I love you. Yep, you. And that guy across the way. And her with the hair. In fact, look around, I love all of you.

I assure you, these words aren't used lightly, nor without proper ballast. I'm not buttering: you are no crumpet, I am no knife. This is honest to goodness, undiluted feeling, straight from the limbic system because, let's face it, hearts are for blood pumping and Hallmark holidays.

You've never met me, you say? It matters not a jot. I think you're incredible; a living, reading embodiment of an evolutionary process that spans time and geography, or Adam and Eved its path to glory. Either way, that's more than enough special on which to base a declaration of affection.

The way I feel about people is probably the reason I spend time in graveyards, reading names so they're not forgotten, and that even my professional emails normally end with inappropriate kisses. It's also definitely the reason this quiet to the point of disquiet introvert chose to tiptoe into a career in communication.

There's nothing quite as powerful as language to bridge a gap that can't be jumped. These days, I regularly use British Sign Language and Deafblind Manual, speak conversational French and pidgin Gaelic, and am currently toying with German or, more accurately, German is toying with me. I've embarrassed myself exquisitely in each dialect and would never claim to be bilingual, but the lingual I have gets me by.

Communication is the world in which I work, the headspace I occupy, the drum I tunelessly bang. Connecting with people in a lingua franca, be it spoken, visual, tactile or based on a system of flags is essential for mental health, social development, and personal fulfilment. Plus, it's just good manners, right?

In short, communication is my pin-up.

That's why I found myself in a church hall on Sunday night, blabbering into a microphone to the unsuspecting east end of Glasgow. And my host? Rachel King: a teenager with two years' radio experience already in her pocket, and the most laid back media manner ever to grace the air.

I've already asked you that, haven't I? Oh well, let's move on.

It's all in the nonchalance.

As a guest on community station, Bolt FM, I was joining the likes of politicians, teachers and dignitaries whose dulcets had spread forth and amplified over a week of daily broadcasting on 106.7 FM. To celebrate the project's 14th birthday, the young people who both manage and front the station took to the road with their portable studio, transmitting from schools and centres in each of the neighbourhoods the station serves. As the last name scratched on a varied guest list, the pressure for me to perform was palpable, and it turned out my palp was less than able when I neglected to announce the title of the upcoming Taylor Swift song, sure as I was that it had been omitted from the system, leaving just a Blank Space. Rachel soon put this troglodyte right.

There's something intoxicatingly shoogly about being part of that little community mouthpiece. It's not the organisation or the equipment, no, there's talent and expense there to rival the big guns, if not quite beat them in a shoot out. But the experience itself, wandering in from the dusky streets of Provanmill to sit opposite a young, unselfconsciously Glaswegian anchor, whose chat I couldn't quite anticipate, felt tense and, I suppose, raw. I wasn't on edge as much as edge was on me, reminding me with every garbled syllable that this casual little natter was wafting out live and unedited to the community - to my community. And that's a lot to take on, particularly when you realise that the station's name reflects its very philosophy, and at any minute I could have been told unceremoniously to 'bolt', if my answers hadn't quite met expectations.

Like I said, I'm not a natural orator, in spite of my best efforts, which are more often than not completely bested. For years I struggled to answer a phone, preferring to let it ring out and call back when I'd had time - and medication - to prepare. I would avoid meeting friends in groups, making excuses until there weren't enough friends left to merit the collective noun. Letting words come out of my mouth, words that hadn't been suitably screened for potential embarrassments, was a stressor too much and silence became my armour as much as my weapon of choice.

The thought then of addressing a population of unknowns, whose reactions are un-gaugeable given their distinct absence from my line of sight� Have you ever tried your own stomach lining? Mmmm, tastes like defeat.

But that's what makes community radio so exciting, pushing buttons that might in turn start a jingle or bolster your self esteem. The benefits are as much to the speaker as the listener - and, in my case, more so. Not only though does wearing the cans and mispronouncing regional town names bring on a catharsis that technically only booze or chocolate should induce; local radio is actually, gulp, socially responsible.

Community stations have a decorated history of providing services to society far beyond what their signal strength would suggest. Bolt FM in particular has been credited with reducing gang violence in an area in which Young Teams and Fleetos have long since been accepted as founding families, giving young people an open ear in their neighbourhood and a big old voice with which to bother it. Using well-forged partnerships with colleges, housing associations and youth services, Bolt can give young people a direction and the contacts to follow it.

Maybe I flubbed a few answers on air then, but my performance wasn't the reason anyone was listening to that show. People engage with community radio because it speaks to them, for them, from a place they very much know. It's communication at its absolute purest.

And I love it - but not as much as I love you.

Many thanks to all at Bolt FM: http://boltfm.co.uk/