Weird Guy With A Knife
It was after 2 am. I was all alone in the building, hosting the overnight all-request show on CKSL in London when a security guard burst in through the control room door behind me.
He shouted, “Don’t worry – we know where he is. We’ve almost got him!” He ran back out of the room and down the long glass hallway alongside the studio at a full gallop. I was completely freaked out! What the hell was he talking about? And who was “him”? And why the hell weren’t there locks on our studio doors??
There was a flurry of activity just beyond the adjacent studio in the newsroom, with people scurrying about but no one bothering to come back and explain the situation to me. I was petrified!
After the noise died down and while the extended version of Tina Turner’s “You Better Be Good To Me” thumped on, I tip-toed out to the foyer to discover an exhausted security guard, attempting in vain to fix the lock on the glass front doors of the radio station.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
I could feel the colour drain from my face when he said, “We saw a guy with a knife wandering inside the station on the security camera but we caught him and the cops have him now. He busted this lock pretty easy. I can’t fix it now. We’ll have to get someone out in the morning. ‘Night!”
I stood there dumbfounded. Was the knife-wielding guy just some kook who happened to break into a radio station? Was he PO’d at the station? At me? I never did find out. My shift was nearly over so I only checked behind me roughly 7,000 times to see if anyone had come in through the door with the broken lock. It was a nice station, too – very new and modern. It would not be the last time I felt the announcers’ safety wasn’t a big enough concern for management. The prevailing attitude was, no one’s been killed yet! There were too many times I walked through dark station parking lots to even darker entry doors, vulnerable to any loony or crack addict who happened by. But I’ve always been lucky.
The crappy lock was fixed and no one ever mentioned another word about it. Since that time, I’ve never been quite comfortable in studios where I have to sit with my back to the door.
