Radio Ulster's Linda McAuley looks back on her career as she leaves her presenting role at On Your Behalf

With only days to go until she leaves her popular BBC Radio Ulster consumer rights show, On Your Behalf, presenter Linda McAuley admits she’s feeling emotional.

"I feel like I am going to my own funeral. Everybody is saying lovely things to me and sending me flowers. It’s making me very weepy. But, as one of my colleagues said to me, at least I get to eat the sandwiches!”

The broadcaster par excellence, who has been at the helm of the popular Saturday morning consumer affairs show On Your Behalf since it launched in 1995, told listeners at the start of this year that she would be stepping down from the programme after deciding the time was right for a change.

“I don’t know what that change will be, but the time is right,” she says.

Radio Ulster's Linda McAuley is retiring from On Your Behalf after 30 years at the helm

Today’s (June 15) show will be Linda’s final live programme and she concedes she’s ‘struggling with it”.

"I’m finding it difficult to put into words. I’m finding it emotional. It’s not just the radio and the programme. It’s also the BBC and all the people there, from those in the studio, to the engineers, to the cleaners, to the security staff. We are very much a family in Radio Ulster and I’m going to miss that dreadfully.”

The final programme on June 22 will bring together people who have contributed to the show over the years and there’s also a special treat.

“Actor and playwright Dan Gordon has written a monologue about On Your Behalf, which I know listeners will find very entertaining,” she says.

Linda McAuley abseiling down BBC Broadcasting House

Over her decades in radio, Bangor-born Linda has had the knack of making listeners feel like she is just on the other side of the table chatting. Listening to her we know we are in safe hands. She comes across as authoritative and unflappable - in comforting contrast to the often complex and frustrating consumer issues she is tackling.In person she is equally poised, that beautiful, melodious, unhurried speaking voice, instantly recognisable and reassuring. Indeed, hers is a voice that is often identified when she’s out and about.

“On the train the other day, suddenly I had a gaggle of people around me – I was doing some interviews on the train and they all recognised my voice. I think that’s what radio does, it’s very intimate. Voices get in your head.”

Defying her ‘nearly’ 70 years, Linda is tall and elegant, immaculately dressed in floral brights with matching lilac nails. She has no particular beauty secrets, but reckons she inherited good genes from her mother Carol, a former model and fashion agent.

"My mother is 91 and holds herself beautifully. She always said to me as a child, ‘head up, imagine you have a string going through your head pulling you up and pretend you are holding a sixpence between your buttocks’.”

Linda McAuley in the On Your Behalf studio at Radio Ulster

Linda and On Your Behalf have brought about real changes in the real lives of BBC Radio Ulster’s listeners. And her efforts have not gone unrecognised.In September, 2018 she was inducted into the IMRO Radio Hall of Fame and in ???? she was awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours List for Services to Consumers in Northern Ireland. She was also chuffed to be named National Consumer Journalist of the Year for the Trading Standards Institute.

“It’s lovely when your peers recognise you and acknowledge you are doing a good job.”

Linda’s got her break in broadcasting inn 1976 when Downtown Radio was launched in Newtownards. Hearing that they were looking for newsroom staff Linda applied and was offered a position taking copy and reading the dog and horse racing results.

Then in 1978 she got a phonecall from the BBC, from senior producers in Radio Ulster asking her if she would like to go and work there, which she did, and just learnt as she ‘went along’.

Linda juggled work with being a single mum to her three young sons.

On Your Behalf is a programme she is fiercely proud of for giving a ovice to unpaid carers, people with disabilities and those struggling with childcare Costs.

She is also grateful to the strong working relationship the programme has with organisations such as Trading Standards, the Consumer Council and the Financial Ombudsman. And, the help and support given to listeners by experts Jimmy Hughes and the late Professor Eileen Evason, CAB and Advice NI.

"On Your Behalf has been a truly wonderful programme, for the BBC, for listeners and for me. It has been a unique programme. It’s proper public service broadcast, which connects completely with listeners. The most important thing about On Your Behalf is that people trust the programme and you don’t win trust easily.”

"The other thing about On Your Behalf is that people learn a lot; I learn a lot. We did a programme last December called, Things I didn’t know, Things I’ve learned, because every week I find myself saying to the expert in the studio, ‘I didn’t know that’, which has been wonderful.”

Has she ever personally been caught out by a consumer issue?

"Of course I have, everybody does. You couldn’t go through life without being caught out with a travel problem or an insurance issue, that’s life. Nothing is every straightforward.”

She said consumer issues have become more complicated over the decades due to the internet.

"For example, people don’t truly understand that if they book a flight on a flight comparison website that they have broken the chain of contract, that they have now brought in a flight comparison company and they aren’t going to give them a refund if something goes wrong.”

And what really annoys her is scams.

“Particularly fraudsters pretending to be your bank. When they ring you it seems like the know quite a lot about you, but they don’t. One gentleman who came to us had been scammed out of nearly £50,000. We were able to get him that money back which gave me great pleasure.

“All those scams are very nasty; whether they are dating scams or online scams when you think you’re buying something, they are hoodwinking you, they are fraudulent and they are nasty. People feel upset afterwards that they’ve been scammed. They feel hurt and they feel that they’ve done something wrong, and they shouldn’t.”

Enniskillen event

Linda has been married to second husband Paul Wilson for 25 years and she has two of her sons living close at hand, in Bangor, along with her grandchildren, five year old Isabella and three year old Arthur.

Whilst Linda isn’t clear yet what the future holds career-wise, the first thing she is planning is a huge trip. First to attend her nephew’s wedding at Venice Beach, California, in July and then on to Australia where her youngest son has lived for eight years.

"Whilst he's been home a lot, I’ve never been there, so I am spending a month in Australia with my son and his family.

"I come back mid-August and I’ll think about things in September. I don’t know what I want to do, but I want to do something. I want to keep involved and I’d like to keep involved in broadcasting because I love broadcasting and I love being behind a microphone and talking to listeners and listening to listeners. I love hearing their stories. I love going out with a microphone. I just enjoy the whole world of radio. I think it’s a wonderful medium. It’s head and shoulders above anything you can look at online or on a phone or a screen. Radio is my love.” I’ve just had great fun. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

The programme will continue with A Anna Corran

believes the programme’s longevity is down to

“Online doesn’t deal with problems, even call centres don’t work that well if you have a problem – they only have the standard answers. Also, I’ve always felt really sorry for listeners who really know what they are doing, have done the right thing, have written the right letters, have written to the right people and still getting nowhere. The problem is they aren’t getting to a high enough level, so when the BBC emails, suddently it gets promoted to another, higher level, and things suddenly happen.

"Being able to help people achieve what they are entitled to, right wrongs, and get apologies – sometimes people don’t always want money, they want somebody to say ‘sorry, that shouldn’t have happened’. The BBC has a bit of kudos and clout. When things go wrong you often need the weight of On Your Behalf and that’s why it’s been such a delight to be able to use that to help people who wouldn’t have been able to do it themselves.”

Highlights

The thing is I’ve enjoyed it so much. One of the best things has been getting out around Northern Ireland talking to people in different places. I was in Downpatrick recently after the floods and ended up speaking to a wonderful organisation that’s helping people with mental health issues through restoring furniture for landfill. I was in a wonderful place in Armagh where they have a sensory centre for autistic children,

She describes herself as bossy, an organiser, I like getting things done.

Since lockdown she has taken up sea swimming.

"I go as often as I can. It’s great fun and there’s also a tremendous camaraderie about it. It’s very good for the mental health, and for the body too. I’m looking forward to swimming in California and Australia where the water temperature will be higher.

Golfing – Lady Caption at Helen’s Bay

She’s not a big fan of social media.

I do get annoyed about the amount of personal detail people put online about themselves – oversharing, and that’s also quite dangerous because that information is out there for scammers and they can pic up little bits and pieces. People put up far too much information. It irritates me, but it also worries me.

Any regrets?

I wish I’d kept a diary. If I had realised all the great things I was going to get to do, the people I was going to get to talk to and the places I would be

I;ll be available for conferences and events.

One of my memories which still makes me laugh is when Michael O’Leary of Ryanair gave a press conference in the Europa Hotel and I had printed off all the many, many complaints we had about Ryanair at that time.

“I showed him all the complaints and his voice started getting louder and he said, ‘Of course you can come to me, of course we’ll answer your questions, but the answer will be ‘no’.”