when I'm talking.
24:51
Corie: Yeah.
24:52
Corie: Excited, huh?
24:53
Corie: No.
24:54
SPEAKER_03: I tell it because I have again.
24:55
SPEAKER_03: Again, I'm so I try trying to really, I try and really groan, but my feet on the actually I'm gonna take my shoes off and grow.
25:02
SPEAKER_03: Oh no, I don't reach.
25:03
SPEAKER_03: Sorry, sorry for you.
25:04
SPEAKER_03: Can't ground either.
25:06
Corie: It can't be.
25:07
SPEAKER_03: Really?
25:07
SPEAKER_03: Not with the bare feet, it don't reach.
25:14
SPEAKER_03: So he tells me, yes, he tells me, they start this situation called Synergy.
25:17
SPEAKER_03: Now remember, I hustling in London now, the year and a half, two years, can't get no break.
25:22
SPEAKER_03: I'm doing a night job, hostessing in something called Sports Cafe with the mini skirt and the thing, and guys heck me.
25:27
SPEAKER_03: You know, I did my my Jews, pay my dues.
25:30
SPEAKER_03: So for me, time Peter C decided making a new station.
25:33
SPEAKER_03: They've come to film Notting Hill.
25:35
SPEAKER_03: I took his mic and I said, in that case, my name's Alex Jordan.
25:39
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to my city.
25:40
SPEAKER_03: Let me tell you a little bit about Notting Hill Carnival, right?
25:44
SPEAKER_03: By the way, I do about two or three links just playing uh playing the fool.
25:48
SPEAKER_03: And then PT C grabbed back, you're trying to take my walkouts.
25:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's all like Peter C.
25:53
SPEAKER_03: And we joke and off we went.
25:55
SPEAKER_03: Nothing happened.
25:56
SPEAKER_03: And a year later, one year later, my phone rang.
26:00
SPEAKER_03: Is this Alex Jordan?
26:02
SPEAKER_03: I was like, maybe.
26:03
SPEAKER_03: And they said, This is the BBC calling.
26:06
SPEAKER_03: We want you to come and host and head our Soka Music Show at BBC One Extra.
26:11
SPEAKER_03: And I said, How on earth do you know me?
26:14
SPEAKER_03: And they said, because we saw clips of you on Synergy TV when we were in Trinidad.
26:19
SPEAKER_03: Also, Peter, keep the photo.
26:21
SPEAKER_03: So, yay! God bless you, Peter.
26:23
SPEAKER_03: You're a good man.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: You have a lot of integrity.
26:25
SPEAKER_03: So I must have a few clips must have made the thing.
26:28
SPEAKER_03: But a man called Ray Paul, who was a wonderful producer from BBC One Extra, was in Trinidad for something else and spotted me and told his team in London, find this girl.
26:36
SPEAKER_03: She lives in London.
26:37
SPEAKER_03: I want her to hop.
26:38
SPEAKER_03: And then I was like, but you know, I'm not really a DJ, but I guess I could get that, dude.
26:43
Corie: You just went and do it.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: Just look.
26:45
SPEAKER_03: And my life, really, my professional life started from there.
26:48
SPEAKER_03: One extra.
26:48
SPEAKER_03: One extra.
26:49
SPEAKER_03: One extra.
26:50
SPEAKER_03: And and then there, then Radio One.
26:51
SPEAKER_03: Radio One sent me to the World Cup in Germany to follow Soko Warriors.
26:55
Corie: Right, yes, yes.
26:55
Corie: I was there for a little bit.
26:56
Corie: I was there for a little bit.
26:57
SPEAKER_03: What a time now.
26:58
Corie: Yeah, that was that was unique.
26:59
Corie: If you look at it.
27:03
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I've really fallen in love with Peter Crouch now.
27:06
SPEAKER_03: Have you watched his podcast with his wife?
27:08
SPEAKER_03: No, I never saw it on the podcast.
27:09
SPEAKER_03: You'll have to watch it.
27:10
SPEAKER_03: He's so lovable.
27:11
SPEAKER_03: And I think to think I hated you all that time for Brent Sancho.
27:13
Corie: No, we will never watch our podcast.
27:15
SPEAKER_03: No, no.
27:20
SPEAKER_03: And he's funny.
27:20
SPEAKER_03: He is.
27:21
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
27:21
SPEAKER_03: And it's kind of self-deprecating.
27:23
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I see what she saw in you.
27:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
27:25
SPEAKER_03: Other than the big big bugs.
27:28
Corie: So was the experience like getting your breakout there?
27:31
Corie: What how was it feeling on one extra?
27:34
Corie: At the time.
27:35
Corie: Yeah, when you just listen, huh?
27:37
SPEAKER_03: Humility is always around the corner.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: I felt like it was a big break because nothing else was happening for me.
27:42
SPEAKER_03: My colleagues at Polydor Records, I also worked at Polydor Records as an assistant, which was another big break because if I tell you I know Fity Cent, Gwen Stefani, Amy Winehouse, like I see Eminem on the list, too.
27:55
SPEAKER_03: I worked with I worked with and hung with a lot of uh superstars.
27:58
SPEAKER_03: So my life has been very enhanced by that.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: Um, but what am I telling you the the one extra?
28:04
SPEAKER_03: The show live was Sunday night, 2 a.m.
28:08
SPEAKER_03: to 4 a.m.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
28:10
SPEAKER_03: So my my colleagues at Polydor would be like, yeah, listen, a lot of truckers are tuning in.
28:16
SPEAKER_03: Listen, don't worry about it.
28:18
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, it's perfect time for the people back in the Caribbean.
28:21
SPEAKER_03: So it was never any mainstream, it was actually the bottom of the bottom, and then rubber ranks.
28:25
SPEAKER_03: This here's where I'm gonna call you out.
28:26
SPEAKER_03: Rubbo ranks did the dance hall show.
28:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I kept begging him, play this tune, play this tune, and advertise your soccer tunes through because and then Kevin Little turned me on.
28:36
SPEAKER_03: Oh, of course, talk to me nicely, Robbo.
28:40
SPEAKER_03: So at the time, not only was it 2 a.m.
28:43
SPEAKER_03: to 4 a.m.
28:43
SPEAKER_03: on a Sunday night, it was a music nobody listened to.
28:46
SPEAKER_03: So I wouldn't call it my big break.
28:48
Corie: Yeah.
28:48
Corie: But I guess it felt that way when you get it called.
28:51
Corie: And it gave me a platform and confidence.
28:53
Corie: So when you left Barbados to go there, you were in on in media already?
28:58
Corie: Who?
28:59
Corie: No.
28:59
Corie: Nothing like that.
29:00
SPEAKER_03: I had uh my university study at McGill University was Caribbean and Latin American studies, which had to do with politics, language, geography, the whole thing, my my humanities education.
29:11
SPEAKER_03: And I had done uh six months at the United Nations Drug Control Program, and then a year at my Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Latin American desk.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: I see.
29:20
SPEAKER_03: And then one I tr I turned like 23 or something, and I said to my mother, I don't know if I could work in a civil service for the rest of my life.
29:30
SPEAKER_03: There's there's no energy.
29:31
SPEAKER_03: Everyone comes in, reads the paper, and then goes to lunch.
29:33
SPEAKER_03: It's terrible, you know.
29:34
SPEAKER_03: And of course, you can imagine hyperactive me at the time.
29:38
SPEAKER_03: And my mother said, That's your Aussie roots.
29:41
SPEAKER_03: You're really an Australian at heart, you need to go walk about.
29:44
SPEAKER_03: And I sold my car, quit my job, and I backpacked across Europe on my own for three months and moved to London to try to make my way.
29:52
SPEAKER_03: Understood, understood.
29:53
Corie: So it was it took some courage too.
29:54
Corie: Of course, of course.
29:55
Corie: So I guess as a West Indian feeling the way you feel you're curious about many things, you had the ambition to come back home after studying all.
30:02
Corie: Yeah, great question.
30:03
SPEAKER_03: So, meanwhile, I get this BBC radio show at 2 a.m.
30:07
SPEAKER_03: Sunday night, two to four.
30:09
SPEAKER_03: And I'm still working at Polydor Records as an assistant to Colin Barlow.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: Uh, he's the best AR company in the country.
30:15
SPEAKER_03: Everything was going well.
30:16
SPEAKER_03: And I finally got the guts to quit the day job to try and really do my presenting thing full-time, even though I didn't have a job.
30:24
SPEAKER_03: So I handed in my resignation.
30:26
SPEAKER_03: I felt good about that.
30:27
SPEAKER_03: And now my days are gonna be freed up.
30:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna be able to market the fact that I have this BBC show.
30:32
SPEAKER_03: I get a call out the blue.
30:34
SPEAKER_03: This has been my whole life and career.
30:36
SPEAKER_03: And it was somebody on behalf of Mia Motley.
30:39
SPEAKER_03: Now, Mia Motley was not prime minister then, she was a minister and she was looking for me to do a diplomatic role in the UK.
30:47
SPEAKER_03: So I went straight from my day job, whatever.
30:49
SPEAKER_03: I had to accept that.
30:50
SPEAKER_03: What an honor to be like, so then I got this diploma, a red passport on this diplomatic role in London.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: I was like, absolutely, don't mind if I do.
31:00
SPEAKER_03: And so I immediately went into this thing, and one year later the government changed.
31:07
SPEAKER_03: So, what happened, ironically, even though I was hired in London, they somehow were contracted to take me and everything I own home duty-free if I wanted to.
31:18
SPEAKER_03: And I took the opportunity to jump ship.
31:20
SPEAKER_03: My parents were getting older, I wasn't sure anything was happening for me in London.
31:24
SPEAKER_03: I do a lot of work, a decade of work, and you know, just a few, few breaks.
31:29
SPEAKER_03: So I decided to move home, and it was the best thing I ever did.
31:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
31:32
SPEAKER_03: Up to now, people always say, but you left the big country.
31:35
SPEAKER_03: But I came home, uh, slept on my parents' couch for a few months, wondering what would become of me.
31:41
SPEAKER_03: And then a man called Habib Elias, hey Habib, decided he was gonna start Slam FM.
31:46
SPEAKER_03: And he said, I don't know nine but you, but they tell me you're BBC trained and not you're the best.
31:50
SPEAKER_03: But you you want to come in front.
31:52
SPEAKER_03: You think I want you to be the face in the morning uh show?
31:55
SPEAKER_03: And then I woke up the country for five years, and I think there's no job in my life I've done better than that.
32:00
SPEAKER_03: The Alex Jordan morning show.
32:01
SPEAKER_03: Brother, I love Sonny Bling, by the way.
32:04
SPEAKER_03: And I always talking to him.
32:05
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't do quite the same thing, right?
32:07
SPEAKER_03: He does a different show.
32:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I was always telling him, boy, if radio could pay me, it would be it would be radio for me every time.
32:13
SPEAKER_03: Because people are distracted by how you look.
32:16
SPEAKER_03: So, for example, this same Habibulias who starts Slam FM, he was like, I was like, okay, so we're having a launch, or how do people know there's a news station?
32:24
SPEAKER_03: He said, Tell your friends.
32:26
SPEAKER_03: Like, not even a soft launch.
32:30
SPEAKER_03: Listen, listen, you man, it's serious.
32:32
SPEAKER_03: This guy comes out of like nightclubs and food and restaurants.
32:35
SPEAKER_03: He wasn't really a radio man.
32:36
SPEAKER_03: So I was like, anyway, within three months, we we were number one in the country, right?
32:41
SPEAKER_03: And um Peter Harris, big up Peter Harris, one of my first sponsors on my show, he at CGI uh insurance, he said, we want to put you on the side of a bus.
32:52
SPEAKER_03: Because they sponsored one of my segments.
32:53
SPEAKER_03: I had a no but seriously segment, which people could call in to discuss things.
32:58
SPEAKER_03: My friends always, I'm making them laugh and they laughing, and then I'm always like, no, but seriously.
33:02
SPEAKER_03: So no but seriously became one.
33:04
SPEAKER_03: And then what drives you crazy is he fun one.
33:07
SPEAKER_03: So they sponsored no but seriously and they put me on the side of a bus.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: Well, the next two months with people calling and saying, Das what you look like.
33:15
Corie: Oh they were like, we thought you were original days on the radio, yeah.
33:18
SPEAKER_03: They thought you were yeah, this before all of that.
33:20
Corie: No camera in studio, no.
33:22
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
33:23
SPEAKER_03: They were like, we thought you was a big fat raster lady.
33:26
Corie: Yeah.
33:27
SPEAKER_03: But but he was like, yeah, small red woman, this makes no sense to us.
33:31
SPEAKER_03: And that taught me something, right?
33:33
SPEAKER_03: Because people fell in love with me.
33:35
SPEAKER_03: And then all of a sudden, when they saw the the garments, which you have no say in, they were like, Oh, I wouldn't have, they wouldn't have made that out.
33:45
SPEAKER_03: And I think if they'd seen me, I would have had a lot of stuff to work through in their minds before they heard me.
33:52
SPEAKER_03: Um, I much prefer radio to TV.
33:54
SPEAKER_03: I like people to listen because I think I have a lot of interesting things to say, and I don't think I look uh good.
33:58
SPEAKER_03: So please stop.
34:01
Corie: I with you on that though.
34:02
Corie: I wish this was audio, you know?
34:04
Corie: Yeah, same, bro.
34:05
Corie: Yeah, there's something about radio and the nostalgia of radio that we knew, where you get just at six o'clock every morning, you go, and there's Alex.
34:13
SPEAKER_03: Brother, it's intimate.
34:14
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, you're you wake up with someone, you know.
34:17
SPEAKER_03: I raise, I don't have children on my own, but I raised the generation.
34:19
SPEAKER_03: You know, people still come up to me and say, Oh my god, every drive to school, me, my mom, my little brother, we were locked in, and you know, I'm proud of that.
34:27
Corie: Yeah, good, good.
34:28
Corie: We're proud of it too.
34:28
Corie: We're proud of it too.
34:30
Corie: The voices of Caribbean radio, especially modern radio in the Caribbean, somebody should do a documentary on it.
34:35
Corie: Special, huh?
34:35
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
34:36
Corie: Very, very, very.
34:37
SPEAKER_03: Wait, you guys have that those that duet who sang the song?
34:40
SPEAKER_03: Something and something.
34:41
Corie: Blazer JW Blazer JW.
34:43
Corie: What's it Dale and Tony?
34:43
Corie: I try to figure out what Dale Antoni sings.
34:47
Corie: Yeah, but they have a few of them through the region, you know.
34:50
Corie: So um, just before I go for uh come back to the how you end up in this AR thing over there, like in music.
34:56
Corie: That's all good question.
34:58
SPEAKER_03: Another good question.
34:59
SPEAKER_03: Life is funny, huh?
35:00
SPEAKER_03: So I working, working, working, can't get no breaks, doing in night jobs, shared house with five people wondering where I left my good middle-class cushy life in Barbados for.
35:09
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, I am home one holiday playing golf.
35:12
SPEAKER_03: Um, again, privilege.
35:14
SPEAKER_03: I was a member since I was a child at the Royal Westmoreland, which is a fancy club in Barbados.
35:20
SPEAKER_03: And this guy who we played with one day was like, Oh, you're in England, you know?
35:24
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Yeah, you know, looking for a break, trying to be a TV presenter.
35:27
SPEAKER_03: He goes, Well, I don't know if I can help you with that.
35:29
SPEAKER_03: But he said, uh, I'm at Universal Music.
35:32
SPEAKER_03: I could probably get you an interview for a PA position.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: And I said, anything, anything is anything.
35:39
SPEAKER_03: What do you help?
35:40
SPEAKER_03: So off I went and I got this interview.
35:42
SPEAKER_03: This is such this stories are traumatic for me.
35:45
SPEAKER_03: It was like PTSD.
35:46
SPEAKER_03: So when I was getting ready for my interview, I put on like a, I remember like a dress suit, like with a jacket and a blazer, and you know, I'm so naive.
35:54
SPEAKER_03: And I walk into the place and everyone's in trainers and jeans.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: It's a record company, Alex.
36:00
SPEAKER_03: So I look totally ridiculous.
36:02
SPEAKER_03: And I interview with a man for the marketing, he's looking for a position, and I didn't get it.
36:07
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Well, you can't even become somebody's assistant, poor you.
36:11
SPEAKER_03: I felt so depressed.
36:12
SPEAKER_03: And I went home, lie down, cry my eyes out, go to sleep.
36:16
SPEAKER_03: And the next morning I got a call back, and they said, the marketing guy didn't want you, but the AR guy is also looking for an assistant.
36:24
SPEAKER_03: Can you come and meet him?
36:25
SPEAKER_03: I'm from the tank, Colin Barlow, and my eyes made four.
36:28
SPEAKER_03: That was it.
36:29
SPEAKER_03: And that was what that was really where I was meant to be.
36:32
SPEAKER_03: I joined Colin in October.
36:34
SPEAKER_03: Um, and we became the number one AR department in the UK that Christmas with the Christmas number one uh Girls Aloud Sound of the Underground.
36:43
SPEAKER_03: And uh it was five years of bliss.
36:45
SPEAKER_03: Like we just killed it.
36:46
SPEAKER_03: Oh, so you enjoyed that?
36:48
SPEAKER_03: I was great.
36:48
SPEAKER_03: I was a terrible assistant.
36:49
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
36:50
SPEAKER_03: Very disorganized.
36:52
SPEAKER_03: Listen, one weekend I'm supposed to send Colin to go and see Ronan Keating, his artist in another city.
36:59
SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I'm trying to organize flights and hotel and all his accreditation.
37:04
SPEAKER_03: When he comes in the Monday morning, I noticed he was looking rather cloudy.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: I said, How was it?
37:10
SPEAKER_03: He said, Well, Alex, when I was walking into Ronan's concert, I did notice that his demographic had gotten a bit older.
37:17
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, that happened, comes to us all, Col.
37:20
SPEAKER_03: And he said, You sent me to a Tom Jones concert.
37:26
SPEAKER_03: And for me, that's sackable.
37:28
SPEAKER_03: Surely that's sackable.
37:29
SPEAKER_03: Somehow I kept my job.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: I was like, so sorry about that.
37:33
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how that happened.
37:34
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm a disorganized person.
37:35
SPEAKER_03: So as an assistant, I wouldn't get, but of course, Colin has a very soft personality.
37:41
SPEAKER_03: So I I think I managed, in retrospect, looking back, a lot of relationships with managers and artists and oh, so that side was wicked.
37:48
SPEAKER_03: Yes, and I think I think we got on well.
37:50
SPEAKER_03: So I was kind of a psych and positive reinforcement counselor for him.
37:54
SPEAKER_03: I I added an All right, okay, well you bring in value.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it makes sense.
38:00
SPEAKER_03: So I got basically, long story short, I got the job at Polydor because um of a connection I met on the golf course in my life.
38:06
Corie: Understood, understood.
38:07
Corie: I must play more golf.
38:08
Corie: I'm gonna I'm gonna split well, you know.
38:10
Corie: Maybe I should start there.
38:11
Corie: I spend most of my time in the drain or on the side of the stuff.
38:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, don't we all, brother?
38:15
Corie: That's where it is.
38:16
Corie: So doing radio for all those years, you said 10 years, yeah?
38:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, radio.
38:20
SPEAKER_03: I well, I had a radio show at 17, huh?
38:22
SPEAKER_03: Before I went off to school.
38:23
SPEAKER_03: Uh uh uh Yes 10.4 in Barbados 104.1, uh, under Nermaltani and Kevin, they were great.
38:30
SPEAKER_03: So from very young, from very young, from six or seven, people kept saying to my parents, boy, she has a voice, huh?
38:37
SPEAKER_03: She was Vic Fernandes, very famous radio personality in Barbados, and now diplomat for the Barbados government.
38:43
SPEAKER_03: He told my mother I had that sound in my voice.
38:47
SPEAKER_03: And we never knew if he meant literal sound or money.
38:51
SPEAKER_04: Either way.
38:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:53
SPEAKER_03: So I was doing radio ads as a teenager.
38:55
SPEAKER_03: I see.
38:56
SPEAKER_03: And uh when I got like, you know, at the time,$150 for my 30-second ad, I was like, this is how we want to make my living.
39:02
SPEAKER_03: Like, that was so quick.
39:03
SPEAKER_03: So at 17, straight out of college, I had a radio show mid-morning, kind of nothing.
39:09
SPEAKER_03: But I, you know, I'd been doing it as a teenager.
39:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so you had no training.
39:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no training, no education, nothing.
39:17
SPEAKER_03: Which was fine for radio, but then when I got called to go to Sportsmax, this was Jamaica.
39:23
SPEAKER_03: Jamaica.
39:24
SPEAKER_03: That's live TV to the region five days a week.
39:28
Corie: So while you're still doing modern radio, you got a call for that?
39:31
Corie: Or you left?
39:31
Corie: Yeah, okay, okay.
39:32
SPEAKER_03: I had decided I was gonna leave.
39:34
SPEAKER_03: I felt like they weren't sharing the spoils with me.
39:37
SPEAKER_03: And I said, nah, I downed it on y'all.
39:39
SPEAKER_03: I this is all off my back and I'm not making enough money.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: And at that, the very same time, I got a call from Sports Max.
39:46
SPEAKER_03: Alexis Nunez had been picked up by ESPN.
39:48
SPEAKER_03: Right.
39:49
SPEAKER_03: And Ollie was like, why don't you come?
39:51
SPEAKER_03: And I said, But you know I don't do TV and I don't do sports, right?
39:53
SPEAKER_03: I do radio and I do music.
39:55
SPEAKER_03: And he said, No, but you could do TV and you could do sports because you're an athlete.
40:00
SPEAKER_03: So there's no training for that.
40:02
SPEAKER_03: Like, literally, live to the region was my first day ever doing live TV.
40:05
SPEAKER_03: And I was horrendous for at least a year.
40:09
SPEAKER_03: I had an ongoing joke with my dad.
40:10
SPEAKER_03: He had a friend, rest in peace, Jimmy, um, who I would see at golf or whatever.
40:15
SPEAKER_03: And every time I see Jimmy, come, Alex, come here, come here, come here.
40:18
SPEAKER_03: You need to stop looking down at your notes, man.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: Every time I see you looking down at you, like the man all nothing had nothing good to say.
40:25
SPEAKER_03: So I it kept me real.
40:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
40:27
SPEAKER_03: Kept me trying to keep better.
40:29
SPEAKER_03: Okay, maybe I won't look at my notes.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: That was more of a comfort thing anyway.
40:32
Corie: I suppose.
40:33
Corie: Yeah.
40:33
Corie: I suppose.
40:34
Corie: I learned in front of the world.
40:35
Corie: I wondered how you felt about it because you said before, like, radio gives you that anonymity.
40:40
Corie: It's just the voice and it's intimate.
40:42
Corie: But you said that it could be distracting when people find a way to look like a one though anyway.
40:45
SPEAKER_03: It's very distracting.
40:46
SPEAKER_03: And at first, the first thing that happened was I noticed it was distracting for me.
40:50
Corie: Because I was like, Oh, of course, you know, you're yeah, but radio, you just um So all this time I'm trying to look really cute to the camera.
40:58
SPEAKER_03: My brain is empty.
41:00
SPEAKER_03: Why?
41:00
SPEAKER_03: I have zero thoughts.
41:02
SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking, oh gosh, this is getting in the way of my free-flowing thoughts.
41:06
SPEAKER_03: So it took me getting comfortable with being ugly to get back into my thinking space.
41:13
SPEAKER_03: Thank God for Simon Crossgill and Lance Whitaker, who were such great company and such uh, you know, riveting conversation that then that started to go a bit more smooth.
41:22
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, and I didn't like when people looked at me.
41:25
SPEAKER_03: You know, that's the big thing in TV.
41:27
SPEAKER_03: There are not many women who do it.
41:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm mostly around men.
41:30
SPEAKER_03: And if you're meeting anyone in the public or in the hotel or something, they don't go up to Darren Ganga or Ian Bishop and tell them how they look.
41:38
SPEAKER_03: 100% of the time, there's a comment on how I look.
41:41
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you look tired.
41:42
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you look the same.
41:43
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you look different.
41:44
SPEAKER_03: Boy, you're looking much younger, you're looking much thinner in real life, right?
41:48
SPEAKER_03: These all these things were, you know.
41:51
SPEAKER_03: I was like, but but uh have I told you how you look?
41:54
SPEAKER_03: Because that's not of any concern to me and shouldn't be, and I realized people are obsessed with the way women look.
42:00
SPEAKER_03: So that's been a drag, if to say the least.
42:04
Corie: Yeah.
42:04
Corie: I can imagine that it's live.
42:06
Corie: You went when you went to it was live out the gate?
42:08
Corie: Live out the gate, red light fever, terrifying.
42:12
SPEAKER_03: And then uh on top of all of that, you know, I consider myself a profound person.
42:17
SPEAKER_03: I'm not surface level.
42:18
SPEAKER_03: Any conversation with me, we're gonna go a little deeper and everything.
42:21
SPEAKER_03: So the fact that these people were looking at my hairstyle or my make or my legs, or I was like, no, no, no, you you guys miss any point.
42:28
SPEAKER_03: Listen, listen to what I'm saying.
42:30
SPEAKER_03: And that's the problem with modern day life.
42:32
SPEAKER_04: I guess.
42:33
SPEAKER_03: Don't get me started here, brother.
42:35
SPEAKER_03: How it's go look.
42:38
SPEAKER_03: How it go look, and you want to know why you're depressed?
42:40
SPEAKER_03: Because we're so far away from how it feels.
42:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:44
SPEAKER_03: How does your soul feel?
42:45
SPEAKER_03: What is what is your body telling you?
42:46
SPEAKER_03: What can you think um that can inspire you?
42:49
SPEAKER_03: Instead, what is within?
42:51
SPEAKER_03: Instead, all we're focusing on is what is without, which is just Yeah, it's without again, luck of birth.
42:57
SPEAKER_03: My mother was a serious mother, you know.
42:59
SPEAKER_03: When people used to say, Oh, your children are beautiful or they haven't nice hair, they don't have nice anything, it has nothing to do with them.
43:05
SPEAKER_03: That's the parents.
43:06
SPEAKER_03: Like my mother was big on she ain't raising no child who think that she's nice or pretty or first time I came to Trinidad was the first time I really saw mixed-race people who look like me.
43:16
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Oh, these women look like me.
43:18
SPEAKER_03: But when I was looking around, 13, 14, 15, I was like, but they're not really behaving many.
43:23
SPEAKER_03: They're behaving in a way that they think they're very, very beautiful.
43:27
SPEAKER_03: So I was always going to identify myself as opposed to that.
43:31
SPEAKER_03: Understand?
43:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know you don't look, don't look at me.
43:33
SPEAKER_03: Mommy was a white Australian, yes.
43:35
SPEAKER_03: White Australian, white, blonde, shocking blonde.
43:37
SPEAKER_03: When you see her, you think, how did she produce this big monster of a woman?
43:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
43:43
SPEAKER_03: Caribbean jeans.
43:45
Corie: She's also small but mighty, you know?
43:47
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:47
Corie: I could imagine.
43:48
Corie: So that transition is starting to enjoy TV, you're missing radio.
43:51
Corie: How are you feeling there?
43:52
SPEAKER_03: I always miss radio because I think you can just become a little more uh thoughtful and make longer points on TV.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: It's different.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: You you actually, the art of TV is saying less because the pictures are saying telling things, and you're just sort of supporting the pictures.
44:09
SPEAKER_03: Um, I've enjoyed TV because it's given me a huge break.
44:12
SPEAKER_03: The the good news about people looking at you is that they know you.
44:14
Corie: Yeah, I suppose they have a big difference, right?
44:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:17
SPEAKER_03: Having said that, many people, when I'm just walking around, don't pick me out.
44:22
SPEAKER_03: But as soon as I sound my voice, voice, right?
44:25
Corie: Of course, of course.
44:26
Corie: You going into spaces again where you're like you comfortably say now, no training, you know, live TV, you're learning it as you go.
44:33
Corie: Uh, you're learning the whole idea of being on screen for the first time and so on.
44:37
Corie: Yeah.
44:37
Corie: And you're learning on new territory again because Jamaica, the Caribbean is so similar, but yet that move from Barbados to Jamaica, oh how's that for you?
44:45
Corie: Is that a big shift?
44:46
Corie: It's a great question again.
44:47
Corie: You see why you're a good one.
44:48
Corie: No, it's just because I moved to Jamaica too, I'll tell you.
44:50
Corie: So I know how that felt.
44:52
SPEAKER_03: I would like to hear your experience.
44:54
SPEAKER_03: I've lived all over the world.
44:55
SPEAKER_03: Like I said, Vancouver Island, Montreal.
44:57
SPEAKER_03: I travel the world, and the most significant move of my life was to Jamaica.
45:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:02
SPEAKER_03: What a what a place, huh?
45:04
SPEAKER_03: I I tell people that I found out what it was to be Bajan by living in Jamaica because I'll be like, oh my God, that's not at all our instinct.
45:11
SPEAKER_03: I would never behave like that.
45:12
SPEAKER_03: These people are outrageous.
45:14
SPEAKER_03: Um, and then of course you have to learn another language.
45:17
SPEAKER_03: That was the biggest thing for me.
45:19
SPEAKER_03: So everybody at sports facts, cameraman, producer, director, runner, everybody speaking Jamaican pattois.
45:27
SPEAKER_03: So that is a whole other language.
45:29
SPEAKER_03: And I would often have to say, I'm sorry, what did he say?
45:31
SPEAKER_03: And what does when he says those words?
45:33
SPEAKER_03: I can understand the words coming out of his mouth.
45:35
SPEAKER_03: What does he mean by those words?
45:37
SPEAKER_03: Because, you know, life TV is precise.
45:39
SPEAKER_03: And very often, even amongst themselves, I feel like the language would be casual and they would make a mistake.
45:44
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I didn't realize, you know, but now I realize that that yes eh.
45:48
SPEAKER_03: Right.
45:48
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, all right, well, let's let's get on the same page.
45:50
SPEAKER_03: And I I really double down on learning how they express themselves and what it means, et cetera, et cetera.
45:58
SPEAKER_03: That was a huge transition.
46:00
SPEAKER_03: Because not only am I doing this thing where I don't even know what's going on, how to do it, I now have to be like trying to pick up what they're actually what are my instructions, you know?
46:06
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, I guess professionally.
46:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:08
SPEAKER_03: I just think it out on the street.
46:09
SPEAKER_03: Like now I just know, bro.
46:11
SPEAKER_03: In the studio.
46:12
SPEAKER_03: Out on your street, it don't matter.
46:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:13
SPEAKER_03: In the studio, I'm like, I'm sorry, did anyone catch that?
46:16
SPEAKER_03: I certainly did not.
46:18
SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, no, Jamaica is so significant.
46:21
SPEAKER_03: What a race of people.
46:23
SPEAKER_03: They are unbelievable.
46:24
SPEAKER_03: I was shocked by the fact that I realized that they didn't really consider themselves West Indians first.
46:31
SPEAKER_03: They're Jamaicans.
46:32
SPEAKER_03: Um, I think the rest of the Caribbean, I'd like to think that we consider ourselves West Indians, even though we're beijing Trinity or whatever, whatever.
46:39
SPEAKER_03: But Jamaicans stand up in the world as Jamaicans.
46:42
SPEAKER_03: Uh, they're an extraordinary, vibrant, amazing, overachieving people.
46:46
SPEAKER_03: You want to talk about people making it despite dazzy people there to watch.
46:51
Corie: Yeah, nothing will get in your way.
46:53
Corie: Yeah, no.
46:54
SPEAKER_03: What was your experience like in Jamaica?
46:55
Corie: Similar, because the thing is, like, I haven't lived all over the world.
46:58
Corie: I live here, I lived in Jamaica, and I went, I was in Guyana very, very often.
47:01
Corie: I feel like those three places are home to me.
47:03
Corie: And um, I think the bigness that's uh uh uh aggression might be the wrong word, but that's what how it felt.
47:09
Corie: It felt like the way people say things, like very, very direct, the very is not what I expected.
47:14
Corie: And I expected um my experience with Jamaica was dub music is dancehall music.
47:18
Corie: So when I got there and I realized how religious people are reverent.
47:23
Corie: Because when I went to we we had started a business, so there were people who would be calling me Mr.
47:28
Corie: Shepherd all the time.
47:28
Corie: And I didn't understand it.
47:30
Corie: That is Corey.
47:30
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:31
Corie: And that Mr.
47:31
Corie: Shepard, and I thought people as my guide master, but these people so it was a real, real change.
47:36
Corie: And I think after I made that adjustment, I didn't want to come home.
47:39
Corie: Jamaica was very, very difficult for me to leave.
47:42
SPEAKER_03: Some of the best years of my life.
47:43
SPEAKER_03: Actually, just the other day, someone said, if you could live anywhere in the Caribbean, where would it be?
47:48
SPEAKER_03: And I immediately said Jamaica.
47:51
Corie: Because it's yeah, yeah, Jamaica, Jamaica is that place special place.
47:54
SPEAKER_03: They also know how to live, bro.
47:56
SPEAKER_03: They know how to live big time.
47:58
SPEAKER_03: And of course, dance, all music, yeah, artists like dirt, huh?
48:02
SPEAKER_03: Oh any little party.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: And then on top of that, athletes.
48:07
Corie: Yeah, of course.
48:08
SPEAKER_03: I was there in the time of bolt.
48:11
SPEAKER_03: It's there the same time.
48:12
Corie: I was there from 07 to like 2010, is when I was there.
48:15
Corie: So from the same time.
48:16
Corie: So that's another adjustment for you because you play sports and stuff, but you weren't doing sports broadcasting.
48:20
Corie: Oh, no.
48:21
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god, that's why it was so bad.
48:23
SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh no, my God, that NBA segment's coming up next.
48:27
SPEAKER_03: God help us.
48:28
SPEAKER_03: On to the NBA.
48:30
SPEAKER_03: So, um, you know, literally, but brother, I used to fake listen, anybody who knows knows.
48:36
SPEAKER_03: Whenever I meet people at CPL audiences who say, I watched this in sports max days, I just hold a hand and look in the eye.
48:41
SPEAKER_03: Say, thank you for sticking with me.
48:43
SPEAKER_03: Thank you for holding in there.
48:44
SPEAKER_03: Because I was, I didn't know anything.
48:46
SPEAKER_03: It's certainly not about basketball.
48:48
SPEAKER_03: That wasn't one of my sports.
48:49
SPEAKER_03: I could manage myself in the football and in the track and in the local football and stuff.
48:55
SPEAKER_03: But brother, it was some stress.
48:58
SPEAKER_03: It was some stress.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: Eventually, my whole career has been an exercise in being all right looking stupid.
49:09
SPEAKER_03: You just have to come to grips with the fact that someone can think, A, you're a dance, b, you don't know, C, you shouldn't be there.
49:17
SPEAKER_03: And even so it's so much, right?
49:19
SPEAKER_03: Especially with the cricket, because you know, cricket is an institution.
49:22
SPEAKER_03: So I feel like big, big names in a game should be watching me, like, what do you hell, what the hell she did?
49:28
SPEAKER_03: I used to think up all of these comebacks for if someone was gonna accost me and tell me how bad I was, which they would have every right in doing.
49:36
SPEAKER_03: So one of my comebacks is gonna be, I know, right?
49:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so that that telling me about what y'all, how how come I'm there and not you?
49:43
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you tell people just that's that's that's what I would say.
49:45
SPEAKER_03: But like, in other words, real sporting aficionados, real whatever, y'all should be fighting down the door for this role here.
49:53
SPEAKER_03: I'm disappointed right now, actually, 2026.
49:56
SPEAKER_03: I'm disappointed that they're not more people fighting for my role.
50:00
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
50:00
SPEAKER_03: Where's the next generation of broadcasters, sportscasters?
50:04
Corie: TikTok and Instagram and um, what do they call it?
50:07
Corie: The next places.
50:07
Corie: A lot of people like the comments, you know, because what you did or do, it takes something more than whether it's knowledge or it takes.
50:15
Corie: I don't even know if you can explain it.
50:16
SPEAKER_03: I think it is knowledge and access and engagement and yeah.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: But some belly.
50:22
SPEAKER_03: The modern world.
50:23
SPEAKER_03: I saw this guy's Instagram account the other day.
50:26
SPEAKER_03: It's a white Englishman who knows his uh reggae music tall.
50:29
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: So every day he plays some ancient thing, and the what he talks about, the record, the studio, the ting, and when I turned to my friend, I said, You think this level of study and application happens anymore in the world?
50:43
SPEAKER_03: Everything is so surface level.
50:45
SPEAKER_03: So I think that would be the difference.
50:46
SPEAKER_03: That you know, uh TikTok and a lot of people, it's the cheap thrill or the cheap laugh, and it's nothing that has any layers.
50:54
SPEAKER_03: Whereas this role, you need to have a few layers.
50:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you need to do a little more thinking, a little more preparation, a little more research.
51:01
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's cerebral as well.
51:04
Corie: Especially with West Indian young sports people.
51:06
Corie: So, SportsMax, how long you, how long you I was there for five years.
51:09
SPEAKER_03: Well, that was five years, yes.
51:11
SPEAKER_03: That was five years, yeah, yeah, yeah.
51:12
SPEAKER_03: Please don't keep adding up these years, people.
51:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we add in.
51:14
SPEAKER_03: We go in.
51:15
SPEAKER_03: And then, um, and so then one year, 2017, uh, Kerry Gibbons decided that we were gonna do something called Fanzone, where we send me and I go and interview the fans of the CPL around the region.
51:30
SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, that's sounding good.
51:32
SPEAKER_04: Right.
51:32
SPEAKER_03: That takes me out of the studio and I can go and travel and maybe get home to Barbados.
51:36
SPEAKER_03: Oh nice.
51:37
SPEAKER_03: So we did it, Fan View, I think it was called FanView.
51:40
SPEAKER_03: And it was a little YouTube show, and CPL picked me up from there.
51:44
SPEAKER_03: Oh, so they saw that?
51:45
SPEAKER_03: They saw that and they came for me.
51:48
SPEAKER_03: And then when I decided to go and do the CPL from there, I got offered the ICC stuff and the World Cups, and my life changed.
51:58
Corie: If you want to support the show and ensure that we gain the best guests here telling the best stories, and we gain a little bit of back and all out of all of them, you could support for free by liking, sharing, and subscribing on YouTube.
52:09
Corie: But you could also join our Patreon, it's just file us to ensure that we could continue to get stories that inspire, educate, empower, inform, and all the other in things that these people behind the scenes tell me to say.
52:20
Corie: So go and do it now, and then we could jump back into the episode.
52:24
Corie: Bang.
52:25
Corie: So cricket knowledge now, because West Indians sports a little crazy.
52:30
Corie: When it comes to cricket, it's a different world now.
52:32
Corie: Yeah.
52:33
Corie: That's right.
52:34
Corie: I try not to talk about cricket at all here.
52:36
Corie: I'm afraid.
52:37
Corie: Same.
52:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm sure.
52:38
SPEAKER_03: Same, but no, but same, right?
52:41
SPEAKER_03: Because remember, didn't play.
52:43
SPEAKER_03: Wasn't a massive fan in the way, let's say a nickel is a fan, where you know, you follow every ball.
52:48
SPEAKER_03: But I grew up at a time when we were kings and we watched a lot of cricket.
52:51
SPEAKER_03: My mother's Australian.
52:53
SPEAKER_03: We all we have it in both veins.
52:56
SPEAKER_03: And we always go into cricket.
52:57
SPEAKER_03: And I remember as a teenager, my boyfriend at the time, Alan and I would go to Grenada and watch cricket.
53:03
SPEAKER_03: I would trend that and watch cricket.
53:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, we were, we were, it was a thing.
53:06
SPEAKER_03: So I knew cricket from a fan perspective.
53:10
SPEAKER_03: But much as I tell Samuel Badry all the time, I never watched Ebola.
53:13
SPEAKER_03: Because I I am a racket person, so I only watch in the bathroom.
53:17
SPEAKER_03: Long story short, my cricket knowledge was very poor when I first started watching, I mean commentating cricket.
53:23
SPEAKER_03: Very poor as in heads should have rolled.
53:28
SPEAKER_03: Right?
53:29
SPEAKER_03: I didn't know.
53:30
SPEAKER_03: Up to now, there's subtleties of balls and things I leave to my expert.
53:35
SPEAKER_03: Right?
53:36
SPEAKER_03: But there are two roles in a commentary box.
53:38
SPEAKER_03: There's a lead, which is what I do, which is more broadcaster role, call what you see.
53:42
SPEAKER_03: And then there's a color or or a talent, who is the expert will be a former player who then fills in you know what kind of ball and how it was, and they describe.
53:52
SPEAKER_03: So I think it does uh yeah, yes.
53:54
SPEAKER_03: Now, of course, I know the positions on the cricket field now, and I know so much more than I did before.
53:59
SPEAKER_03: But there's an element of humility you just gotta keep with that.
54:02
SPEAKER_03: There, you know, I remember you're a couple of years ago hearing Bish say off air, oh, what happens in that case?
54:08
SPEAKER_03: And I say, if the great Ian Bishop dono.
54:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, who is me?
54:14
SPEAKER_03: So then I realized this is your mother's lesson from young, again, a very non-West Indian lesson.
54:20
SPEAKER_03: It's okay not to know.
54:23
SPEAKER_03: It's okay not to know.
54:25
SPEAKER_03: And what I started doing is not going down a lane I could I didn't know.
54:30
SPEAKER_03: Call what you know, whatever, and then fill in.
54:32
SPEAKER_03: And you still make tons of errors.
54:34
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
54:34
Corie: I had to ask you about how you're so comfortable in spaces like those because you've said repeatedly, you weren't good at this when you started off.
54:40
Corie: You was you don't know enough, you're not trained in it.
54:43
Corie: Where do you find the gumption to go through that period?
54:46
Corie: I think it's gumption.
54:47
SPEAKER_03: It is gumption.
54:48
SPEAKER_03: I'm not comfortable.
54:49
SPEAKER_03: There's no part of me that's comfortable.
54:51
SPEAKER_03: The first I had I got an agent.
54:52
SPEAKER_03: That was the big break.
54:54
SPEAKER_03: Because I was still a kind of presenter, interviewer by the time he came into my life.
54:59
SPEAKER_03: But he's such a big agent, he has so much reach.
55:02
SPEAKER_03: He I remember my first assignment, and this is as a commentator.
55:06
SPEAKER_03: I guess CPL had given me one or two overs.
55:10
SPEAKER_03: I guess they were trying me out, and in that environment, alongside all my guys, I know it was okay, but still.
55:16
SPEAKER_03: And then he calls and says, All right, you are off to Abu Dhabi for Afghanistan, Ireland, One Day International.
55:26
SPEAKER_03: Brother, in all of my life, I have never felt fear like that.
55:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
55:32
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
55:33
SPEAKER_03: Up to now I go up to the gentleman with whom I did the um broadcast to say, I'm so sorry about that.
55:39
SPEAKER_03: Thank you for all your kindness.
55:41
SPEAKER_03: There was just no way I should have been doing it.
55:43
SPEAKER_03: It'd be interesting to look back and think.
55:45
SPEAKER_03: And my first big one here, I got a test match with Ian Bishop in Antigua.
55:49
SPEAKER_03: It was Sri Lanka, West Indies.
55:50
SPEAKER_03: So there I was like brilliant shot.
55:54
SPEAKER_03: Over to you, Dish.
55:56
SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking, what the hell?
55:58
SPEAKER_03: This is Test cricket.
55:59
SPEAKER_03: Because T20, the institution is not as traditional.
56:04
SPEAKER_03: And furthermore, you know, men like Mikey Holder and them that not even watching T20.
56:09
SPEAKER_03: So I felt kind of.
56:11
SPEAKER_01: But when the test match now, I said, no, sir.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: Oh, God help me.
56:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I don't do too much of that now.
56:18
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:19
Corie: But that I have to ask as well, well, because you're finding it in yourself in these spaces, where do you think it is people seeing you to put you in spaces where never you're showing up brand new?
56:28
SPEAKER_03: A lot of experience, yes, but I think people are very impacted by my voice.
56:34
SPEAKER_03: That's I that's my takeaway.
56:36
SPEAKER_03: I think people think the voice sounds assertive and sounds believable.
56:42
SPEAKER_03: And I also think I've got an a personal energy that draws people in.
56:49
SPEAKER_03: So I think those are the two things that people saw.
56:52
SPEAKER_03: You know, they think, all right, she's fairly capable, which is not true.
56:55
SPEAKER_03: But I think you keep saying it's not true.
56:57
SPEAKER_03: Well, at the time it wasn't true.
56:58
SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
56:59
SPEAKER_03: So at the time it wasn't true, but I think I sounded to them like I was capable.
57:05
SPEAKER_03: And again, I do have some innate self-confidence which comes from my parents and my upbringing and my education.
57:13
SPEAKER_03: Because yeah, what is confidence?
57:17
SPEAKER_03: Confidence is about getting over little barriers every time, like in the gym, doing a one more weight, or doing something that makes you uncomfortable and getting through.
57:26
SPEAKER_03: And you know, and you and you build that up over the years.
57:28
SPEAKER_03: And confidence is also being okay with getting it wrong and looking stupid.
57:33
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
57:34
SPEAKER_03: That takes a lot of shutzpa.
57:36
SPEAKER_03: That takes belief in self because you come to grips with the fact that someone in Chiguanas is gonna think you're an idiot, and you gotta live with that because you know you're not an idiot.
57:48
SPEAKER_03: I think that that's would be where my confidence comes from.
57:52
Corie: And so the initial role when you moved from Sports Max was the fanzone thing.
57:57
SPEAKER_03: Fanzone to CPL.
57:58
Corie: Right.
57:59
SPEAKER_03: Being the the lady kind of interviewing sideline, la la.
58:03
SPEAKER_03: And then after a year or two there, they invited me into the common trump commentary box.
58:08
SPEAKER_03: No one was more surprised than me.
58:10
Corie: Yeah, really?
58:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay, if you if you say so, you guys are the bosses, but I think this is a terrible idea.
58:18
SPEAKER_01: Let this be on you, okay?
58:20
SPEAKER_01: Let this be on.
58:21
SPEAKER_03: But you don't run from it.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: I don't run from anything.
58:24
SPEAKER_03: That's uh something I've learned in life.
58:26
SPEAKER_03: If you see how I got all my breaks, it's never been by through the rules and applying and writing anything.
58:32
SPEAKER_03: It's not like you apply for nothing.
58:33
SPEAKER_03: No, never in my life that my work has come to me.
58:35
SPEAKER_03: But it takes uh it takes courage and it takes trust and belief that me, all right, you can do this.
58:42
SPEAKER_03: I think who's the Virgin Atlantic guy?
58:45
SPEAKER_03: Richard Branson.
58:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Branson.
58:46
SPEAKER_03: He he's famous for the quote, just say yes.
58:50
SPEAKER_03: Right?
58:50
SPEAKER_03: Just say yes and you will you'll figure it out.
58:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
58:54
Corie: Now that we've learned your connection with people, like I was looking on your YouTube channel recently and I saw your last video talking direct to camera, and I was wondering if sports is where you're gonna stay.
59:05
Corie: Because I felt when I watched that video that you have a lot to say about a lot outside of sports.
59:10
SPEAKER_03: Yes, thank you, Corey.
59:11
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I was telling my mom I'm going on the Corey Shepherd podcast, and it's it's a terrible reminder that I don't have my podcast yet.
59:21
SPEAKER_03: A decade I try and start a podcast.
59:23
SPEAKER_03: Um yes, I want to talk about a lot of things.
59:27
SPEAKER_03: I love sports, and I will do it for as long as they'll have me.
59:31
SPEAKER_03: But I feel like there are deeper, more meaningful stories that I'd like to tell.
59:35
SPEAKER_03: As you can tell, I have interest in many things, and I I think by this age as well, collected a lot of wisdom.
59:41
SPEAKER_03: And I'd like to share it.
59:42
SPEAKER_03: I'd like to share it particularly with generation next who are growing up in a world that is I don't recognize and is very destabilizing for them.
59:52
SPEAKER_03: So I would like to do stuff about the human human experience and uh yeah, deep things.
59:59
SPEAKER_03: Let me talk some, let me talk below the surface now.
1:00:01
Corie: Yeah, I think so.
1:00:02
Corie: I think so.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_03: You like the like what video was it if you don't mind me asking?
1:00:05
SPEAKER_03: Do you remember?
1:00:05
Corie: I remember it was the last thing on your, I'll show you where it was.
1:00:07
Corie: It was the last thing I saw on your YouTube.
1:00:09
Corie: Is it your YouTube channel?
1:00:10
SPEAKER_03: It is, it is straight to camera.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_03: Straight to camera is harder, isn't it?
1:00:14
SPEAKER_03: It's a little harder than uh speaking with someone.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_03: So I think that's why I've delayed so long in having a podcast because I'm not sure how it looked, or you know, is it with me and one other person or who am I interviewing?
1:00:25
Corie: And oh, you mean how it looks in terms of what you final products have been?
1:00:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_03: So, yes, I want to talk about things more than sports is the answer to me.
1:00:32
Corie: Well, at least for me, it's captivating because to hear you, I think like what's a sudden beginning.
1:00:36
Corie: There's a lot of times you find that people could just define it as the thing they meant to watch.
1:00:40
Corie: Yes.
1:00:40
Corie: Or the thing you get most popular for.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_03: A video's gone viral, this CPL of me dancing with a TKR fan.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you've seen it.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_03: It's to Marshall and Ruperty's Unity.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_03: They just catch me, right?
1:00:51
SPEAKER_03: And and as the trainees would say, I had catch it.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:00:54
SPEAKER_03: I hear the tune and I was like, I love that song.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_03: So it's a lovely little piece with me and her dancing.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_03: So I've been enjoying the comments, which were all very lovely.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Trinan Tobago.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_03: It could have been different.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_03: One of the comments was, I didn't know Alex have all them moves.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking, you don't know anything about me then.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_03: You don't know anything about me if you don't know I'm a dancer.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_03: I'm a raver.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_03: Like ding-dong ravers.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_03: Don't forget, I live in Kingston.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_03: All right, okay.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_03: I love to dance.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_03: I've been dancing all my life.
1:01:31
Corie: Yeah, I think that's why it was so it was refreshing for me to see because I feel like, especially with cricket being what it meant to the region and you being, I got the voice of cricket in the region.
1:01:40
Corie: We've had many, but it's true.
1:01:43
Corie: Listen, it's 100% true.
1:01:44
Corie: Like we were talking before, we cut it out if we need to, about the decision with CPL year to year.
1:01:50
Corie: And I know you're saying an interview, too, you call yourself a hired gun.
1:01:53
Corie: You say you're on contract if they call it a work and you and you figure it out.
1:01:56
Corie: And we know you'll figure it out.
1:01:58
Corie: But I can imagine CPL without hearing your voice, you're not even watching the games.
1:02:02
Corie: I didn't watch a game for the season yet.
1:02:04
Corie: Maybe I'll just stick to that if TK come back, I'll say I watch all right.
1:02:07
Corie: But here seeing it or hearing coverage without your voice or your presence here.
1:02:13
Corie: Something is missing.
1:02:15
Corie: And I can we zoom in on that?
1:02:17
Corie: Yeah.
1:02:17
Corie: Can we?
1:02:18
Corie: But I don't need that.
1:02:20
Corie: Do you really think so?
1:02:23
Corie: I alone here.
1:02:24
Corie: No, it's a hundred percent true.
1:02:26
Corie: It's a hundred percent true.
1:02:27
Corie: And we have had so many people here.
1:02:29
Corie: I grew up, or we grew up, you have Tony Cozir, Michael Holden, as you said.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_03: Big up Fazir Mohammed.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_03: Fazir Mohammed.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_03: For me, one of the best, best, best, top, top, top men.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_03: I love to hear Fazir Mohammed talk.
1:02:40
Corie: Yeah, maybe it's good that you bring up Fazir because I was I was producing a podcast one time for Lasana Lieber and Wayne Shepard and the Birdie and Barney podcast, and they had Fazir on.
1:02:49
Corie: What's really impressive about what Fazir said was that um when he was doing coverage for football, like you said about cricket, he said it's not my strong point, but he said that um he was doing it for the BBC as well.
1:03:00
Corie: And he said I took the time to learn the players' names.
1:03:03
Corie: He spent some time on that because he said, if I could learn Sidebottom and Bratways and this, he said, it's an insult to my culture and an insult to who I am and my ethnicity.
1:03:12
Corie: If you got simple names that might be coming out of Asia, Africa, India, yes, very pronouncing.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_03: You can imagine that I'm a bit of a stickler for that.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry, how did you pronounce that?
1:03:25
SPEAKER_03: I believe it's Vital, not Vitel.
1:03:27
Corie: Yeah, I would imagine.
1:03:29
Corie: I would imagine.
1:03:30
Corie: But yeah, in a space now where your voice is there or is missing when it's not there.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you like to think you bring something, but you know, no one is bigger than a broadcast.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, we couldn't cope without an Ian Bishop voice.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_03: We couldn't cope without a I'm one part of a family that makes the whole thing tick.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_03: And and I'm honored that people think that I bring something refreshing because it is not that sort of hardcore cricket knowledge.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_03: That's not what I bring.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_03: I bring something else.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_03: And I guess over the years I've learned to value that because the Caribbean values that.
1:04:03
Corie: 100%, 100%.
1:04:04
Corie: What you bring is Alex Jordan.
1:04:05
Corie: Yeah.
1:04:05
Corie: And I mean, I'm honored and thank you for always saying very, very kind and charitable things on the Instagram page and so on.
1:04:11
Corie: You've been very gracious to us when we fumbling over words here.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_03: No, no, I love, I really enjoyed the podcast.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_03: And I I've seen a few clips where whose like the quotes I've taken and been using in my own day-to-day life.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_03: So I'm an avid subscriber.
1:04:24
Corie: Oh, this is a lot of pressure.
1:04:25
Corie: Thanks for saying that when we're almost done.
1:04:28
Corie: So, where's the future lie?
1:04:29
Corie: What what are you seeing as as weird going for you?
1:04:31
SPEAKER_03: Well, it feels now like a little time for a pivot.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_03: I I, you know, I always joke that I'm really a Jamaican.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_03: I have 10, may I have 10 jobs.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_03: So um, I have given up one or two of those to buy back some time for myself.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_03: I want to write a book.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_03: I want to tell the story of my life and two generations before me, but in a way that people would consume it now, because you know there's so few readers.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_03: So I want a little more time, less time on the road.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, I definitely love to keep doing CPL and maybe one or two others, but not not the whole year on the road anymore for me.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_03: I'd like, like you say, to talk about other things and focus on a few other things.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_03: So hopefully um the future brings that.
1:05:11
Corie: Good, good, good.
1:05:11
Corie: We're looking forward to it.
1:05:12
Corie: I think your voice could change a lot of things in your region.
1:05:15
Corie: Thank you, man.
1:05:15
Corie: Thank you very much for coming today.
1:05:17
Corie: Thanks for taking the time.
1:05:18
Corie: I have to tell people, Alex, had to go back to the game now.
1:05:20
Corie: Yes.
1:05:21
Corie: Yeah, game day today.
1:05:22
Corie: Come on, TKR.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_03: You can do it.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_03: You allowed us to that's the other thing, right?
1:05:28
SPEAKER_03: People are always like, who's your team?
1:05:30
SPEAKER_03: My team is West Indies.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_03: I do it West Indies.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_03: But I have an ongoing joke with Bravo and following them that I don't support TKR.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_03: Because TKR don't mean by support, right?
1:05:39
SPEAKER_03: That means the big down.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_03: Last week they get them already dressed.