For the past 18 months I've been working as a radio copywriter, meaning I write adverts for commercial radio.

My typical workday involves a nice long round of phone calls...calls to salespeople...calls to the clients I'm writing for. Then after finishing a script - I call the client again and present their advert.

The only problem is - I have a stammer.

Now you're probably reading this thinking "So why did he choose a career in radio?" and "how does he cope in that environment?". Hopefully my story will explain all.

After finishing university I worked a string of dead end jobs and spent too much time in the pub. After two years of this I decided to get a 'proper job' and start being a respectable person - the usual concerns. As working in advertising always appealed to me, I wrote off to some commercial radio stations, eventually landing a job in South Yorkshire.

If there's one place to be acutely aware of your stammer, it's a radio station. After all, you're surrounded by newsreaders, disk jockeys, and highly articulate salespeople. These are people who make a living from their voice.

Needless to say, the first couple of months were the hardest. At the time I wasn't having any speech therapy but I had developed a misguided way to hide my stammer. If I said 'er' whenever I felt a stammer coming on, I often avoided it.

So that's how I carried on for the next few months. Writing scripts, making phone calls, and breaking the world record for saying 'er'.

I experienced the tremendous buzz of hearing my scripts on the radio. But that was nothing compared to hearing my voice.

You see, if you work at a radio station you're always dragged into the studio at some point, then you have to say a few lines in a commercial. Anyway, I wrote an advert for a nightclub, which required a young, shouty, voice-over...and the producer roped me into it. I had to shout 'ARE YOU READY', 'LARGE IT UP', and 'FLAMES NIGHTCLUB - UP FOR IT'.

I would modestly describe my performance as excellent and that's where the paradox lies. Whenever I read a script aloud using my radio voice, I'm totally fluent. But when I revert back to my normal sounding voice that's when the problems occur.

After that I began to appear on the odd commercial. Maybe a line here and a line there. That wasn't much to my work colleagues or a lot of other people, but to a stammerer like me it was magic. Even appearing in a commercial for discount carpets felt like the leading role of some Hollywood blockbuster.

The thing I should be proudest about are my scripts. It takes time, effort and ability to get them right, and after 18 months I still feel like a novice. But perhaps the greatest feeling of all was when I was mistaken for a professional voice-over.

I called up a client to present their script, a little apprehensive, a bit stammery. But when I read them the advert, my voice transformed. I sounded like the classic cheesy radio announcer! You know 'sale must end', 'massive savings' ...that kind of thing.

"You've got a great voice" said the client, "will you be reading it on the radio?".

"I'm not a professional voice over," said I.

After a short pause the client replied, "Well you sounded like one to me!"

But it's not just voice-overs that give me a high. It's mundane things like a good telephone conversation, or being fluent and articulate when chatting with colleagues. And now I'm having therapy, the bad days don't depress me as much.

After well over a year in South Yorkshire my contract ended. I still do the odd day there, but mostly I work from home. I'm still writing, still stammering, still in the radio industry. All in all, I'm doing okay.

So the next time you're listening to the radio and there's a commercial break, don't turn off. There might just be a stammerer talking to you.

From the Winter/Spring 2002 issue of 'Speaking Out'