A NORTH YORKSHIRE man has been presenting a radio show to Mexico City from his shed in his back garden.

Andy Backhouse, from Catterick, started presenting the radio station, which is called La Bestia Radio, four years after winning a competition giving him the chance to fly out to the city for two weeks and explore Mexico City's nightlife.

While he was out there, he would occasionally present radio shows on Ibero station, which is Mexico City’s equivalent to BBC Radio One and BBC Radio Six.

After the first lockdown, Andy revamped his garden shed into a recording studio and has been presenting the show from there ever since.

He said: “Working from home has been fantastic really, I mean, just looking back at the last year, all my work has been tied to live events, putting on gigs and DJ-ing and I know a lot of friends who have put on gigs or who are musicians who have had to adapt to the last year.

“For me, a really great thing that’s come out of it project wise is a station called La Bestia Radio, it’s in Mexico City and it’s Spanish for ‘The Beast’ and it just sort of came out of the blue last year.

“About four years ago when I just started at university, I won the student radio competition with the British Council and Folded Wing a production company and this fantastic prize was to fly out to Mexico City and explore the night life and everything the city had to offer for two weeks from the British Council.

“All the while we were reporting back to headquarters which was a radio station, Ibero 90.9 FM and it’s the Mexico City’s answer to Radio One or Radio Six music and I was presenting shows on there for two weeks on FM to loads of music fans stuck in traffic jams across the city and it was a huge station.

“One thing that is unique about it, it’s the size of Radio One or Radio Six music, but it’s mostly run by students, which to me is like the phrase ‘the lunatics taking over the asylum’ it’s a very creative area to be part of, I loved it so much that over the years I’ve stayed in touch with the friends I made while I was a student and they were a student."

He added: “All these years later, those guys at the university have all graduated and are all about 24 to 25-years-old and started this station called La Bestia and it shows the power of radio as it connects us at the moment through the pandemic and across the world.

“The show is called Ground Control, named after the Bowie song and the stations DNA is all punk music and Indie and guitars and Ground Control focuses on the brilliant new music and exports coming out of the UK essentially.”