Songs from the shed – update on a shed of the year winner Jon Earl

Jon from Songs from the shed gives up an update to what the past few months has been like as Shed of the year winner.

It’s an indication of the impact winning Shed Of The Year has on ones life that it has taken two Months since Uncle Wilco asked me to find time to put into words what winning meant to this humble shed owner.

I had some media experience because of the musicians that had visited my shed but nothing prepared me for the onslaught that followed the announcement that Songs From The Shed had won.
The first day or so was complete mayhem and I would advise any future winner to take a couple of days of work as the calls and requests for interviews are non stop.

With the help of the lovely Cuprinol PR team, Uncle Wilco and some sage words of advice from 2010 winner Reg Miller I negotiated my way through the multitude of press, TV and Radio interviews with the highlight being Sky News featuring the story as their “and finally” feature every half hour for 8 hours on July 4th. You can see the film here

The story featured on many local,national and International radio stations and I was interviewed by Matthew Bannister for the BBC World Service, The interview was conducted live from BBC Somerset’s studio in Taunton I presume Matthew was in London, After the interview the producer came over the headphones “Thanks Jon our listeners will love that story”..”Excellent how many listeners does this programme Have” “38 million worldwide”. Thank goodness she didn’t tell me beforehand !

Probably the most unusual and surprising call was an interview with National Geographic, Although a friend did email to tell me the story was in The North Korean Times and my wife did turn down the offer of quite a large fee to do a “I lost my husband to the shed” type story for a weekly magazine. It is impossible to guage accuratly how many people potentially heard or read the story but based on 38 million being a true figure and the Sky News coverage it must run into the 10’s of Millions. All in all a good days work by the Cuprinol PR team.

For Songs From The Shed the outcome (For which I am truly grateful) has been nothing but positive and with everyone knowing the story it has enabled me to approach artists that may have been more difficult to reach without the publicity.

The prize money was spent before I received it as the shed was in a terrible state of repair and after some intial attempts at patching it up we discovered that the woodworm had completly destroyed the bottom third of the frame and that it was being held up by two drainpipes !

All in all winning the competition has been a fantastic experience, I love being part of the “shed community” and I look forward to being on the judging panel for Shed Of The Year 2012.