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THE BiTS INTERVIEw: Ashwyn smyth

The award winning and multi-award nominated Digital Blues has
been broadcasting since April 2001 and is aired on a number of

stations on FM, DAB and online. Currently it is available on FM in

Essex, UK and New Zealand, and online via stations based in the
UK, USA, France, Germany, Gozo, New Zealand and Spain.

Presenter Ashwyn Smyth now lives in France, where he moved in

2008 after he retired following working for forty years in the City
of London. Ian McKenzie spoke to him on the telephone.

AS: Hello, Ian.

BiTS: Hello, Ashwyn. How nice to speak to you.

AS: Excellent, good.

BiTS: Let me tell you what I want to do.
I want to talk to you about your previous
life before you became a DJ and all the

rest of it and talk to you a bit about
contemporary blues.

AS: Right. Okay, [chuckles].

BiTS: Tell me first of all, I gather you
were born, and I guess bred in Brighton.

AS: Yes.

BiTS: How long were you there for?
When did you move away from Brighton?

AS: I moved away from Brighton when I
was 11. Moved because my father got a

job at a school in Surrey, my father's a
schoolmaster. But then I went back to
Brighton at the age of 13 and did five

years at boarding school in Brighton. So although I wasn't living there full time, I
spent more time in Brighton than I did anywhere else for those five years. It's a city
now, of course, which is very close to my heart.