Bulletin Board

23.12.08 | Plug 'n' Play Studios | 35 Milford Road | Reading | 8pm | Entry £5 donation to charity plus a dodgy/ embarrassing CD/record from your collection that you'd like to get rid of!

What have I let myself in for. When asked to partake in a charity DJ battle, I said yes without looking at who my competitors are.

The concept is a fun one, and not one I've heard before either. The idea is for participating DJs to represent a local charity shop, and then spend a mere £5 in there to create a 25-minute set.

Steps? I don't think so!

And seeing as the days of nabbing a CD for 10p are long gone, having just 500 pennies to spend on filling nearly half an hour's worth of top tunage is pretty tough.

But that's not the only tough part - for me at least. As looking down the list of DJs, it turns out I'm up against the likes of DJ Muzzell who is the bloomin' 2005 UK DMC champion!

Other turntable titans include Mat Carter, who's a regular at the famous Fabric club in London, and Brighton DJ Mr McVowty.

Completing the line-up is electro whizz Gavin Lombos and muso Russ Alsop - both in bands and who both run the hosting venue Plug 'n' Play.

With the audience voting for the winner, I don't think I've got much of a chance of winning top prize, which is the donation of all the door money and CDs to my chosen charity shop.

It's with this comic sense of trepidation that I traipsed down to my local Oxfam in Caversham. Did they even sell music?

Thumbs down for Savage Garden

Yes, thankfully they did. And what a collection.

Someone clearly had had enough of Westlife and dumped their entire single collection.

Then there's a Pop Idol single, a 1940s war-time compilation (that'll go down well), a truly awful Now That's What I Call Music CD, and quite a few compilation gems performed by sound-a-likes.

But among the donation dross sparkled quite a few gems. Some of whom were too expensive for my limit of £5 (I guess that's what you get by choosing a shop in posh Caversham).

A Good Morning Vietnam CD was a strong contender, as was a 60s hits disc, but for an uplifting dance night the flower power tunes weren't quite upbeat enough.

A great find - the Trainspotting CD!

A ha! Some kind fellow has donated the Band Aid single Do They Know It's Christmas - perfect for the gig, which is just before Christmas on Tuesday 23 December.

And I've rediscovered that singles feature DJ remixes - so out comes Love Fool by The Cardigans, with a reversioning by Todd Terry.

Then comes the inevitable cheese. I'm unabashed in my love for Erasure, so my greedy hands quickly nip out the band's I Love To Hate You single, featuring a few extra tracks to boot.

I'm also going to argue to anyone groaning on the night that no party is complete without the Grease Megamix.

But my piece de resistance is the Trainspotting soundtrack CD, which features no less than 14 tracks including New Order, Iggy Pop, Pulp and Leftfield.

Phew! My line-up is complete.

I know the other DJs are no doubt going to perform jiggery pokery with their CDs, importing them into laptops and 'mashing' them up.

But I'm silently hoping the audience prefer a bit of old skool cheese from someone who can just about put a CD in the tray.

Fingers crossed!