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ANSWERING phones and making the tea is the best many youngsters can expect from a period of work experience, but one talented teenager had other ideas.
Noel Phillips, from Kingstanding, so impressed bosses at radio station New Style 98.7fm during his two weeks unpaid work they decided to offer him a job presenting his own show.
At just 15 years old Noel, is one of the city's youngest DJs to regularly broadcast live on air.
The George Dixon International School, Edgbaston, pupil said that while presenting on a national radio station would be a dream job, at the moment he is just delighted to be on air at New Style.
He said: "It has been a bit of a whirlwind really. I am studying media at school and just came here to do some work experience.
"When I had finished that I was sent a letter inviting me back and I filled in for a few presenters when they were off ill or on holiday. Then, at the beginning of the school holidays I was offered my own show and also the opportunity to sit in on the breakfast show."
"Having a voice and being heard is great. I love music and I love talking so this is an ideal job for me Ð it is what I have always wanted to do."
Noel's sparky style has already earned him rave reviews from colleagues such as breakfast show co-host 'G-Man' who believes the youngster has what it takes to go all the way to the top of the broadcasting tree.
The veteran presenter and radio broadcasting teacher said: "Noel is the best young person I have ever come across. He has taken to it like a duck to water and he has picked up the fundamentals incredibly quickly.
"He is still very young and there is a bit to work on, but he is a natural and I think if that is his vocation in life he can take it all the way."
The radio station based at the Afro-Caribbean Millennium Centre, in Dudley Road, Winson Green, is one of a handful of 'Access' radio stations in the country funded by commercial advertising and a government grant.
This week it celebrated five years of broadcasting across the city and G-Man, who broadcast the station's very first show in 2002, said he enjoyed working there because presenters were given the scope to play their own records coupled with an emphasis on local news.
He added: "If we change our values then we change the way that I believe radio should be.
"We have had some great times in the first five years. One of the highlights for me was when Sir Trevor McDonald came to have a look around the station.
"We had decided to name one of the studios after him as he is a patron and it was interesting that he said that was the first time a studio had been named after him.
"When you find someone like Noel you realise how important it is to open the doors to young people and to give them an opportunity to shine."
