TRAPPED inside his own body for 10 years, a young Exeter man is casting aside his severe disability to achieve his ambition.

Bram, 30, who goes by the name of DJ Eye Tech and has asked the Echo not to use his surname, can only communicate by moving his eyes but is set to host a two-hour radio show in the city tomorrow.

He is presenting a show on Phonic FM despite suffering from Locked In Syndrome, which has left him unable to speak and paralysed except for eye movement. It was brought on after a bicycle accident a little over 10 years ago when he was 20.

He uses a computer with eye tracking software to type words that the computer then reads out.

By only moving his eyes he developed a way of talking, spelling out letters one by one, with a Perspex communication aid.

The show took several months to record.

Tony Walker at Phonic FM said: “His voice has been silent for all of the time he has had to live with Locked In Syndrome but now the whole world can hear him.”

Bram said: “My brain damage only affects movement of muscles but it means I cannot walk, eat or speak. There is very little for me to do except watch the TV, which now I hate.

“Although computers are really clever they can only be used in certain positions. I still need to use my communication board.

“I cannot start a conversation, make a statement or comment on something without first getting somebody’s attention to use the board with me, and waiting while they work out what I am trying to say.

“A lot of what I’ve got to say goes unspoken.

“It is a very lonely place stuck in your own head when you have remembered all your memories and your days now are so similar to each other it just seems every day is the same and impossible to create new memories.”

Tomorrow’s show was devised by Bram, then typed out with his eyes over many hours.

Mr Walker and Bram’s music collaborator, Philip Robinson, recorded his computer voice and edited it together with sound effects to create the show. The DJ is expected to be in the studio while it is being broadcast.

Mr Robinson said: “When I first met him he was a young man unable to communicate with the world around him — his thoughts and feelings, questions and ideas, laughs and cries all literally locked-in — to us he was just silent.

“Through determination, patience and above all an amazing capacity for organising and remembering complex thoughts he began to communicate his world to those around him,” he said.

“Along the way he has produced and devised astonishing music, created and written lyrics for rappers about his experiences of his condition, all done with a very black sense of humour and an inspirational realism of what it is to be alive in a moving/talking world when you can do neither.

“And now he has his first radio show.”

DJ Eye Tech’s show will be broadcast from the Exeter Phoenix, in Gandy Street, tomorrow between 8pm and 10pm.

Phonic FM hit the airways in February, 2008 during Exeter’s annual Vibraphonic festival.

The station has a five-year licence to broadcast on 106.8 FM within a 5km radius of Exeter.

For more information, visit www.eyelife.org

To listen to the show visit www.thisisexeter.co.uk/phonic between 8pm and 10pm on Saturday, July 18.