Mike Reynolds

I don't own a turntable.

Manchester

Mike spent ten years as a sports broadcaster. He started in England, calling football, the real kind, as he'd say, before Hank tells him off for it. Then the NFL's games in London, season after season at Wembley. Somewhere in there the Chicago Bears got under his skin. He still can't explain why. When the network needed someone in Chicago full-time, his hand was already up.

Forty-five seconds

One night in London a colleague dragged him to a warehouse party. He stood on that dancefloor for forty-five seconds, and something clicked that he still can't explain. Not a last-minute winner. Not a cup final. This.

He never caught the DJ's name. He didn't know enough yet to know he should have written it down.

Two thousand CDs

Then Chicago, and the discovery that the music had come from there all along.

"Someone said to me, mate, do you understand what this city actually did for music? I thought they meant the Blues. They did not mean the Blues."

Two thousand CDs in three years. Every compilation, every NOW That's What I Call House Music. Hank calls it a pile of plastic. Mike calls it an education. Both of them are right.

On the station

He still dresses like he's on television, for a studio nobody can see. He drinks tea in a building that runs on coffee. He treats Hank like a five-time world champion, and Hank tolerates it better than he lets on. The most friendly person in the building, by a distance.

And when the music really takes off, so does the accent. Manchester comes straight back.