BEWARE! is plastered all over her face when Down To Brass Tacks is being aired on Voice Of Barbados (VOB). Winnie Griffith simply must not be disturbed from “tracking” the programme or “trying to call in”.
Griffith sees herself as a “call-in freak” who “lives for the call-in programme”. This Spanish Town, Jamaican-born sees her “calling in role” as “very critical”, sharpening her tongue “left, right and centre to represent hundreds of people” who ask her to.
Griffith, whose voice has been known to the programme for the past ten years, granted the “lucky” SUNDAY SUN team the interview we were waiting for for over an hour outside her home last Monday.
The “mouthpiece of the people of Barbados”, as her husband calls her, was “trying to call in”. She doesn’t usually entertain visitors when Brass Tacks is on.
Ordinary people
“Government and private workers and ordinary people call me on a day,” Griffith says. “Sometimes my phone rings 23 times a day, because people want me to go on the programme to talk about them not getting paid . . . .
“And doctors call me too, you know. They ask me if I could talk for them; that they are not getting their money. I said to one the other day, ‘No, man, call in yourself; you must have family who can call in for you’.
“A lady called me the other morning and said, ‘Oh you don’t know me, but I know you’. How she get my number, I wondered. But I understand, because I always say on the programme that my husband’s name is Gordon. So, people look in the phone book for Gordan Griffith.
“And the lady ask me if I can talk about how she did not receive her money. I said, ‘No, you must have people who can call in for you’,” said Griffith who keeps abreast of current affairs and local politics.
Everyday thing
The 62-year-old retired cook, who was employed in Britain, and has resided in Barbados for the past 18 years, said the calls to her were an everyday thing.
“But I don’t mind . . . . I love helping people out.
“The other day my husband deleted 42 messages in a week . . . messages about what people want me to say for them . . . . This morning [last Monday] I got two calls asking me if I can talk about an old lady staying somewhere and the people taking the family money and not feeding her . . . .
“I was gonna talk about that today, but I was holding on, and I know I had you [SUNDAY SUN team] outside waiting. So I said let me put the phone down and try calling after lunch to talk about that old lady – and that [Tudor Street] tragedy situation too.”
Understanding husband
Griffith, who has been married to her “understanding” husband for 32 years, said her frank and straightforward talk had caused “many other callers to put me down”. Vocalizing their anger towards her, they have even asked her to return to her homeland.
But Griffith doesn’t “really reply to them, because I find their behaviour stupid”.
“People say I’m frontish because I am scared of nobody, except God. And no one can hold me down because my last baby is 37 and I’ve got lots of grand-kids. So anything can happen now.
Proud Jamaican
“I am a proud Jamaican, and Jamaicans not scared,” Griffith declared. “You know how many jobs I lost for sticking up for people and myself. I stick up for anyone that I see is being unfaired.
“Once you are my friend, I am your friend to the end . . . but don’t cross me.”
According to Griffith, who reads “the nation every day because there is no other paper for me”, without people like her there would not be a call-in programme, “and the moderators know that”.
Addicted to Brass Tacks, as some television viewers are to Days Of Our Lives, Winnie Griffith won’t stay away. As long as she is alive her voice will be heard on that VOB call-in programme.
