Saturday was easily the best day's hitching I've had so far.

It was a cloudless day with temperatures in the 90s, and maybe the weather put people in an even more generous mood than usual. I never had to wait more than about twenty minutes, and on one occasion I put down my backpack, stuck out my thumb, and was given a ride by the first car to come along.

The driver was a mass of contradictions. A former hitchhiker himself, he went several miles out of his way to make sure I was in the best possible spot to catch another ride. And yet he told me proudly: 'I always stop for white people, but never for blacks and Mexicans. It's them that does all those carjackings and things.'

I'm losing count of these instances of casual, throwaway bigotry, and I was reminded of another otherwise perfectly pleasant racist I'd met.

I was sitting outside a 7-Eleven in New Britain, Pennsylvania, when a state trooper leapt out of his car, bounded over to me, and shook my hand. He'd seen me walking along the road with my 'Coast to Coast' banner.

I won't forget his words in a hurry. 'Boy, that is one fucking long walk,' he boomed, and everyone within earshot turned round and grinned.

He insisted on buying me a bagel, and then sat down beside me and told me about his recent visit to the UK.

'I went to the gates of Downing Street and showed 'em my badge. Told 'em I was from New Britain. They let me in and took my picture on the steps of number 10.

'Then I went to see the House of Lords. That was real interesting too, all them guys in funny clothes asleep on the benches. But you know what? I was really shocked at how many of 'em was what you Brits would call wogs.'

That's one of the things that's most coming home to me on this trip: people's stubborn refusal to be pigeonholed.

Anyway, the next ride I got was a real humdinger. The driver was a motorcycle collector, and had taken a shine to a 1996 Honda Goldwing selling on eBay. His was the winning bid, at $8,000, but the only thing was, he lived in Montreal and the seller lived in Tampa.

So he drove 1,600 miles down I-95, the main east coast road, handed over the money, and took the bike home on a trailer. That's the equivalent of me driving from London to Palermo to do my Saturday shopping, but he didn't give it a second thought, though his wife told him he was crazy.

He told me I was welcome to come any or all of the way, and for a while the air was thick with possibilities. I could go to New York and retrace my steps by car. Or I could go all the way to Quebec, where the snow had started to fall already, just for the hell of it.

But eventually reality got the better of me, and I came as far as Savannah, 320 miles from where I'd started my day. I've enjoyed my rest, but I want to get walking again sooner rather than later.

A new word has entered the English lexicon, thanks in no small part to Bill Clinton's speech at this week's Labour party conference.

The former president introduced delegates to the concept of ubuntu, from the Bantu languages of southern Africa. It means something along the lines of 'I am because you are.'

The idea is that humans need other individuals to be fulfilled, and that we enjoy being ourselves by enjoying the company of others. Because we share a common bond, when one person gains, we all gain.

I'm very much aware of how dependent I've been on the company and kindness of others during this time in my life.

When Jayne was ill, we worried constantly that compassion fatigue would set in and the torrent of visits and phone calls from friends and family would eventually dry up, leaving us to cope on our own. But it never did.

Now, my passage across America is being eased by a thousand acts of kindness from strangers: the guy behind me in the supermarket line paying my bill, the restaurant owner giving me a free meal, people taking the time to sit down with me and discuss the next day's route, or phone me after I've vanished into the distance. Without them, it would have been a lonely and joyless journey.

I'm now hitching up the east coast of Florida back to Kentucky, and every ride I get is another gesture of friendship from a person I shall probably never meet again.

This evening, I arrived at a truckstop and asked the woman behind the counter in the shop whether there was anywhere to stay.

'No, there's nothing here,' she said. 'The nearest motels are at the next exit, three or four miles up the road. But if you can wait fifteen minutes till I get off work, I'll give you a lift there - it's on my way home.'

She, and everyone else before her, was doing this because she hoped that others would treat her in the same way when she needed it. It wasn't a calculating decision, just a piece of spur-of-the-moment altruism. It made her happy too, which is why I feel perfectly OK about putting my thumb out and asking drivers for free transportation.

The receptionist in last night's motel used to live in Leytonstone. There was a world of difference between the urban grime of east London and the waving palms of south Florida, but she still wished she could go back.

'Everyone is so self-centred here,' she said. 'They're all too busy making money to care about anyone else.'

Well, there may have been a grain of truth in what she said, but based on my experiences over the last three months, ubuntu is as alive and well in the United States as it is anywhere else in the world.

I'm delighted to have received a message of encouragement from Craig and Charlie Reid, better known as The Proclaimers.

Being a dullard and an ignoramus, I've only recently discovered that they had an album called Hit the Highway and a hit single with I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles). I thought the lyrics were particularly appropriate:

But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles
To fall down at your door.

So I've officially declared it to be my theme song.

Thanks, Craig and Charlie! Any time you fancy a spot of exercise, come and join me. Actually, that applies to all of you.

I'm heading back to Kentucky tomorrow.

This postcard is from my good friend Alex Childs, who lives in Leeds, England. The space shuttle flew over my motel the other night on its way in to land, creating a sonic boom, but I slept right through it.

I often make comparisons between this walk and my first visit to the States and Canada in 1978, during my year off between school and college.

Then, this country seemed impossibly remote; today, it feels like a second home, just a shortish hop away. I hitched 15,000 miles in ten weeks, mainly on interstates. I was addicted to speed - rapid movement, that is, not amphetamines, though the effect was similar - and to travel for its own sake. Then, as now, I met a constant cavalcade of amazing people whose only common feature was their open-handedness towards strangers.

This time, the pace has been rather more leisurely: an average of about 3.2 miles an hour, hopefully taking some nine months to cover just over 3,000 miles.

But the biggest difference between the two journeys has been one of technology.

In 1978, my parents counted themselves lucky if they got one phone call every two weeks, and I needed to accumulate a truckload of quarters before I phoned. Today, I can call them a couple of times a week, whenever I like, without giving it a second thought.

Back then, I could never have dreamed that one day I'd be on a similar journey, but with two little black boxes in my backpack.

One would be a tiny portable telephone, with free calls thanks to the generosity of the phone company. As an added bonus, it would tell me my location on the frequent occasions when I got lost.

The other would be an enormously powerful computer that would allow me to write about my experiences, sharing words and pictures with people all over the world.

The Coast to Coast banner on my backpack is my most important possession, because it's led to so many extraordinary encounters and friendships. But my laptop comes a close second. It's the reason why an evening on my own in a motel is not a dreary prospect, but something I can still look forward to.

Most of my blog gets written in my head as I walk, and one of the first things I do after the door shuts behind me is to upload it from my brain to my computer. The emails and the messages on the blog are a source of real pleasure too, a constant reminder that I'm not alone.

The technology does create a whole new set of problems, of course. The phone's coverage can be very patchy outside large towns, and recharging it is a constant preoccupation. One way is to find a drinks vending machine in the street, unplug it and plug in the phone, hoping that no one ends up with a warm can of Coke as a result. Once, in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, I was sitting with my phone plugged into one socket of a drinks machine and my laptop connected to the other. A succession of Amish people clipclopped past in their horsedrawn buggies, in a meeting of 21st- and 19th-century technologies.

BITTER ABOUT LITTER
Coast to Coast names and shames the perpetrators

My walk has made me sadly aware that every mile of every road in America (and probably the world, for that matter) is a living indictment of the throwaway society.

The other day, I was hitching outside Atlanta when a van stopped for me. I opened the door, and out tumbled half a dozen empty drinks cans and Pringles tubes. In my usual helpful way, I started picking them up and putting them back in the van.

'Don't worry about them,' the driver said. His exact words are engraved in my mind. 'They're trash. There'll be someone along to sweep them up.'

I ingored his instructions, but I was still mildly shocked.

I don't often get to meet a litterer face to face. I've always assumed they were spotty, drunken 17-year-olds, cackling gleefully and driving ageing stolen Ford Mustangs at 90 miles an hour. But here was an ordinary, respectable middle-aged guy who'd had the decency to offer me a ride and yet still expected other people to clean up after him.

Anyway, not all litterers shroud themselves in a cloak of anonymity. Some proudly display their credentials for all the world to see.

K. Long, of Union, Kentucky, wanted a job flipping burgers at Wendy's. He or she filled in the application form but then, overcome by the sheer futility of existence, tore it up and scattered it to the four winds.












Elsewhere in the fast-food industry, Brad's boss gave him a laminated copy of the Cheers restaurant mission statement. On his way home from work he treated it with the contempt it deserved, hurling it out of the car window.



Joe Degrella received a letter from Crosman Corporation, a gun supplier. I don't know what it said - 'Dear Mr Degrella, like most of your fellow Americans you have an unhealthy preoccupation with weaponry, so we have decided not to send the fifty AK-47s you ordered'? - but he threw away the envelope. I was just coming into Crestwood, so I thought I'd go and drop it in his mailbox, but I couldn't find Locust Lane.



Thirteen-year-old Timothy has the classic chiselled all-American good looks and athleticism of a future basketball star, and every girl in his class has a secret crush on him. But he hates it when people call him Timmy. So when this piece of well-meant advice was passed to him under the desk during math class, he consigned it to the Ohio countryside where it belonged.



And finally, Chuck Owens lives at 5085 Tile Plant Road, New Lexington, OH. One day, he will Google his name and find his secret moment of shame displayed on my blog for all the world to see. An intrusion on his privacy? I don't think so. When he tossed this delivery note onto the grass at the side of the road, he was placing it in the public domain, like an artist nervously greeting guests at his first solo exhibition.

The ride out of Mango felt odd right from the start.

A friendly and smartly dressed couple in their early fifties stopped for me. Skipping the usual exchange of pleasantries - where are you going, where are you coming from, what brings you to the US - they simply asked my name and nationality.

Then the husband began to talk, and this is what he said. I know it's what he said because he was reading from a script, and I have a copy of it here in front of me.

'Phil, has anyone ever told you that God loves you and that he has a wonderful plan for your life?

'I have a real quick, but important question to ask you. If you were to die this very second, do you know for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you would go to heaven?'

I felt alarmed. Were they about to stage a spectacular car crash to find out the answer to this question?

'No? Let me quickly share with you what the Holy Bible reads. It reads "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our lord."

'The Bible also reads: "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved". And you're a "whosoever", right? Of course you are; all of us are.'

My attention wandered, and I peeked at the checklist on the dashboard which they'd have to fill in when they finished with me. It read: 'GOOD NEWS CENTRAL FLORIDA. Date, Area Evangelized, Soul Goal, Salvations Achieved.'

The husband continued reading. 'I'm going to say a quick prayer for you. Lord, bless - what was your name? Phil? - and his family with long and happy lives. Jesus, make yourself real to him and do a quick work in his heart. If Phil has not received Jesus Christ as his lord and saviour, I pray that he will do so now.

'Phil, if you would like to receive the gift that God has for you today, say this after me with your heart and lips out loud. Dear Lord Jesus, come into my heart...'

Firmly but politely, I changed the subject, and soon afterwards, unredeemed and still weighed down by a lifetime of sins, I was back on the side of the road with my thumb out. I hope they managed to achieve their soul goal for the day without me.

Last night I stayed in a hotel on Peachtree Street, the main street in Atlanta, and tonight's accommodation continues on a fruity theme.

This town has the nicest name of anywhere I've stayed so far, and Florida the most poetic names of any state. There's Coral Springs (where Jacqui and Richard live now), Coconut Creek (where they used to live), and Cocoa Beach (where they stay when they cover shuttle launches). And then there's towns like Frostproof, Tangerine and Briny Breezes, and highways like Alligator Alley, the Orange Blossom Trail and the Sunshine Parkway.

To continue with the poetry, I've been extremely lucky in hitching from Kentucky. I've had several shorter rides of 20 to 30 miles each, and two long ones, one of 150 and another of 320 miles. The longest wait has been about an hour and a quarter.

I love this mode of travel: I could have hired a car, taken the bus or flown, but this is the best because I've just met such a wonderful cross-section of Americans.

Yesterday, I had another tussle with the forces of law and order. I was standing on the on-ramp of I-75 just outside Atlanta when a police car cruised up, and out stepped an officer in the obligatory mirror sunglasses.

'We've had a complaint about you' he snapped. 'You can't hitch here - it's against state law.'

'That's news to me,' I told him as politely as I could manage, annoyed because I knew he was wrong. 'I've hitchhiked in loads of states, and I know it's illegal to hitch on the interstate, but no-one's ever told me I can't do it on the ramp. I've often had police cars pass me and wave. I'd really appreciate it if you could quote me chapter and verse on what law says I can't hitch here.'

He looked briefly flustered, but said he'd call headquarters and find out. Five minutes later, he reappeared and told me they didn't know, but it was still against the law.

So he suggested a compromise. If I moved two exits down the road, I'd be out of his jurisdiction. I would become someone else's problem, and he could tick off this heinous crime as having been resolved.

'OK, in that case could you give me a ride there?' I asked cheekily, expecting the negative. But much to his credit, he did.

To use one more fruit-related expression, I think the miserable bastard who picked up their phone and shopped me to the police deserves a whopping great big raspberry.

Answering my own question, I've decided to reward myself with a rest. I've been going for eleven weeks now, with hardly any days off, and I'm tired, physically and mentally. I'm also a stone's throw from interstate 24 , which would take me in a more or less straight line all the way to Florida, where my sister Jacqui and brother-in-law Richard live. So I'm going to spend a few days with them.

I'm going to hitch, because I'm not in a hurry and I love its unpredictability. I've done this a few times on this walk: twice to cross bridges where pedestrians weren't allowed, and also to backtrack or make side trips off my route. Sometimes it's been maddeningly slow, other times stunningly fast, but always it's been a great way to meet people. So I'll keep you posted.

How would you celebrate if you were me?

I heard José Sullivan and his friends long before I saw them. It was just starting to get dark, and I was walking down the remote country road from Central City to Hopkinsville, looking for somewhere to pitch my tent, when I heard the brassy blare of mariachi music ahead of me.

As I drew nearer, I caught the heady fragrance of barbecue smoke and saw a group of guys milling around in the front garden. One of them was José, and as soon as he spotted me he waved me over and yelled: "Wanna have dinner with us?".

He introduced himself and his eight Mexican friends, sharing a spacious house in this most unlikely of rural locations, working a 60-hour week in a sawmill and earning nine times as much as they would have done at home. They made me instantly welcome, plying me with beer, chicken, and questions about my walk.

I'd only been there for about two minutes when they'd invited me to stay the night. "We leave for work at 5.30 am, but stay as long as you like and make yourself at home," José told me.

They seemed remarkably cheerful considering they were so far from home and family and working such long hours. They'd also been victims of southern racism: less than 2% of Kentucky's population is Hispanic, and every so often a passing driver would yell abuse at them. Back in Central City, the newspaper headline on the day of my visit was about a black teacher who'd had "KKK" and burning cross symbols spray-painted in red all over his white clapboard house.

Yesterday morning, a deer called Leroy wandered into my bedroom. He snuffled around my pack, found nothing of interest, and went off to the kitchen for breakfast.



My hosts Thomas and Marilyn had adopted him after he lost his mother at an early age, and now he would stroll in through the open front door at periodic intervals and wait to be fed. They'd put on a collar so that hunters would recognise him: while normally they can blast away at everything that moves, they're forbidden by law from killing tame deer.

Back on the road, I passed through a little town with a handful of houses and a single convenience store. I had everything I needed, so I continued on my way, feeling guilty. In a gesture of welcome to passing travellers like me, or perhaps out of sheer desperation, its founders had named it Do Stop.

A few miles further on, I was standing on the hard shoulder fiddling around with my pack and looking at the map when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving.

An olive-green van had coasted almost to a standstill behind me, and a man jumped out before it had stopped. He was lanky and greasy-haired, with a torn t-shirt, and his white underpants were very much in evidence through the holes in his trousers. He had a wild look in his eye.

"Where do you think you're going?" he demanded.

"Los Angeles", I told him.

"Well, you're scaring a lot of people out here," he mumbled.

Not half as much as you're scaring me, I thought. He set off across the road on some errand, leaving a male companion sitting at the wheel, and I made good my escape.

Ten minutes later they passed me again in the opposite direction, and stopped. "Got any good drugs?", Greasy Hair shouted.

"No," I replied. "Have you?"

He laughed maniacally, and the pair sped off down the road.

Another ten minutes, and back they came, this time saying nothing and just parking fifty yards behind me. I was reminded of the sinister ice-cream van in Assault on Precinct 13 that silently cruises up and down the road to taunt its victim before dispatching him with a machine gun.

Fortunately, just at that moment I walked past a restaurant. I breathed a sigh of relief, went in and spent half an hour drinking a coffee I didn't really want. When I came out, the van had disappeared.

The "you're scaring people" comment struck a chord, though. While the vast majority of people here are as warm and friendly as you could wish, there is sometimes an undercurrent of paranoia. Dave and Stu, the two Brits also walking across America, have twice been reported to the police by curtain-twitching locals for supposedly looking suspicious. In one hilarious aside while they were being searched, a policewoman told them: "You're either going to jail or you're going free".

Last night, there was a piece on the local TV news about security precautions to protect the area against terrorist attack, on the grounds that (a) it was the home of Fort Knox, which is fair enough I suppose, and (b) that it was part of America's agricultural heartland. Somehow I can't imagine Osama bin Laden setting his sights on the turnip fields of south-central Kentucky.

Marilyn Clark, 35, is unemployed, as is her husband Thomas. They put me up on Monday night, for which I'm extremely grateful.

"My last job was six years ago with a plastic mouldings company in Morgantown, Kentucky. I worked there for three months with a temporary agency, but the company wanted to hire me before my 90-day trial period was up and the agency got mad at me and fired me.

"I wasn't too worried because Thomas was making enough money working for a tree-planting company. But that was before my heart attack. I woke up thinking I was having another bout of asthma, so I went to my family doctor, and he sent me to hospital in Bowling Green, where I had to have an emergency angioplasty.

"It turned out I had three blockages caused by eating the wrong things and smoking. I still smoke - I've tried quitting, but I can't.

"Thomas went off the rails at this point. He got depression real bad, and he's had it ever since - the good days are few and far between. It got to where he was scared to be around. He'd come home late from work, go to sleep, and then go out again.

"I never knew who he was with or anything like that, but he was just frightened he'd come home and find me dead, and he couldn't cope with all the extra stress and responsibility.

"I've been advised by my doctor not to work, which is a shame, because I enjoyed my job and I'd go back tomorrow if I could. At the moment we have to feed ourselves and our two sons on $603 [£320] a month in social security.

"We have to do without a lot of things, and we can't go out because of the cost of the gas. We sit at home and say no to the kids when they want to go out to things like pool parties and ballgames. We spend all our time working out which bills to pay and how much.

"From May to August last year, we had no power because we couldn't pay. They're not supposed to do that if you have kids, but they do. They don't care. The guy who turns it off may care, but he's just doing his job.

"At first Thomas would go our and reconnect the supply every time they turned it off - it's not difficult if you know how. But then they told us that was a federal offence and we'd both go to jail if we didn't stop. So we went to live with my brother, and then some friends.

"I also have depression - I've had it since I was five, which at least means we can understand each other's problems. But not having a job makes it worse.

"We've applied for benefits for Thomas, but it's still awaiting approval by the review board. When it comes through, our situation should be a lot better. And my children give me a lot of happiness. Money isn't everything - if it was, we wouldn't be sitting here together now."

There are three milestones that give me the feeling I'm making real progress. One is notching up another hundred miles; another is crossing another state line.

The third happened today for the first time. I arrived in my hotel room down in the dumps after a very long day's walk in grey, wet, depressing weather, glanced at the clock beside the bed, and noticed that it was an hour slow. I'd walked into a new time zone without even realising it.

I cheered up instantly: it felt like I'd actually walked round one 24th of the world's circumference. I probably haven't, but if you have a pedantic comment about my lack of geographical knowledge, keep it to yourself. I've already been reminded by one sharp-eyed reader today, with reference to my Fort Knox visit, that an army officer would never wear a stetson while on duty.

When I stayed with Liz and Ben in Louisville, I gave them a gift of two of the finest culinary delicacies that Britain has to offer: chocolate Hobnobs and mushy peas. They demolished the Hobnobs while I was there, and saved the mushy peas until after I'd gone. But I was still able to enjoy the sight of twin daughters Sophia and Isabella sampling them for the first time, because they filmed the event. It made me laugh a lot, so I thought I'd share it with you.

They say Fort Knox is difficult to get into. It's not, but Louisville is difficult to get out of.

Much as I enjoyed the city, I thought I'd never escape its clutches. I was staying on the east side, so I spent most of Thursday crossing the city to reach Dixie Highway and continue southwest down the Ohio river.

The next day I tackled this road, commonly also known as Dixie Dieway thanks to its poor accident record. It was four, sometimes six lanes of heavy and fast-moving traffic, and as usual there was no provision for pedestrians.

I'd walked 120 blocks before the built-up area began to thin out, but even in the countryside there was no respite from the thundering procession of trucks whizzing by at not much more than arm's length. I probably inhaled a fatal dose of exhaust fumes - in fact the state of my lungs after this walk doesn't bear thinking about.

Thanks to Goldfinger, we foreigners know Fort Knox mainly as the home of the United States Bullion Depository, where most of the country's gold reserves are stored, though the town also houses a huge military training base.

They don't usually welcome visitors at the Bullion Depository, but I thought nothing ventured, nothing gained. I spoke to Major John Zwiebelfresser of the public relations department, explained what I was doing, and asked if there was any chance of a look round. He said he'd speak to a few people and get back to me.

A couple of hours later, my phone rang. 'OK Phil, you're a very lucky guy. The boss says you can have a quick tour. Can you make it to the main entrance by noon?'

I turned up as instructed. The building was surprisingly small, set amid spacious grounds and surrounded by high barbed-wire fences. I handed over my passport, walked through a security scanner and was met on the other side by Zwiebelfresser, a rotund Texan wearing a stetson and chewing on a fat unlit cigar. 'This is a non-smoking facility, but they can't stop me getting my nicotine fix,' he boomed, encasing my hand in a vice-like grip.

He made a call on his two-way radio, and a minute later we were joined by two of his colleagues, one male and one female. 'It takes three different combinations to get into the vault,' he explained. 'No one person knows all of them.'

Each entered their combination, carefully standing with their backs to the rest of us. The vast steel door swung silently open, and there it was: one hundred billion dollars' worth of gold bars, row after row, stacked from floor to ceiling.

The room was silent, and otherwise empty but for a handful of workers, dressed in yellow jumpsuits and laboriously polishing the bars with white satin cloths. 'You know you Brits say a job is like painting the Forth bridge? One of those endless tasks where as soon as you've finished, you start again? Well here in the US we say it's like polishing the gold at Fort Knox.'

The major told me about a conspiracy theory almost as famous and widespread as the one about Apollo 11 being a hoax. 'They say that in the 1960s, most of the gold in Fort Knox was sent to London on the orders of Lyndon Johnson. Well, as you can see, it's all here just like it always was. We carry out an audit each year, and the results are made public.'

Did he think Fort Knox was totally impregnable, I asked him. 'No, but the guys wouldn't get far. We've got over a thousand tanks from the 81st Armor Regiment a hundred yards down the road. We'd blow their asses to kingdom come.'

The tour over, he took me into a side office. 'Me and the guys have got a little souvenir for you,' he confided. There, on a baize-covered table in the middle of the room, stood a 27-pound gold bar, glinting beneath the harsh fluorescent light.

'It's for you,' he told me. 'It was worth $152,000 at yesterday's closing prices. We admire what you're doing, and we'd like to present this to your charity on behalf of the American people. We can sell it for you, or we can transfer it to any bank in the world...'

...No, I'm sorry, I've been wasting your time. You have just witnessed my first venture into creative fiction, and this is all a pack of lies. Visitors have never been welcome at to the Fort Knox Bullion Depository, and nor will they ever be. I did go past and take this picture, though.

Ben Davis, 30, is a DJ with WDJX 99.7 FM, Louisville's leading top 40 station. I enjoyed a couple of days off staying with him, wife Liz, and daughters Sophia and Isabella.

I work the evening shift, from 7 pm to midnight, so I'm lucky enough to have the day to myself to spend with my family.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have to go in at 3 pm, because I'm also the station's assistant programme director and music director. That's when we talk music - the songs we want to add to our playlist, the ones we want to play more or less of, and the ones we want to take off. There's a lot of talk and research about each one, and it's never a coincidence that they get played.

I also field calls from record companies - they're basically salespeople. It's a more honest business now than it used to be: last year a whole load of DJs got fired for accepting money, trips and gifts to play certain songs.

I don't see the seedy side of the business, but I do hear about it. These guys can be annoying - some of them want to tie you down and kick you till you play their song.

I got into radio while I was studying TV and print journalism at Columbus University. I did an internship where I worked for free just to get my foot in the door, and I realised that this medium afforded me the luxury of being myself and letting my personality shine.

I'm quite quick-witted and sarcastic, and I try to be intelligent and humorous. I also try to be edgy without crossing the line and being crass and blue, though I do cross it sometimes. I've sometimes had problems when I'm doing outside broadcasts because people like to swear into the mike. We do operate a delay system, but it only works if I'm paying attention.


I'm my own worst critic, but it's the only way to get better. After all this time, it still makes me feel good when I create something that's funny and original and that makes me and at least two other people laugh - I feel a real sense of accomplishment.

I have a friend who's a doctor - now that's what I call an important job. All I do is talk on the phone and play music . I definitely don't consider this a job. A monkey could do it. I'm just there as a distraction for people who've had a crummy day.