Matt Edmondson is a busy man.
In just over a week, from 12-14 July, he will be performing presenter duties for the Yahoo! Wireless Festival - featuring Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Rita Ora, Calvin Harris, Snoop Dogg, Emeli Sandé and more - broadcasting live coverage online across the world, adding to his portfolio of previous presenting work for Channel 4, ITV and BBC.
Not content with this, earlier this year he took on the coveted weekend 10am-1pm slot on Radio 1, thereby fulfilling the twin broadcasting disciplines of a man to whom he is often compared - North Norfolk Digital's very own Alan Partridge. As our interview reveals, the similarities don't end there. Read on to discover his guilty pleasures in life.
(Image: Rex)
Film
"Home Alone 2: Lost in the New York. It's one of those movies that if someone said to me, "you can only watch one movie a year for the rest of your life", that would be it. It's got everything: it's much better than Home Alone; it's probably the first or second greatest Christmas movie ever made - it's a contender with The Muppet Christmas Carol. When I went to New York for the first time - about 2 years ago - I said "we have to go to Duncan's Toy Chest" - then I found out it was fictitious, which was very disappointing. I'm getting married in September and going on honeymoon to New York, mainly because of that movie."
TV Show
"If you haven't seen The Millionaire Matchmaker, your life is about to change: you are going to watch it every day. I got told about this show by Rachel Riley (Countdown presenter): it's this woman called Patti Stanger, who describes herself as a 'first generation matchmaker' - I'm not entirely sure what that means. She sets up 'cash-rich but time-poor' millionaires with desperate people who want to marry a millionaire. She's 50 but she doesn't look 50; she looks like a wheat-intolerant Katy Perry after a bread binge. She gets people in and tells them exactly what she thinks of them, then gets the good ones in a room before picking one for a really cringy date - like going hot-air ballooning, or to a yoga place. Usually they don't follow any of Patti's strict rules and they get booted out of her millionaire dating club. I was so keen to watch the final episode of the series I downloaded it from iTunes rather than wait to watch it on TV. The trashiest thing you'll ever see, but incredibly addictive."
Music
"My older sister was into pop music quite heavily in our teenage years; due to thriftiness on my side I didn't want to go out and buy any albums myself, I thought I'd just listen to any albums that I found lying around the house, which meant that I was listening to my mum's Dido CDs, my dad's Shania Twain ones, and in the case of my sister, Westlife albums. My favourite was World of Our Own: it was a good value album, I believe it had 19 tracks on it, including some big hits, but also some very good album tracks. To this day I could probably tell you every lyric on that album. Occasionally, if you're wandering round a TK Maxx or something, they'll play an album track from that album - because they're trying to save money by playing music they don't have to pay much for - and when it finishes I think "I know what the next track should be", and I'm disappointed when it goes into a muzak version of tAtU's All the Things She Said."
Clothing Item
"I like to wear a deck shoe. I'll wear it regardless of weather; if it's snowing: put a deck shoe on; if it's raining: put a deck shoe on; if it's sunny: put a deck shoe on - and the reason is that it's basically like an outdoor slipper. I'm quite lazy and even the process of choosing a pair of shoes annoys me, so if you're just going wear one pair of deck shoes that solves that. Then having to undo the laces, redo the laces - don't worry about it - with a deck shoe just slip into it. I buy a pair and then wear it until it can only be identified by its dental records and then I will buy the exact same pair of shoes again."
Food
"Occasionally I get accused of being like Alan Partridge - I don't know if that's because I'm a TV presenter and Partridge lampoons TV and radio presenting so well that it's impossible not to sound like him, or if it's just that I sound like Alan Partridge - but I'm not helping matters by consuming no fewer than two chocolate oranges a week. I'm happy to pay full price for them - although recently I was delighted to discover in a Sainsbury's near me, that they were doing chocolate oranges for a quid - they're normally between £2.50 and £3. My girlfriend came out after doing a shop - while I was waiting with the dog outside - and said, "chocolate oranges are on offer for £1, so I got you two". She was expecting my reaction to be "thanks very much", instead my reaction was "are you f***ing mental - go back in and buy them all", so she went back in and bought 10 chocolate oranges - all they had in stock."
Magazine
"I'm a fan of flicking through in a newsagents at magazines like Take a Break, for their stories. A friend of mine recently sent me a picture of the front of one, with a picture of a woman stroking a baby bump. The headline was something like "My Baby Bump Turned Out to be a Poo". I just don't know who is submitting those stories. I assume that the photo was not an actual photo of that woman, as she wouldn't go, "I'm really pregnant, let's take a photo of my pregnant belly" and then when she just does a big s**t and the log goes out you wouldn't think, "oh I'll phone Take a Break"."
Book
"I've read most of the Dan Brown books - The Da Vinci Code and the rest. The stories are entertaining, but I read a satirical article in The Guardian, where someone had lampooned Dan Brown's writing style to review the new one, Inferno. I then downloaded it and I now can't stop seeing all the things that he does, like using terrible similes and always referring to the age of the character he's writing about. I'm trying to struggle through Inferno but that article slightly ruined it for me. I will definitely try and get through it at some stage though."
To get all the news in the run up to Yahoo! Wireless Festival and to watch the live coverage go to www.yahoo.co.uk/wireless
