by Lucy Roberts
Presenter and MotoGP enthusiast Suzi Perry is a master at everything she tries her hand at – sports reporter, model, radio DJ, documentary creator and now part of the judging panel for BT Sport’s Innovate 21 which launches today.
Suzi Perry
Innovate 21 is a competition held by BT Sport which gives entrepreneurs and start ups the opportunity to present a new idea, technology or service which will enhance BT’s sport broadcast experience.
Her nine years on The Gadget Show has given Perry the technology knowledge she will need to decide which entrepreneur will potentially win a six-figure sum to develop their idea with BT.
As well as revealing how excited she is to be a part of this competition, Perry also spoke about the time she spent modelling in Japan, why she likes mixing music and sport and explained why she has a passion for MotoGP.
Q) Why did you choose a degree in business and finance?
A) I think it’s because at the time I wanted to go into music promotion, that’s the background of my father, and I had an opportunity to possibly work with his partner Maurice Jones who’d recently helped put together Live Aid, so he was quite a big fish in the pond. In order to do that I wanted to specialise in marketing, and I wanted to get a degree so business and finance was the closest option if you can imagine, to what I wanted to do, which sounds extraordinary now when you have degrees for absolutely everything. But if you go back 30 years it was quite a limited choice.
Q) What was it like to work in Japan where the culture is so different from ours?
A) It was like landing on a different planet. I went back in 1992/93 and Japan was a very different place to the country that it is now. I’m very lucky that I go pretty much every year for racing, so I see it over and over. But when I went there was no signs in English, hardly anybody spoke English and you really were culturally very different to traditional Japanese people. They loved the West and that’s why I had a job over there because I was modelling and doing TV commercials and things like that and they liked that look. But I fell into this category of looking a little bit Japanese but with a Western style figure, so I did quite well out there. I was terrified actually. I was full of bravado when I got the contract to go, I was excited, but I didn’t do any research. Research was much harder to do back then because you had to go to an actual library. I didn’t know anybody that had been to Japan and I got there, and I didn’t know a soul obviously, I was on my own. I didn’t know how to even use the telephone, when I went into the shop, I didn’t know what food to buy, and it was a real shock to me. But within a week I’d met a few of the guys out there that were doing the same thing as me and there was a couple of English girls, some American, some European and they helped me. And suddenly I was having the time of my life. It went from crying my eyes out on the first night and reading a book that my dad had told me to take because he said, you’ll be really lonely to start with, to loving it and having the most incredible time. And immersing myself as much as possible in that Japanese culture to the point where it’s one of my favourite countries in the world. I love going to Japan. I got obsessed with the whole world of geisha and learnt all about what they had to do and the history behind that. So, I fell in love with Japan, and I left a piece of my heart there. It was an extraordinary experience which I think would be hard to replicate now because the world is just so much closer.
Q) Why did you decide to approach Sky Sports to become a sports reporter?
A) As I mentioned I did some modelling while I was studying and to get some money and things like that. I was also working at theatres as an electrician, I was trying to get the cash in and when I came back from Japan, I moved down to London which was another crazy episode of my life. But after a few years in London, I kind of felt like I’d done the modelling thing, I didn’t ever really want to do that, it was something that just sort of happened and it was really great fun, I couldn’t believe that people were paying me to take a picture of me. It was a really great job for a while and then I wanted to do something which stretched me a bit more and I really loved motorsport, I always have. I’ve always been hugely into sport and my friends at the time that I was sort of hanging around with and my boyfriend at the time and all his friends, they all had motorbikes and we used to go and watch British Superbikes and World Superbikes. We would watch it religiously and I was just really obsessed with the sport and I thought, this would be great. I used to shout at the television like we all do, and my friends just said: “Why don’t you ring them and speak to them?” So, I did. That’s how the sports reporting job happened; it was just a sort of roll on from what I was doing even though the jobs couldn’t be more different to be completely honest.
It’s funny to me now that people talk about reporters and anchors and they are completely different jobs once again. And even television presenters and broadcasters in my book are very different. For me a television presenter is somebody that eloquently reads the words off an autocue and provides energy to a show and a broadcaster is someone that can sit and talk without notes, without anything, from the heart and from knowledge and keep something going. I think they’re very different roles.
Q) Do you get nervous before going live on air or have you got used to that over time?
A) When I first started, I was absolutely terrified with everything I did and that probably rolled on until I felt comfortable within my own skin which took me probably a couple of years. And then I would only get nervous if I was doing something that was very new that stretched me a little bit, and I’m still the same today. So, if I’m doing something that I haven’t done before then there will be, and it’s not crippling, but there will be some butterflies before we start. You can sometimes hear it a little bit in my voice for the first sentence. But then afterwards it’s fine, but certainly not for MotoGP. This is my 25th year and it’s just like talking to friends really so I never get nervous with that. And also, I really love the guys that I work with and Natalie (Quirk) as well, we’ve all known each other for such a long period of time and there’s such an inherent trust between all of us. We know what our roles are, no one is trying to steal your job or anything. It’s actually the best team that I’ve ever worked with and I would go so far as to say that it’s the best coverage that bikes have ever had in the UK because we are live for every single lap from Friday all the way through to race day and it’s produced, so you get good features, you get great content and you get great insight from the experts we have on the team. So, I’m loving my working life at the moment.
Q) Are you very aware of how many people are watching you on TV or do you have to put that to the back of your mind?
A) No, I never think about it. I’ve gone through different shows with different peaks - hundreds of thousands to millions to hundreds of thousands to millions. Ultimately, I’m only ever speaking to one person and when I broadcast, I’ll say “you” instead of “all of you.” For me, when I’m watching the television, I don’t want to be one of loads of people, I want to be special. So, when I speak to the camera, I’m speaking to one person and it’s sort of an imaginary friend really. I feel like I can connect more when I’m doing that.
Q) You currently cover MotoGP for BT Sport, but what is it about MotoGP that draws you in?
A) One thing is that I couldn’t do it, I can ride a bike, but I couldn’t race like they do and the second part of it is that there’s an element of danger, the speed, the competition, the closeness. It all amounts to me the greatest racing that you see on a track. You don’t even have to think too hard because you see it right in front of you. Formula One is an incredible feat of engineering and we get some great races, but you’ve got to try and think of strategies all the time and it’s very complicated. Whereas with MotoGP they make changes on the bike and they have different modes but essentially, you’re seeing it on the track, in front of you, in 45 minutes. And that for me is perfection when it comes to racing. And the characters have always been big in MotoGP, it’s never been supressed by money or sponsors, we’ve always seen a lot of flair and flamboyance. Of course, I’ve come through the Valentino Rossi era, so I started at the same time that he started in GP and I’ve loved being part of that, a tiny, tiny part of that story and it’s added to my enjoyment of watching bikes. I still scream at the television, we all do when we’re watching the races, we’re all jumping up and down, we’re personally invested in the British guys of course. It’s been a lifelong love really, I loved watching bike racing when I was a kid and became pretty obsessed really in my 20s, I would say. I genuinely feel it’s one of the greatest sports in the world, if not the greatest.
Q) When you’ve worked on BBC Radio Two, how does it feel to know that you can play a big part in the mood of listeners with what you say and play?
A) It’s always a privilege to be on somebody’s radio or on somebody’s television because you’re in their room and you’re in their life. You try to bring positivity and reality to a show. To bring energy through whatever media it is, is a real joy and if you can do that then you’ve done your job essentially because you’re there for good company, so it feels fantastic. I haven’t done any radio for a while and I do love the medium of radio. I think it’s very immediate and you say something, or you play something, and a message comes in straight away that’s reacting to what you’ve just said or done and that’s really lovely that people are listening to you and you can affect their day. I feel like radio has got a long life; I hope it has because it’s such good company for such a lot of people. I use the streaming services often if I don’t really like the DJ that’s on or I just want to hear some music that I really love, so I sort of mix and match in between the two. You have your switch on moments, for me they’re the likes of Johnnie Walker, Bob Harris, Craig Charles, Sara Cox - I love those shows and Ken Bruce in the morning, I love listening to PopMaster and especially during this lockdown it gives me some kind of routine and familiarity. Wherever I am in the world I know that it is there for me. Habits are changing but maybe people find that rhythm in something else, I don’t know.
Q) What was it like to make the documentary about the music Formula One drivers listen to?
A) I really enjoyed that because it married two of my favourite things together – music from growing up, my dad was a music promoter, and I grew up with loads of live music and Formula One which is what I was covering at the time for the BBC. I made it myself, I did all the interviews and put it all together and then a producer at Radio Two helped me put that together and they liked it so much that they put it out on Drivetime which at the time, I was completely blown away that I was going to be doing that show and standing in for Simon (Mayo). It was really interesting; I was quite excited to speak to Lewis Hamilton about his music because obviously famously he’s very into music and I wasn’t quite sure how that was going to go. Also, to speak to Lewis about something different other than driving, I was hoping that I would get to another place in his heart, or his passion and I feel like I did. That was interesting and he went with a classic Bob Marley as one of his tracks. But it was also brilliant to speak to Niki Lauda, God rest his soul, and I had great stories from him about the past. And that’s the thing about music, it takes you back to a place or can take you back to a moment and it makes you feel a certain way or remember things you haven’t thought about for so long or even smell something that was there at the moment you were listening to it, like cut grass or something. Only music can do this and it’s so unbelievably powerful. I loved making that documentary and I would love to make some more actually. That was a really special one because we had things from drivers we had never heard before and it allowed them to open up about maybe a subject they don’t really talk about very often.
Q) How did your time on The Gadget Show help broaden your technology knowledge and experience?
A) I think when you do a show like that, that’s very specialised, you always learn so much and I was lucky to be doing that show at a time where suddenly the consumer was becoming the king if you like. I remember doing my casting tape for that on the Apple iPod - that’s how long ago it was. And I did a piece about why the Apple iPod was going to change the world in terms of how people are listening to music, gadgets and how it was the first true unisex gadget that people wanted as a luxury item, not just for what it did. It was an amazing time I think for us as consumers because suddenly everything changed from just everybody having a smartphone, I’m not sure if we even use that technology term anymore, and then it had keyboards at the time and then it went to touch phones with the new Apple iPhone. And we married this with incredible stunts and wild ways of testing technology. It was really fun. For a long time, it was very heady, and I feel like you would watch the show often to see a gadget for the first time. I started that show in 2004 so it’s a long time ago but even if you went on the internet, you couldn’t find the things that we were testing, and the world has changed quite a lot but for that it was a very important show and I think at the time on Channel Five it was their biggest home grown show for sure. We used to get over a million viewers on the Monday night which was quite extraordinary then and I loved it, I loved the people and there were a lot of kids that we were working on it and it was their first job out of university, so they were all full of energy and excitement and it was contagious, it always came through to us. I think it was genuinely competitive as well, so it was very real. I ended up in hospital so many times on that show! But I look back at that and I have happy memories and I think we did some really great things. Some of the stuff may have been a little pushed and produced arguably but I think we had a loose grip for that show but generally it was made up of what we were experiencing at the time and good people to work with, obviously Jason Bradbury, I started with him and Jon Bentley - both two tech heads, much more knowledgeable than I was. Then we all sort of found our way. I loved photography, I’ve always loved photography, I had cameras from being very, very young and that was my thing really and it still is. I love taking photographs and of course back then it wasn’t digital, and you’d have to go and process your pictures and that’s been a big part of my life. Also, with the modelling as well, being in front and behind the camera but I much prefer being behind the camera. Gadgets now are just a huge part of our life but they’re not luxury items anymore and I’m a bit sad about that because I don’t think you should expect to have this gadget, this gadget and this gadget otherwise you’re somehow poor. I feel quite strongly about the way that technology is made, how it’s disposed of and I think it’s something that needs to be thought about a lot more.
Q) BT Sport is launching Innovate 21 today and you’re going to be on the panel of expert judges, so what is it and how excited are you to be a part of it?
A) It’s really exciting to be a part of Innovate 21 because once again it brings together two things that I’m passionate about – the technology side of sport and broadcasting and obviously also my sport too. MotoGP is very technical and one of the things I’m always asking questions about when I’m in the paddock are the onboard cameras. I feel as though MotoGP and Dorna, who own the rights, are at the forefront of this kind of technology and they create it in house. It’s absolutely brilliant. When I first started the on-board cameras were massive, like a big sandwich box and no rider really wanted them because they were heavy, and they affected the bikes. And now they’re so tiny, they’re just grams, because they’re gyroscopic the pictures are very clear, but they can chase, with sensors, another bike. So, you’ve got bikes doing the filming for you and what that does is it gives you a really great feeling to know how close the bikes are, and you feel like you’re actually on the bike. I think anything that brings a fan closer to what the rider is experiencing is a great thing. They do really great things in our sport, so I love that. And I love the fact that BT Sport have got a history working with entrepreneurs and creatives and start ups to make the experience for the fan better and that’s essentially what Innovate 21 is. We are looking for people to come up with ideas that make the viewing experience better. Whether that comes from making the broadcasting experience better or something that we can use within our app, so for example, last time the winner came up with a very simple idea which you’ll be like: “Oh can we not already do that?” But these are always the best ideas. It was where you can watch sport together, it splits the screen so you’ve got your sport on one side and then you’ve got two of your friends that you can watch sport on the other side. Really simple but really lovely and how great during this time to be able to do that because of course you can have your friends on some kind of team meeting but it’s not the same thing. If you embed something within the app then you can watch it wherever. So, it was an absolutely brilliant idea. BT Sport like working with new ideas and with new people and so that’s what we’re looking for. It runs to the end of July and I’m judging with Robbie (Savage) and with Brian (O’Driscoll). We’re on the judging panel with various other people who probably know a lot more than we do. Historically, it’s been very successful and I’m excited to see what ideas come through.
Building on its reputation for world-class viewer innovation, BT Sport has launched the Innovate 21 competition to identify new experiences in sport broadcast. To find out more and to enter, visit www.bt.com/innovate21
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