He's Irish, the son of a policeman, is a friend of U2's Bono, and is a popular breakfast host on UCB UK Radio - what more could he want?

By Michael IrelandChief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

STOKE-ON-TRENT, UNITED KINGDOM (ANS) -- Robbie Frawley, morning breakfast-time radio host of Britain's UCB UK Radio, grew up Roman Catholic in Ireland, his father was a police officer at Dublin Airport -- and he has a unique friendship with Bono of U2.

International journalist and author Dan Wooding caught up with Frawley at the UCB UK studios on Stoke-on-Trent, England, where the radio host talked about his family background, his frienship with U2's Bono, and his career in British radio.

Robbie Frawley in AucklandFrawley told Wooding that he comes from a family of five -- two older and two younger brothers -- and that in the 1970s cancer took the life of his mother, who passed away when Frawley was a young child.

"But you kind of live; I don't know if you ever get over those things, but you begin to live with them and life takes the turns that it takes and you have a choice -- you choose to live it or you choose to be defeated by it. As a family we chose to live by it. My father was working for Dublin airport -- he was a policeman -- and over the years we kind of grew up and ended up getting involved with the Charismatic renewal initially in the late seventies in Ireland and working with some great people with whom we are still very good friends today and discovering that there was more to life than just ritual. There had to be more to life than just ritual. If that's all life ever, ever gave, then what a boring existence."

Frawley said he was thankful for his Catholic background

"To be quite honest with you I have to say today I'm grateful for my Catholic upbringing as a school kid because I knew who Jesus was. No one could ever tell me did you know about this Jesus and my answer would never be blank. I always knew who Jesus was. I knew that there was God the Father, I knew that there was God the Son, I knew that there was the Holy Spirit and I knew that certain times in your life according to our belief system at that time certain things would happen. I would make my First Communion I would be Confirmed and all these things would happen and I had a knowledge. The difference is I honestly didn't have a relationship with Him, and that was the difference. So when it came to understanding that actually I can have a one-to-one relationship with this guy called Jesus I know about Him, I know that Easter came, I know that He died on the cross, and I know that the Bible says that He rose again. There was a point in my life at the age of fifteen where I suddenly realized that it was real and it was very true. A nd for me as a young teenager of fifteen the light just suddenly went on that this isn't just knowledge, this has to be a relationship. It has to be (from the) heart and it has to be me willing to just surrender my life to Jesus because of what He did. It was just mind blowing -- it took a bit of time for that to happen, and I can't say my Christian walk in my early teens was on the up all the time, not a chance. It was more peaks and troughs than anything else."

He was asked about his friendship with Bono

"In the years of growing up we were at the same church together and I know him well and with his lifestyle with my lifestyle I worked with the family for a good number of years, you end up going separate ways. Of course he is such a huge star now I don't get a chance to see him too often -- probably every couple of years or thereabouts we cross paths. But we had some great fun together as we grew up. He was a little older than me, and still is! When I was working for Alison's family, actually his wife's family, we would spend a lot of time together. We would in the early years of U2 and that sort of stuff. We would spend a lot of time together at concerts or just in the factory where we worked together, the warehouse where I worked for his father-in-law. I remember once fixing his car just before his driving test. So I have a claim to fame that I fixed Bono's car before his driving test. A funny thing I remember walking down the street praying as we walked through Dublin just the two of us walking down together for sandwiches for lunch. People don't see that side of him. People don't see that heart with him and hand on heart I can't say that's where he's at right now but I do know that he's got a lot of spiritual backing, a lot of spiritual input, and in the early years we used to do things like we would pray as we walked. We would share the Gospel together. We would share Jesus together. We would have a laugh together and we would just experience life together. It was fun."

Frawley was asked what he would like people to know about the Bono that he knew?

"The Bono I knew and the Bono I know of now and I could probably say I still know because of my connections are still there, you know something he's the most incredible family man. He is one of the world's greatest rock stars and I think you get judged for that because no matter who we are, we all make mistakes. But you know something I've seen him in his home of late and he is the most incredible family man and they are an incredible balanced family. They do more good behind the scenes than people will ever know, both him and his wife Alison and now their children of course the girls are a lot older than the boys. But there is just an immense heart for people that I don't think we see an awful lot of. We see him on platforms with different events that happen -- the G8 and all that sort of thing. But behind that there's a heart for people worldwide in terms of Africa and AIDS and what's going on there, but he's a true friend and when his friends are in need he's there for them. There's a real, real honesty about the man that I don't think people see."

Frawley said he got into broadcasting in Ireland when he was eighteen

"I always played with music, I always played with mixers and decks and all sorts of things. I was about eighteen and I got into broadcasting for the first time. I ran a one-hour show on a Monday evening for what was then called the Irish Christian Broadcasting Service which was based in Dublin in a convent. It was so funny, I mean it was pioneering stuff, it really was. I'd go in at seven o'clock in the evening and it was seven o'clock as long as my watch said it was seven o'clock. If my watch was ten minutes out the program started ten minutes late. The transmitter was in the same room as the mixing desk and it was so basic. That's where I started. Strangely enough that particular station played the very first airing of U2's New Year's Day.

"Somebody came to a prayer meeting I was at and some friends said to me you'd be good at that and I said no. They said yeah go on you'd be good at that. So I ended up speaking to the representative of the Irish Christian Broadcasting Service and they said oh come along let's see if you're any good. I suppose in terms of Ireland the rest is history as they say. That was it -- it was just responding to somebody being at the front of a church saying this is what we're doing we need volunteers so I put my hand up and that was it."

What was the catalyst that brought Frawley to England?

"I think for me it was a case of having to change my scenery. At the time it was 1985 and Ireland was going through a bit of a rough patch. There wasn't a lot of work about the seventies had really taken a toll. The whole Celtic tiger hadn't even been born. It was one of those things where I couldn't find a job, I couldn't settle, and there was something in me that felt I had to do something and I didn't know what it was, and I agonized over the move for a long, long time because we were a very close family. In eighty-five I kind of pulled my socks up and said I've got to do this. I thought I'd be in England for three years -- my plan was I'd go to England, I'd make my fortune then I'd come back to Ireland and go haha look at me. But God had a different idea. God had a different plan. I arrived in July, 1985; it was Wimbledon Sunday. I remember watching the beginning of Boris Becker's first Wimbledon final in Dublin in my aunt's house -- a wonderful, wonderful lady who raised me after my mum died the most incredible woman. It br oke her heart, it broke my heart, when I left her. I watched the beginning of the match there and I watched the end of the match in my cousin's house in Dagenham (near London). That's how quick it took me to get into Dagenham."

Frawley said he drove a mini-cab (independent taxi) around London for awhile

"It was very interesting life, but that wasn't the end of it because there was a church based in Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire and they were connected to the church I was in at Dublin. Some telephone calls or whatever had passed with my old pastor and the pastor of this church. I made contact and after six weeks of living in London I uprooted out of London and I moved to Milton Keynes not knowing anybody but I thought I've got to go to this place because the people there David and Maurine Church are the most incredible couple. They were so loving, so open, and so willing to help me even though I didn't know I needed help.

"Everything kind of happened in Milton Keynes for us because that was the years where my spiritual walk took root, my development took root, my radio career began again -- hospital radio initially for Milton Keynes and then local FM, local cable radio as well and then national AM all out of Milton Keynes with a radio station that began a network there. "It was the Children Radio Network. I would drive from Milton Keynes to Dunstable only about ten fifteen minutes away for the overnight show on AM. We had three transmitters in the local area and we'd go satellite national overnight so there was a whole host of people from all over the nation and it was a great, great learning curve for me. But you forge lifetime friendships and lifetime people who walk with you through your darkest times. That's what happened in Milton Keynes for us because I met my wife Lynne, an English girl, and we were married in eighty-eight. We were a part of the same youth music group at church -- we just kind of grew up together."

He was asked how he got the job at UCB. Frawley said he got a phone when he was about to move house in Milton Keynes and was in the middle of taking on a pastoral role with one of the church congregations he was associated with there."I was packing things away and I remember packing away stuff from my past radio life interviews with different people -- BeBe and CeCe Winans, Russ Taff -- those kind of people, and sticking them into a box and turning around to Lynne my wife and saying was all this a waste? Typical male thing you know. And her response was nothing is ever wasted in God's economy, nothing; get a grip. Three months later I get a phone call from a man who I've never met before who was running UCB Europe as it was called at the time. They said to me I believe you're an Irish radio presenter and I believe that you know we need an Irish voice. Could you please come and talk to us. That was back in 1999. I was a volunteer, I used to have a client in Manchester so I'd go to Manchester for the day I'd come back down here, stay over night and do some work for UCB Stoke-on-Trent and then the next day go to a client in Birmingham. So it all worked out travel- wise. I did that for about six months as a volunteer. Then UCB kindly took me on and paid me one day a week and it was then, when a new manager came along from New Zealand, he decided he wanted to hire me fulltime. That was at the end of 1999."

From there he went from doing Sunday afternoons and Tuesday evenings and all sorts of things to Breakfast on UCB Europe

"It was very interesting and for the first year of that I drove up to Milton Keynes every day, which is very interesting. A round trip of two-hundred-fifty miles. So I killed two cars and I'm sure almost myself a number of times. But you know when God's grace is involved in something, when you need the grace of God it's there, because when we moved to Stoke-on-Trent that weekend I was invited to Milton Keynes to do something and I thought well I can't even face that journey. The weekend we moved we were fine. Once I was here I didn't need the grace for that journey any more and that was it. So I did the breakfast show for a good number of years, probably four years, until I went into managing the network."

When he did the breakfast show it was always known to be very upbeat. Has he had any really funny experiences?

"I think lots of experiences can be humorous and funny. There's been many things on the breakfast show that were a real privilege -- we've had some fun with some great people. Rebecca St. James, Mmartin Smith, Michael W. Smith, all these people, some amazing fun. We've done some strange things even with (your son) Peter. We've had Peter trying to escape out of a straightjacket on the breakfast show. Breakfast week we've sent somebody to a Bacon Buddy bar to do a report on the great British breakfast. For me it's spontaneous -- it has to happen now, it's very rarely planned months in advance. We have an idea of what we want to do, but I always found the most incredible thing for me was the privilege and honor to be invited into people's homes every day, because as a radio presenter I don't have any rights. As a radio network we don't have any rights. But as the guy who's here at six o'clock in the morning I don't have a right for people to listen to me. It's a privilege -- people choose to switch the radio on and that for me is r eally cool, and interacting with those people who listen every day sparks off and we have so much fun because life is fun (and) it should be fun. We should be able to wake up with a smile on our face."

Wooding said that Frawley was going against the grain for Christian broadcasting because so much of it, especially in the United States. is very serious -- no humor whatsoever. So how did this philosophy come about?

"It came about I think long before I actually came back on air, before I actually joined UCB. I was living in Milton Keynes God spoke very clearly to me about something because I wanted to be like everyone around me. And of course I'm a minority in Central England -- you know I'm an Irishman in a church of Middle English people -- and God spoke very clearly to me and said you're Irish, be Irish. Don't be anybody else. Life throws a curve ball at you sometimes and you have to be able to catch that somehow and deal with it. But life should be fun and all you've got to do is look at Jesus and the disciples to see the most incredible sense of humor in the world. I mean fancy picking those guys, really! I mean the people he picked and put next to each other people you would never in your life dream of putting next to each other in human thinking, never. And what does Jesus do? He pulls them altogether and he makes them work as a team and I'm sure he had some great fun along the way. Why shouldn't we laugh -- we have the greatest news in the world? Tthe fact that Jesus loves us so much that He died for us. That's got to be the greatest thing that we could ever talk about. But let's laugh, let's have fun. Breakfast is a time when people are getting out of bed thinking oh God it's another day my job is to go God it's another day and hey listen I know where you're at I want to guide you through it. That's where my role comes in, so let's have fun. Let's throw the baby and catch the baby of course but let's do something different that turns this thing on its head that says as Christians we have to be looking at our shoes. We shouldn't be. We should be looking at the horizon, we should be looking to see what God has for us every day. Am I trying to be super spiritual? No, because there are days when I walk into work and I think Father thank you for today, I'm so tired, I need you to really give me a boost. So I'm not saying I'm up every day I have to work at that, but my heart is to make sure that we have fun as we go about the day."

Frawley was asked if his audience is predominantly Christian or does he get a mixture?

"I think in percentage, yes it would be predominantly Christian, but I would hope and we have had people ring the breakfast show before in the past and just give their lives to Jesus over the phone, which is wonderful. I would like to think that there are a number of people who don't know fully who God is or who God can be for them. It's ok to have a knowledge of God but to have a relationship with him. So, to answer your question, in short I think predominantly Christian, but I would hope that there are some people who are really searching for some answers and some truth."

Frawley mentioned that the UCB stuidios have been through many different guises, but they have always had a Christian flavour

"It's like the building is probably three-hundred years old now at this stage. My understanding is that it was originally set out as a hospital and mainly for the children mainly get them out of Stoke, out of the potteries, out of the steel foundries, out of the area that was smog and get them into the countryside because, although we're only five miles from Stoke itself, that's enough. In those days that was enough to get them to clean air. That was its idea and it's been through many, many different things. The last thing it was before UCB took it on board was a Christian school I believe and when we took it on board it'd been left. They weren't in it at the time, they'd long since departed it needed a lot of work and it's an amazing place. It's a real privilege to be working a place like this. I've never seen radio stations like it."

He was asked to describe looking what he sees when he looks out of his studio window?

"Looking out from my office right now we've got the prayer garden right across the car park from us. Now in the prayer garden we've got an immense team of people who look after this. I don't mean immense in size I mean just in heart, in ability, in willingness to serve. We have full house site services team and they look after everything we see. So across the car park are beautiful gardens, fountains and ponds -- places to sit and have your lunch, places to reflect. The whole idea was to set the place up that when we have guests and things to go out there and go for a little retreat. Go reflect sit, read the Word, just have peace. And you wouldn't even believe we're half a mile from the M6 motorway. And then at the back of the building we've got a nice walking area and a hilled area, it's all part of where we are. I think there's about 3,000 trees we've got planted around the place. So to protect the environment and respect our neighbors and go from there. So it's a wonderful place to be and a great, great setting to have a radi o station, and tv station."

Wooding said that people listening in the United States probably don't realize how difficult it is to get a license to broadcast in Britain even though Britain is supposed to be a Christian country. He said: "For many years the BBC had this monopoly and they would do religious broadcasting and religious broadcasting was religious broadcasting: Hindu, Muslim Christian nothing overtly evangelical. For many years the government here fought any evangelical broadcasting. Can you tell us a little bit about the battles you've had?"

"There have been many battles along the years and I think different people have taken up the mantle as time has gone on. Ian Mackie our CEO has been the man to really come with a vision from New Zealand and has fought on both sides to try and get recognition and then went back to New Zealand and come back again in 1999-2000 to pick up the torch again. But it seemed as though every time we were close to getting anywhere the goalposts moved for whatever reason. I don't get it, I just don't understand it; all we have to do is just trust God, and that sounds really easy to say, but it's hard to live sometimes. God has given us this amazing facility. He's given us the Word For Today as well Book of Hope and our prayer line and all the things that are based in our other building. UCB is quite a large organization and you think God if we're United Christian Broadcasters then when are we going to get to broadcast? Little did we ever think that the future would be digital. You know in the late eighties, early nineties it was all AM. Let' s do AM. AM will have its platform with DRM Digital Radio in time, but currently AM is old technology. It's very expensive to run -- I'm not knocking it if you're on AM -- praise God, enjoy it. But for us, our future could have been very, very limited with AM. God knows best and over the years particularly in 2003, 2004 the digital revolution began with digital DAB and the powers that be, the radio authority and OFCOM as they are now, they saw fit to give us a license that we could apply for space on somebody else's multi-plex. Somebody else owns the space, we apply to rent space, and that's what's happened for us. You know in the past eighteen months we've gone from not being on anything but satellite and the internet to now being on DAB with UCB UK reaching potentially 30 million people across the UK. That's quite amazing."

Frawley gave up your breakfast show for a while and he's now back on again. What's it like to be back on the air?

"Oh it was very strange to begin with it was like oh how do I do this? It was like did I forget because when I stopped I stopped to help manage the organization, to be the station's manager to prepare us, little did I know, for the DAB revolution. And once we'd done that and we'd done it a number of times there was no need for me to be in this fulltime role as it were. So it was decided that I needed to go back on air. Again because I want to make sure that I do it for the right reason and I want to make sure that I do it right that I still honor those people that listen and I'm still recognizing that it's a privilege that I do what I do, it took me a bit of time to settle back into it. But it's still great. I still don't have a problem getting up in the morning even though I'm getting a lot older now! Still I don't have a problem getting up in the morning and when I do come to work every day and I get into the office at five o'clock in the morning I think Father what a great place to be. What a great privilege because I've no i dea what you're going to do, I've no idea how people are going to respond, would they respond in such a way that they would know you."

Robbie how can we pray for you?

"Well for me personally I'd love you to continue to pray that God would keep my feet on the ground and my head where I need to be facing, but also that God would continue to open the doors for us at UCB that we would cover the nation. That's our desire --that we would cover the nation with digital audio broadcasting and that we would see the message of Jesus go further and further and further across the airwaves. Not for personal success or anything, but we would see an increase in the people who listen, an increase in the people who are affected, and an increase in the people who are praying for and supporting UCB."

What would Frawley like people to pray for Bono and his life at the moment?

"It's funny, people who look from the outside see him as and see people like him as incredibly rich and driving all these wonderful cars and jetting here and jetting there. I would ask you to pray for wisdom Bono as he is in an incredibly powerful position and I know that he hasn't sought a powerful position for himself -- he doesn't need to -- he hasn't sought it for money, he doesn't need to, I think wisdom is what he needs in how to best use his world position for the benefit of those I know he loves dearly. That's why I would say wisdom."

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