*Yes, we sometimes give ratings
to days or weeks. It all harks back to our beginnings.
The views expressed in this weblog are those of the individual author alone and do not in any way reflect the views of any organisation or any other contributors.
You know you've arrived when you get your first story on Ceefax. Even if it is the second item of three on page 385, sandwiched between two boxing articles.
Cleverly, the system we use duplicates the first four paragraphs of selected stories and re-encodes them for Ceefax, meaning there's no need to write everything twice - once for the web and once for Ceefax.
However, there is a strict limit of the number of characters (i.e. letters and spaces) you can fit on a Ceefax page. So we have all sorts of visual indicators on our screens to let us know when we've exceeded the limit, and all our copy must be edited to fit the Ceefax constraints.
This is why almost every report from a Premier League football match on the BBC Sport website carries a four-paragraph summary of the game (for Ceefax) then launches back into it from the beginning, in much more detail, as soon as you reach paragraph five.
Exactly the same article as the one above appears, with a picture and some links, on this page of the web.
Personally, I prefer the Ceefax version. When I was younger and we went to stay at my nan and grandad's house in Scotland, I'd wake up every morning to find my grandad sat in his armchair with a plate of toast and a banana, meticulously combing his way through Ceefax. It's nice to think I'm part of the machinery now!
I hate leaving. Whenever I leave people or places that have been part of my life for any length of time, I can't help but get a little misty eyed.
So waving goodbye to colleagues here in Caversham before I head off to London for the next few months has been tough. I genuinely love my old job and all the people that go with it, and I've had a constant lump in my throat for the past few days.
Not only that but, this being my first proper job, I've never had another job to leave. So it's the first time I've had to confront a change of workplace. It's all a bit odd.
But now, sat here in the all but deserted newsroom on a Sunday afternoon, it's come to an end. I've published my last webpage, fetched my last guest, and read my last sports bulletin - in the company of no less than broadcasting legend Richard Skinner. I didn't know what to say when he went for an on-air goodbye and ended up sounding very silly, but it was a lovely gesture:
My new desk awaits, on the fifth floor of the now-doomed Television Centre, as part of BBC Sport, one of the departments set to move out of TVC to Manchester in the next few years. (Have you seen the Salford designs? It's going to be bloody brilliant, I'm halfway to renting a flat oop north already!)
TVC's limited future does nothing to diminish its iconic power as a building, though. When I went for an introductory day last week my jaw dropped about eighty different times - be it celebrities behind me in the lunch queue, through to walking past big signs that simply say: "Entertainment", or "Drama". I can only imagine what goes on behind those doors. It's like some kind of broadcasting Hogwarts, without the funky dress code.
You'll be getting plenty more of this as the weeks go by. I'll be working on our 2008 Olympics coverage, developing features with some of the athletes taking part, as well as coming up with ideas for our website. But I'll also be using the telly next to my desk to watch UK Gold during my lunch break, and suffering withdrawal with the nearest Diet Coke facilities a whole three floors away (which can only be a healthy development!).
And my preferred mode of transport: the Oxford Tube. My three month pass allows me onto any bus, any time, anywhere. It's two hours each way though, so I'll be downloading myself plenty of telly to watch on the way in and out of London. If you see a decent podcast to keep me occupied, send it my way!
Oh and finally, speaking of that, I really like the Telegraph TV service I found the other day. Click here to have a look. The kitchen experiments filmed by the Telegraph science editor are particularly good value, and have a homely but fun quality to them. Well done lads!
It only took a matter of minutes to herd these various BBC 'Have Your Say' links into an image. The BBC website, indeed any major media website, is awash with audience calls to action. Call us, text us, email us, vote on the website, have your say.
It does often feel as though any broadcast journalist caught eschewing audience interaction will be strung up at dawn. So bravo Eddie Mair. His PM programme on Radio 4 won a Sony Gold for interactivity (a Sony being a very, very prestigious radio gong to receive).
Now he's getting a new programme, iPM, designed to reflect input from its audience. More of that shortly. For all this interactivity, writing on the BBC News website, Mair insists this pursuit of your views is to the detriment of the end product:
Whole weeks of airtime each year are devoted not to well-made programmes, but to the garbled scribblings of the ill-informed being badly read out by presenters who would never have cut it in the "Golden Age".
The BBC is the worst offender. In a wilful misunderstanding of what public service broadcasting entails, putting the public on air as often as possible in as many different forms as possible is now the goal.
You can't just have a good idea and go out and make a programme anymore. No. Oh no. How very old fashioned of you to think that. Nowadays you must consider before you've made the programme how the listener might interact with it.
Don't misunderstand me, opinion is important. Even ill-informed opinion has its place. It's in the pub. Or the taxi. But on the radio? What makes listeners or viewers or, heaven forbid, bloggers think they have the faintest idea about broadcasting? If they had any good ideas they'd be employed in broadcasting.
Thank God. It is a delight to hear a respected broadcast journalist, at the top of his game, acknowledge that much of what passes for interactivity is usually undiluted pap of no worth to either the broadcaster or the listener.
Elsewhere in the article, Mair says: "If we wanted to know what a bunch of unqualified loons thought we'd have put a vox pop in the show."
Well I'd even ban vox pops if I could. I've always found them to be an absurd waste of everybody's time and energy. Look at the Northern Rock story. If you are a Northern Rock customer affected, and you're listening to the news, who do you want to hear from? A correspondent? The chief exec of the bank? Or three affable but entirely unhelpful members of the queue outside your local branch, telling you they're in the same situation as you?
Voxes add nothing to a story unless they are very cleverly done. Voxing a particular group of people who you know all have something to contribute - say, medics leaving a conference on cancer - is worthwhile. Voxing people in the street outside the conference for their views on cancer is meaningless.
And sadly, much of the 'interactivity' going on is a rung below that, opening the floodgates and inviting anyone with a spare five minutes and a mobile phone or computer to blanket bomb us with opinion. As Eddie Mair says, there is a place for most of that opinion, and national radio - even local radio to some extent - ain't it.
That doesn't mean we ought to get rid of our attempts to be interactive with you, the listener. We just need to put some thought into it. All too often the interactive bit is the first box ticked because "we'll ask them to email us about it", and that's that. We'll stick the email address in the script, or on screen, and see what happens. It resolves itself without any further commitment of resources.
Genuinely useful interactivity requires as much from the broadcaster as it does from the viewer or listener. Sorry to harp on about that bloody BBC Berkshire flood map, but that's where interactivity really did work, and really did help and interest other members of the public (surely the goal). I spent my days constantly updating the map with new images, video and audio, from our own reporters and from members of the public. Having added their content to the map, visitors could browse the rest of it for important information and other photos.
We had dozens and dozens of lovely messages from people using the map, both those who contributed and those who did not. Australians with relatives in Berkshire were using other people's photos, collated on our site, to see how bad the streets near family members looked. There was nothing inane about it - every photo and video was an important addition.
Now, granted, that was an isolated situation, one that won't often occur. But that's when interactivity works. You cannot just fire a load of interactivity at people every day and expect it to be meaningful, top quality content. Interactivity works best around events, planned or otherwise. For the 2008 Olympics I'd like to think we will harness visitors to the games in a similar way, getting their impressions of organisation, transport, the events themselves, the venue, the whole works. It's not something our correspondents will be able to do in the same way, and we can bring all this together under an authoritative badge, filtering the best contributions to produce something worth looking at.
In essence, what I'm saying is that interactivity needs to become part of a bigger toolkit, rather than the sledgehammer used to bish, bash, bosh our way through fifteen spare minutes of programming. We pull it out of the bag when it's needed and when it's most valuable, not to fill space and not as the raison d'etre for entire strands of programming. Here's PM editor Peter Rippon explaining the new iPM series:
"We are starting a new programme on Radio Four and we need your help. Actually it’s more like an ongoing conversation on the web that will have a programme attached to it once a week. iPM will rely on its audience to help shape the content through a blog."
Right, alarm bells are already ringing. Anything that mentions a 'conversation on the web' needs to be attacked with a big stick before it gets itself hurt. Most 'conversations' on the web, on blogs and message boards, are carried out by people ill qualified to do so, and descend into slanging matches. You need a lot of patience, skill and tolerance to weed out the best contributions before you lose your faith in humanity reading the rest.
"Our intention is to distil the very best of the web to produce a new type of programme that is in the best traditions of BBC Radio Four. We'll be as transparent as we can about the ideas and guests that make it to air. Our blog will explain why some ideas and stories get dropped or squeezed out. Also, by posting our rough ideas in front of the audience, we're also inviting the well-informed and blog-savvy to help us develop a particular idea."
But, Peter, we can do all of that without getting the audience, the blogs, whatever, to build the bloody programme! What I really think we should be doing is outlining our programmes in advance, explaining decisions we make, and offering behind-the-scenes knowledge in our blogging. Why was this guest dropped? Why did we make a certain editorial decision? Why didn't we mention that story?
That's the extra value that ought to come from editors blogging. There was a brilliant morning's entertainment a while back when the daytime News 24 editor blogged from the gallery, minute by minute, for an entire morning - explaining almost everything we saw on air. That's invaluable when it comes to explaining to audiences how we do what we do.
That should not become confused with letting them tell us how to do what we do. By all means we should be encouraging our audience to have ideas, get in touch with us to share them, and maybe even help to see them through. But I'm sure we were doing quite a good job of that before we invited millions of people to text a five-digit number and start their message with 'NEWS' in order for us to see it.
The BBC is about as far as you can get from a closed shop when it comes to exploring avenues opened up by members of our audience. I'm all in favour of our continuing to do that. But it's important that powerful story-led programming is powered by thoroughly researched and well reported audience contributions, rather than diluted by an incomprehensible tide of texts. Interactivity must be deeper than that.
Earlier today I went into Reading to interview Cameron, lead singer and founder of the band Architecture in Helsinki.
Myself and cameraman Chris met Cameron reclined on a knackered old sofa in a dark, dank room upstairs and behind Reading's Fez Club, where they are playing as I type this evening.
He was happily engaged with a bright green and silver laptop, but smiled when we walked in and extended a hand. He came across as a very nice man, and seemed resigned to doing this kind of thing - I dread to think how many local radio journalists have pottered in and out of similar rooms across Australia, Singapore, the UK, France, the UK again and (soon) America in the months, and months, and months that Helsinki have been touring.
The band hail from Australia and it was clear that Cameron wasn't entirely sure whereabouts in the world he was. He'd have been able to get as far as England but Reading's precise location must have remained a mystery, and an understandable one at that. Off mic, at the end of the interview, he politely asked where "Berkshire" was (pronouncing it burk-shire), given it was emblazoned on the microphone. I had to explain that Reading was in Berkshire, and run through the whole burkshire/barkshire thing.
It must be incredibly odd to be over the other side of the world from home, checking your emails in a glorified store cupboard, waiting to play another gig in another faceless town. He's in Kingston-upon-Thames tomorrow, having been in Sheffield last night. His only knowledge of Reading was a bit of shopping in TK Maxx earlier that day. It's not like the band have the time to actually go and explore, or get to know these places.
So it all felt a bit soulless really. The interview happened because I'm standing in on our new music show for a couple of weeks - when I was last writing properly as a music journalist-of-sorts, a couple of years ago, I didn't shed a tear when the BBC job came up and I could give it up. It's one vast manufactured industry, with PR people pulling strings and bored bands giving boring answers to bored journalists. Even sports journalism offers more spontaneity, raw passion and insight.
Cameron was polite, friendly and apparently more than happy to entertain us, but it still felt like tough going simply because it wasn't a natural environment. There was a camera with a bright light pointing at him, my microphone underneath his face, and the somewhat claustrophobic walls of this cupboard leaning in on us. it's tricky to make that feel like a natural conversation, especially with the band's soundcheck thumping through the paper-thin walls and floor.
Still, having seen the band a few months ago, I doubt the cupboard is going to adversely affect Cameron's stage presence tonight. On stage Helsinki are electric, jubilant and vibrant, leaping from instrument to instrument with boyish enthusiasm. I just don't know how you bottle that on camera in a cupboard on a Wednesday afternoon.
I think it speaks volumes that both Chris and I managed to leave our mobile phones in the cupboard by accident. I realised just as we were leaving; Chris only noticed halfway across town and had to run back. We can only surmise that we were both so keen to get out of the cupboard that, when packing the camera into its rucksack, we both lobbed our phones to one side then bolted for the door without a second glance.
You'll be able to listen to an edited version of the interview and make your own mind up on Sunday night from 7pm. There'll be an article on the website as well, I'm sure, although with foot-and-mouth looming (and yes, I've already been asked to create an interactive map of the outbreak), it may be put on the backburner.
On Saturday afternoon, I was hugged by an Afghan for the very first time.
The Afghan Deputy Minister of Information (I think) and his team came to visit our local BBC station as part of a wider fact-finding mission to the UK, presumably to see how the country, and the BBC, 'does' information.
One or two of the party could speak English but for the most part they were operating through a translator. So, for the first time in my life, I found everything I said being echoed in a foreign language about four seconds later, which was fascinating - I kind of wanted to stop and listen, except if I stopped talking then so would the translator, which made it a bit tricky.
I showed them how we put our website together and they all seemed duly impressed at the simplicity of our system (this after a visit from an engineer with a polar opposite point of view just days ago). A couple were keen to ask questions, for example about how 'Listen Again' works (answer: badly, at the moment), and they all appeared genuinely very interested in how things are done.
When we'd finished, I got up to shake hands with everyone and guide them back to our newsreader, who had previously been showing them around. But one of the group members stopped me and asked, in broken but functional English, where I'd studied, and then what I'd studied.
Having heard that I studied history, he broke into a wide smile. "So you have two professions?"
Now I'm probably capable of claiming many things in life, but I'd struggle to claim history as my 'profession'. I had to explain about my postgrad in broadcasting.
This did not dissuade the gentleman. "You are just like my son! He completed degree in medicine but now he is investigative journalist. How old are you?"
Yes, his son was 22 as well. He took one of my business cards and insisted he must get his son to write to me. Then, before he turned to leave, I extended a hand. He ignored the hand entirely, swooped an arm up over my shoulder and gave me a great big bear hug, smile etched across his face. It was quite touching, albeit in an entirely unexpected kind of way. I await the email with great interest and anticipation.
The events of Saturday evening, however, outdid the events of the daytime. For the very first time, my good friend and colleague Andy and I travelled to Slough to commentate on ice hockey.
That's the view from what is now the BBC gantry at The Hangar, otherwise known as Slough Ice Arena.
In one of the more laidback commentary deals of our time, Andy and I negotiated the installation of broadcasting equipment over a 'meet the players' barbecue last Sunday. So here we were for the start of the new season to commentate on Slough v Invicta, the first ice hockey commentary either of us has attempted, and the first online hockey coverage from the station in its history.
Slough ended up winning 9-0 and you know what, I may be slightly biased, but I don't think we did too badly. For me there were two major problems: firstly as we are based at one end of the rink, it is incredibly hard to distinguish members of the visiting team from one another when attacking the near goal, as you can't see their names or numbers; and secondly I kept slipping into footballing terminology, once referring in dramatically incorrect fashion to 'the pitch' when I of course meant 'the rink'.
We got a few other things wrong here or there but having listened back to most of it while at work today, it feels like people at home would at least have had a sense of what was going on, and we regularly gave the score, time remaining and other basics. It's far from the best hockey commentary in the world but it's serviceable and we'll only get better.
Here's a sample of comments from the two sets of fans. Doing something like this throws you up on a pedestal so I've got to be prepared to take the verbal fruit-throwing with the praise... it's not as bad as I thought it might be!...
Jets fan:"I heard the last five of the 2nd, and the 3rd period online. It was good, perhaps better than you'd expect from local radio. They could probably use an ex-pro for color commentary, and they could certainly use a scorekeeper. Anyway, we came out of it sounding good." Jets fan: "Considering this was their first attempt I think it's great." Jets fan: "I'm told (as I cannot get Realplayer to work) that it's pretty good listening from a Jets point of view."
Invicta fan: "The only problem for some Invicta fans listening back home was that the commentators didn't seem to know anything about anyone who wasn't a Jets player- hope this'll be different when they play the EPL sides. One of our fans actually had to e-mail them our team list which is a bit worrying." [Editor's note: Slightly unfair. We already had a team list, we were just having real trouble identifying their players coming at us, and if we can't see names or numbers, no team list in the world is going to help! I do admit that from an Invicta point of view we were below par and my main aim for the next one, against Guildford, is to improve my away team knowledge about ten-fold.] Invicta fan: "As for the commentary, well it was pretty poor, but those guys obviously had their reasons for being so." Invicta fan: "Can't believe the negative way he is reporting on Dynamos. Okay, we don't expect to win, but some of his comments are unnecessary." Invicta fan: "I don't think that the commentators are putting the Mos down. They are a local radio so obviously know more about their own team. The commentators have also stated many times that this is their first game commentating, and that they are at one end of the rink, so in the first the Mos were facing them, hence the reason they could not see their names. Good effort by Radio Berkshire - would be nice if Radio Kent could also do this."
Lots of food for thought. We can't expect everyone to be thrilled with the commentary when one team loses 9-0, but there are points I can definitely take on board and having listened back myself, there are other bits that I need to work on.
But what brilliant fun! Seriously, even though we're doing it in our own time at the end of long Saturdays, commentating on ice hockey has to be one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done. I'm determined to get better if only because I'll be getting plenty of practice - I'd be mad not to turn up to as many games as I can.
Oh and you can, of course, have a brief listen for yourself. With nine goals (seven on my watch) there were plenty of highlights, and you can find them here.
Now, what's the first thing you notice in that picture?
Like me, I suspect you might have thought, 'What is that hair doing? It looks like he's got a bald patch!'
And indeed it does. I'd been on an early shift and not washed my hair that morning. Had I seen a photo like this before leaving the house, I'd have revised that decision. As it was I went the whole day before this issue came to light in the photograph.
But if you're particularly eagled eyed, there are other things to spot. For example, you might have twigged that the calendar still says 'January 2007'. Having tied it to an overhanging cable I cannot now untie it again, so it remains stuck in its own little timewarp.
Or you might have very cleverly deduced that my desk is next to a fire escape, since the corner of the door is visible in the shot, as is a fire alarm braille notice.
You may even have realised my PC monitor has its own rear-view mirror, donated by David Sheppard, with which I can see the entire newsroom behind me.
But David, the man who had come to visit me, spotted this:
CMS is the software we use to update our BBC website, and David works for the team which designs and builds it. He'd turned up in our newsroom to find out more about how we use his technology - what the working relationship is between user and software, and what we'd like to see changed or improved. Naturally, the very presence of a big sign questioning the software's reliability was going to draw his attention. I only realised it was still there once he'd sat down next to me, and didn't have the chance to create a distraction and destroy it.
David spent three hours with me, asking me to create a web feature from start to finish (this one) and getting me to describe my every move. In the process it became very clear that I use all sorts of workarounds and tricks that the designers don't even know exist, and are surprised to discover we have cause to use.
It seemed like David learnt a lot of stuff and he went away apparently a very happy man having done his research. But I'd picked up a thing or two as well, during our lunch break and the walk we'd taken around the grounds.
It is well known that within our various online teams there exist at least five or six competing bits of software for building BBC web pages. For example while we use CMS, News and Sport Online use CPS, some radio station and music websites use FLIP, and still others with sillier acronyms can be found elsewhere. At Reading Festival we built pages using a piece of software called HomeSite, and some sites still use the relatively archaic Dreamweaver.
But what amazed me was the discovery that the teams behind each of these are actively working to conquer the market. In other words, they're improving their product with a view to rolling it out to other BBC websites. In yet other words, they're direct rivals with each other!
So we've got teams of BBC technologists huddled in their various corners of London, trying to outdo each other in the quest to be Top Dog. David and his CMS team can claim all the Where I Live websites and parts of CBBC as their kingdom, but David insists CMS has the capability to attract all the other websites, even News and Sport Online.
For the latter, CPS remains king, but David reckons CPS is less flexible and requires more coding by the user. For David and CMS, user-friendliness and ease of use are the priorities, so much so that his latest research is all to do with creating a dead simple interface for the most basic of users. Our newsrooms are littered with radio and TV journalists for whom the web is a frightening monstrosity, so they need gently coercing to get them to contribute to our websites. That is the CMS plan.
But when I pressed David on this, it became clear that he's just one of many Davids all trumpeting their chosen piece of software to us BBC online folk. He admitted that whenever he comes into contact with designers from the other teams, it's all a bit uncomfortable. "It's like, 'Get out of here or I'll set my ferret on you,' when I sit next to them," he said, pulling a wry smile.
Now I don't know what to make of this. Part of me thinks it's brilliant that the BBC has competing teams, each striving to make their web tools the finest in the land, each pushing the boundaries of what we can do. After all, look at most BBC websites and they're smashing - the software is clearly doing pretty well for itself.
But can it really be right that BBC members of staff are having to go up against each other and, ultimately, fight with the goal of putting some of the other lot out of their jobs? If CMS got the nod across the board, one can only assume the CPS, FLIP and other design teams would be handed their P45s. It's the equivalent of BBC Radio Solent deciding to move into our patch, and their web journalists putting me out of a job once everyone goes to their website instead of ours.
Is it better to have five small teams working on five solutions, or one big team working on one solution?
As a postscript to the previous report from Reading, I've found myself in the background of one of our BBC videos.
Click here and find the interview with Ash. About a third of the way through, watch the background behind the Ash gentleman's left shoulder. Yours truly will appear in a cream shirt and blue jeans, hat in hand, then hands on hips looking vexed.
It's a beautiful cameo and I'm visible in the background for nearly the whole remainder of the interview. It looks as though I'm a complete spare part but I promise you, I'm actually busy! At this point I'm waiting for the kind Radio 1 engineer (see previous post) to appear with some much-needed cables. I didn't realise I was being filmed or else I'd have tried to act a bit livelier! Terrible.
Now, you may be able to find my photos from today's Reading Festival on the BBC website here, but that doesn't mean we're just online journalists. In fact between us, Linda and I have spent most of today putting together a live festival special which went out from 7pm til 8pm this evening.
Getting the audio to play in the show has been the easy part - it's the technological hurdles which have proved the hardest to overcome. Linda just about managed to use a special internet connection allowing her access to our audio database back in Caversham, but when she went to do her first piece on air at around midday, calamity - it was being talked all over by random voices on walkie talkies.
This isn't a new phenomenon. At last year's WOMAD I was doing a live piece into the programme of one David Sheppard when, from nowhere, a phantom female voice crackled into life, knocking me off-air. Clearly someone at these festivals uses our frequency and thus causes a rather large headache.
It's no use trying to do an hour-long live programme from the festival if you can't be sure of keeping out the crackly intruders, so we had a couple of options left. Either we took LInda back to the studio to do it from there (and sadly lose the live atmosphere) or find some other way of broadcasting from the site.
Cue an apprehensive knock on the door of the Radio 1 compound, and an inquiry as to whether their chief engineer was around. Over came a kindly-looking gentleman - excellent.
"Please sir," said I, doing my best Oliver Twist impersonation. "Can we have an ISDN line?"
And there we were, at 7pm, sat in the Radio 1 compound facing the VIP area, plugged into Radio 1's main desk.
It worked like a charm. Our friendly engineer said he was glad of the experience as it got him outside for the first time that day, but he really didn't have to help us. Sometimes it's nice to be a part of an organisation like the BBC - if you're a local commercial station, it's a lot tougher to go begging at the door of network radio.
Tomorrow is going to be a long day with filming for telly probably the priority. I'm hoping to get to the gates of the main arena in the morning before they're opened to the public, to film the crowds pouring in at the earliest opportunity, then we have a band to film on one of the subsidiary stages.
Sunday remains the longest day of all though, with a full radio shift followed by a dash to the festival to quickly knock off some shots for telly, cart them back to Caversham, edit them, then back to the arena to polish off our coverage. Oh, and they want some TV stuff on Monday morning too. My peers are nothing if not demanding. Thank the Lord for three days off next week.
Cor dear me. Sorry for the absence, it's been a long week. Much to recount but so little time so I'll stick to today for now, the first day of our 2007 Reading Festival coverage.
Last year the online coverage of the festival was down to the two of us on the BBC's Berkshire online team, plus a freelance photographer. Using my laptop, a creaky internet connection and my GMail account, we shifted dozens of top quality photos to the BBC's Reading and Leeds website, plus text updates from around the festival site.
Here are Dayorama posts from last year's festival:
25 August: Work + Rock - the internet goes down for everyone except me!
25 August: Giving It Some Welly - it's raining but we're snapping away...
26 August: Wow - Muse are amazing and our photos are up!
27 August: Think Penis! - Tales from the festival arena as we go out filming.
This year things are a little different. The BBC is this year's 'official online partner' of the festival and we're part of a team of fourteen people keeping various BBC websites ticking over. We even have our own office in the ginormous BBC compound, sat in the shadow of legion mammoth BBC Outside Broadcast trucks. The Beeb have taken over a corner of the festival to set up an incredible array of outbuildings, cables and vehicles. It's like being part of a small invasion force, as another white off-road vehicle with 'BBC Outside Broadcast' stencilled to the side thunders past.
It's an incredible operation. Think about it: someone has to make sure the television programmes go out on air, from set design through to driving the trucks, from powering the broadcast through to packing the right cables. Someone has to make sure the radio programmes go out on air, from setting the correct frequency for radio microphones through to issuing passes to all the correct staff. And someone has to make sure the online content reaches the web, from setting up broadband access and buying in laptops to going out and collecting the raw material - and that's where I come in.
Today I've been out in the campsites talking to the punters as they arrived. There's a funny smell as you reach the camping area, a sort of cow-meets-beer aroma, and once you turn a corner the vast extent of the human herd is thrown out before you. Reams of tents rise up to the right of a narrow metal track rising an inch above the rapidly liquifying soil, while on the left a line of shops can flog you anything from a smoothie to a sombrero.
You can click here to watch the footage I shot and see some of the people I met. One group of girls were so thrilled to be interviewed that they demanded a photo with me, so I ended up with one on each arm while their male friend took a picture - the trappings of fame.
If you can't watch the video you can hear from various people in a short package I've produced for Friday night's live broadcast from the festival site. Use this audio panel to listen to it.
Hopefully I'll have some time to keep you updated over the next three days - it should be fascinating being behind the scenes at such a major operation. Coming up on Friday we'll be out taking audience photos then producing a one-hour festival special for broadcast from 7pm, then on Saturday we're filming around the arena to gauge reaction to all the top acts. We have not one but two live specials from the site on Sunday, and that's after my usual 6am shift! It's going to be a busy one.
Well I've not lost it, per se. I know exactly where it is.
But I'm not going to tell you where that is just yet, because it requires the whole story, pictures, video and all.
Suffice to say it's in a location which, if BBC passes had to vote on locations to be lost in, would easily make the top ten. And I'd be risking death trying to get it back in a hurry.
It's the little things that are often the most telling.
After six days of 6:00am starts and nine days without a day off, my mobile phone charger has migrated to work. Now, instead of charging my phone at home, we have reached the stage where I get more battery life out of it by leaving it on charge at work.
I fear this marks an unsettling turn in events. I'll be moving the bed in next. I am going to set a record with my lie-in on Tuesday morning.
Floodwatch: Floods have gone, the map lives on. Had the Press Gazette on the phone earlier today, who interviewed me for ten minutes - will be interested to see what bits they use, if any. I continue to be surprised at the reaction - I swear it just seemed like the obvious thing to do to build a map. People are acting as though I swapped News 24 to rolling map coverage, where Bill Turnbull could click a marker and Natasha Kaplinsky would appear at the location of his choice. Now that would be worth an interview.
Good morning! Things must be getting better with the flooding in Berkshire - it's 8am and I'm still in bed.
It's been a long week for everyone. The flooding that did occur was thankfully minimal but, given its unpredictable nature, we've had to have staff working flat out to make sure we're not caught out. Even so we have to maintain our normal programming at the same time, so lots of people have been doing two or three jobs and we've drafted in help from other stations.
The map continues to attract attention. The Environment Agency themselves emailed me yesterday enquiring after it:
Your interactive flood map appears to be a very useful source of information to supplement the information we have been collecting. Especially where you quote the time & date the photograph is taken and also who took the photograph.
Could you please forward this e-mail to the department or person who has produced this map and is responsible for storing and publishing these photographs. We would be very interested in discussing potential uses and also ideas such as this interactive flood map to improve sharing of information during a flood event.
It would be nice to have more data from the Environment Agency to work with in future. I was told by one visitor to the map that the EA collects data on water velocity etc at different points which would be handy for people to see, plus the EA has its own flood map showing a blue area within which houses are at risk of flooding. It'd be very useful to build that into the map next time.
Life has started to go on outside flooding now. I went to Bisham Abbey yesterday afternoon to interview Marcus Willis, a 17-year-old tennis player from Berkshire who got to the third round of the Wimbledon Boys' tournament this year. His Russian coach once counted Anna Kournikova as a pupil, and he's joining the men's tennis circuit this September - at least if he passes his GCSEs, anyway.
Marcus seems a very nice guy. We recorded a five minute interview about his tennis aspirations (and his mum's GCSE worries) and the most telling aspect was that throughout the entire interview, he was watching the practice match going on behind my shoulder. He was talking at the same time and clearly taking in the questions, but I don't think he missed a point of the game being played on the opposite court.
If he's living and breathing tennis to that extent he's probably going to go far, and he reckons he's got a chance of becoming a future Wimbledon champion (coach Victor Roubanov says top 50 is a definite). So keep an eye out for the name and, naturally, remember where you heard it first. The video interview should be on the Berkshire site later today.
The wait goes on. I'm at home now but expecting to be called back into work at any point during the night. It all depends how bad the flooding is.
Yesterday I wrote to compare the atmosphere in our newsroom to a form of embattled trench in a warzone, hours away from the final battle. In response, Dan Grey wrote the following comment:
I think you guys need to calm down a bit. Listen to what the EA are telling you: that the Thames on a Flood Warning, NOT a Severe Flood warning (i.e. widespread flooding of property is NOT expected), and that the flood is only going to be at or below 2003 (which saw only very limited flooding in Caversham), and nowhere near 1947 (that was The Big One, when as far up as Gosbrook Road flooded to some depth).
I couldn't agree more about the calming down, but it's difficult. One half of you is driven by a sort of journalistic fervour for there to be a story, the other half keeps that in check and stops things getting carried away. On top of that some people had quite real concerns that their houses would flood (and indeed some already have, as I said). So calming down wasn't easy.
I don't agree about the Environment Agency advice though. Dan goes on to say:
At most, some farmland and the very lowest-lying areas are going to flood. Flood Warning only means that there's a *possibility* of some flooding, not that it will happen (yes, the EA warning system is poor). Severe Flood Warning is the one to listen for - when you hear that, that means flooding of property *is* going to happen.
The EA has been saying this throughout - check the archived information bulletins on the News section of their site.
Well, no, Dan, they haven't been saying that throughout. I've been in work for ten or eleven hours a day these past four days, and I've heard at least 20 Environment Agency spokespeople on our radio station in that time. The advice has been constantly changing. I promise you that 36 hours ago, the EA were predicting floods akin to 1947, both on air and on the phone to us off air.
Since then they've been all over the place, from predicting a surge of water down the Thames (causing the Evening Standard to demand residents of London near the Thames "flee") to the most recent advice, which is that the flood will be more like the floods of 2003, if not the lesser floods of 2000.
I don't blame the EA at all for the ever-changing nature of their advice. I imagine predicting exactly how a river will flood, taking into account all its tributaries, the surrounding geography and the weather pattern, is an incredibly inexact science. As one of our presenters said this morning, it's a wonder they can predict anything at all.
But it makes preparing for the flood something of a dark art. It's looking fairly certain now that Berkshire will fare much better than Oxford, let alone the likes of Gloucester - but earlier in the week the EA advice could easily have been interpreted to suggest vast swathes of Caversham would be under four or five feet. We had friends and colleagues sweating over the EA's flood map, showing a blue zone in which housing would be affected by severe flood, even though their houses were very much on the border of that zone.
If the news bulletins on the EA's website do show a consistent line of advice, then they're at odds with the interviews we conducted with EA spokespeople on air. It's not their fault, but is it any wonder it's difficult to keep calm when none of us know if we'll be in work overnight? We've already had one TV reporter spend 28 hours in Pangbourne on Environment Agency advice in anticipation of flooding which has yet to arrive - it creates a lot of uncertainty, because we need to be there when it happens, and so we have to have everybody on pins to jump the moment it kicks off.
All that said, it is very easy to get carried away when you see what's going on in places like Cheltenham and Gloucester - see Amy J's comment on my last post for an idea of what it's like there. And thanks for the compliment about the map, Dan. I've had quite a lot of good feedback about it today, and a lot of people similarly want it to be extended to cover places like Oxford. Sadly that's not possible this time around (it'd take forever to coordinate it with the information they have, and our map can only accommodate 100 markers at a time before things go a bit awry), but I'll be pushing for us to do something like that if this happens again in future.
I think I've replaced Barclays with the Inland Revenue.
I'm going to be working in HK for 6mths, so need to notify HM R&C. Simple, right? I complete a form, send it off, and all should be OK. Obviously it won't be OK, but we'll come to that in around 7 months time.
I finally found, downloaded, printed and completed the required HM R&C Form. I then needed to find out where to send it. I went on the HM R&C website. I go to the "contact us" section. It provides a raft of options. Unfortunately it doesn't tell me where my "local" tax office is. Follow "L", and "London" isn't an option. "Kent" has an 0845 number, and there was an everlasting wait for someone to answer. I abandoned this option and tried the list of helpful answers on the website. Unfortunately it didn't tell me how to contact them.
I ended up calling a random helpdesk number, something to do with returning a self-assessment tax form. After a while I was verified. I was then told that my local tax office was Salford. Salford? That's hardly local. I did try to argue, but I didn't really get anywhere.
So, my form has gone off to Salford. Who knows what will happen en route. In the meanwhile, I've tried to close one of my accounts with Barclays. Just wait for that saga to unfold.
We're all too familiar with Facebook. In the past couple of months I've had conversations with people I went to Primary School with and haven't spoken to for over ten years, and found out what peers from Secondary School are up to.
I remember a while back trying to predict when we would all get fed-up with the concept. When will we give up on it? When will it become unfashionable?
It doesn't seem that time is approaching just yet. Facebook has expanded and now has a host of new applications. In addition, the breadth of people who are members has increased considerably. At work, for instance, I now have a number of Attorneys who are "friends". Today, even my secretary (who, incidentally, has a 21yr old daughter) joined. It's insane. How many employers will try to check out potential candidates, via Facebook? It's a dangerous environment: best check those privacy settings.
Right, allow me to set the scene. About a month ago, my radio station adopted a panda. Here's what I wrote at the time:
I came up with the idea that for every text we received reading "Save the Panda", I would donate 50 pence to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has a panda as its logo and pays special attention to conservation work with the furry photo-negatives themselves. Our presenter Andy and fellow producer Rita matched this, so we were offering £1.50 per text.
In a few seconds flat the Pandometer had reached £30, so I went to find out how to donate. Lo and behold, the WWF pages advertised the chance to adopt a panda for £2.50 a month - £30 a year. Perfect! I filled out the direct debit form and the panda became BBC property (well, I adopted it, but it's on attachment).
Well, the panda has not been forgotten, and today it made its first live appearance on air. See, I'd shipped it over from China to join me in the commentary gantry at Ascot for the afternoon's racing.
Alright, so maybe it wasn't the actual panda...
And alright, if I'm honest, maybe it wasn't even that panda. See, cuddly panda toys can't really talk. What I needed was an actor to play the role of the panda on air for me. Someone with quite a deep voice. Someone the listeners (and presenters) wouldn't recognise. Who could I call on?
Yep. OJ is officially the voice of Zhu Xiong the panda, of Wanglang Province, China. We caught up with the panda's activities since being adopted last month, and the panda helped us pick a few horses for that afternoon's "horse tipping" competition. Miraculously the panda even correctly chose Pelican Prince as the winner of the first race, but sadly hadn't put any bamboo on it.
When not indulging our panda storyline, we spent a very enjoyable afternoon on the seventh floor of the Ascot grandstand, able to see Wembley Stadium in the distance, watch the cricket being played on a pitch inside the racecourse, and of course watch the racing from our vantage point directly above the winning post.
I even got to try my hand at racing commentary a couple of times - which, let me tell you, is a nigh on impossible art, trying to make out blurry sequences of colours hurtling along five furlongs away. A couple of times I only just recognised the correct horse at the last moment. I don't envy the likes of Cornelius Lysaght and John McCririck, that's for sure, and nor do I think I pose a serious threat to their job security.
I think OJ would join me in recommending The Old Hatchet, a pub just a few minutes' drive from Ascot. We decamped there after the final race and it was a lovely place, serving decent food at a reasonable price in a peaceful, shady beer garden. Is it any wonder OJ's texted me his approval for these invitations on 'press gigs'?
Just a short lesson for life. Don't have an oversized handbag / manbag. Or if you do, make sure you don't have a rip in the lining so your house keys fall in the lining. If you do, make sure you know about it. Do make sure you don't get back to your flat at 12.45am from work, realise you don't have keys. Or, think you don't. Go back to work. Then find keys in bag. Get stuck in work because the lifts shut down for scheduled maintenance. And b[a]ggered if I am walking 46 flights of stairs. Have to descend in the "goods lift" - a horrid experience - and then get back in cab and go home. Agh. I need sleep.
For Shep it'd probably be boring, going on tedious, to present an hour-long sports show on Friday early evening. But it's now been over two hours since the first ever radio show I could properly call my own finished, and I've yet to come down off the ceiling.
Well, maybe not the first ever. I used to have shows now and then on student radio, but I could count my internet-based audience using various gadgets, and the maximum listening figure I got was: eight.
So it's a bit of a step up to be given an entire county.
To say I was nervous beforehand would be something of an understatement. David can attest that I was circling the newsroom like a shark with Parkinson's in the hour prior to broadcast, and when producer Rita spilt coffee on a keyboard, all anyone could see was me walking round with rolls of brown-stained toilet paper, which was remarkably apt.
See, I've wanted to do this for ages. I've been in the newsroom before, wondering what the odds are that the regular presenters and every other available person will all be held up in traffic, leaving me to stride in and save the day. So when I got in this morning to find an email telling me I was presenting tonight, it put me on excitable pins all day long.
Our station is particularly blessed with experienced, brilliant presenters who've been there for decades and seen it all (Henry Kelly, for example). One of these is Phil Kennedy, a veteran of national radio and frankly a bloody good presenter. When I heard Phil utter the immortal words, "That's it from me, here's Ollie", I'm amazed I stayed conscious. It's the equivalent of David Beckham rolling the ball across for you to score in an empty net in the World Cup Final, in your first ever competitive football match.
I think the hour went okay. As with all things like this, it felt like mere seconds, and we managed to fit everything in without making any big cock-ups. But the credit for that rests with Rita, who was operating the desk which sends everything from our studio out to air, and who calmly massaged my shaking soul through reams of jingles, beds and clips, which otherwise would have sent my head rolling from my shoulders.
I promise you presenting radio is not easy, but the best people make it seem like it is. That's why I blame David for making me think I'd get away with it. In case you don't know, Mr Sheppard is standing in for Paul Miller across BBC local radio in the South for the next week or so, and he's doing a brilliant job - everyone there, and everyone listening, loves him. Don't forget to tune in... he'll be in the studio by now ready for 10pm, and if his palms are sweating anything like mine were, he'll have to swim to his microphone fader.
(PS: My ego would like it to be made clear that tonight's Sportsweek, with yours truly bricking it throughout, is available on Listen Again for a week.)
If you're wondering why the BBC News and BBC Sport websites are not updating overly quickly this morning, I may have some vague sort of answer.
Staff working on the websites - not to mention radio and telly - are having all kinds of problems logging in to BBC computers this morning. A couple of staff here are affected. This is the explanation one sent:
"I'm logged in now but it is apparently taking up to 3 hours for anyone in BBC News to log in and they don't know how long that will go on for.
"Apparently it's something to do with a printer in Jerusalem - you really couldn't make it up!"
At the time of writing the BBC News front page hasn't been updated for nearly an hour, and the BBC Sport cricket team have resorted to posting updates on the England-Windies test using the BBC's 606 message board.
Actually I've just had an email from our technical team which suggests there are two big problems this morning, not one:
"The News CPS has encountered a major publishing problem. We have been unable to update indexes or stories for the past two-and-a-half hours. We are assured that men with spanners are trying to solve the problem."
CPS is a content management system the BBC News Online team use to produce their pages - we use a different one, CMS, which appears unaffected. From what I can tell, it looks like the only thing the News/Sport Online teams can alter is the little ticker on their respective front pages, since that's a java script and doesn't have to be edited using the technology that's gone down!
Having previously surfed our intranet extensively, I can tell you there is a whopping great back-up plan on there for when things like this happen. What I can't tell you is to what extent anyone's following it. Full marks to Tom Fordyce for 606-based cricket updates though. Brilliant thinking.
I must confess that when I went into work today, I was not expecting to adopt a panda.
But they say anything can happen in the world of live radio, and so it is that the day ends with three local radio personnel funding the wellbeing and development of ten-year-old giant panda Zhu Xiong, a resident of the Wanglang nature reserve in central China.
And it's all because of this t-shirt:
Not exactly the same one - mine is orange - but the design is almost identical. If you can't make it out, the text reads "Yum Yum Panda Burgers".
Now I have never eaten panda, nor would I even entertain the thought - although of course, it's no different to eating a cow, or a chicken, or a fish, regardless of their endangered species status. If you approached me and told me I was on the menu because there are lots of me around, but the panda is off limits because there's only so many left, I wouldn't find your argument for my demise overly convincing. So in reality, our distaste at the idea of panda patties is probably somewhat hypocritical.
But that doesn't make the sentiment "Yum yum, panda burgers" any less heartless when read out on air by your presenter. So I had to think of something to pacify the many people who by now had me down as the thoughtless, gutless panda-consuming villain of the piece.
So I came up with the idea that for every text we received reading "Save the Panda", I would donate 50 pence to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has a panda as its logo and pays special attention to conservation work with the furry photo-negatives themselves. Our presenter Andy and fellow producer Rita matched this, so we were offering £1.50 per text.
In a few seconds flat the Pandometer had reached £30, so I went to find out how to donate. Lo and behold, the WWF pages advertised the chance to adopt a panda for £2.50 a month - £30 a year. Perfect! I filled out the direct debit form and the panda became BBC property (well, I adopted it, but it's on attachment).
We're promised a cuddly toy version of our panda in the post, plus regular updates and a photo of the real thing. Once we get all that I'll put a BBC webpage up for the panda, which is now as much a part of the weekend staff as anyone else, although we doubt we'll get a particularly good signal from the radio car in Wanglang province.
Now this had all been quite light-hearted but I was worried it might sound like we didn't really care what happens to pandas - who, after all, are remarkably beautiful, exquisite creatures.
So Alison, the off-duty WWF press officer (above), received an unlikely phone call.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is that Alison?"
"Yes, it is."
"Hi, Alison. My name's Ollie from the BBC, sorry to disturb you at the weekend. Now, for reasons that I can't really adequately explain, we've just adopted a panda on air."
"... I see..."
"Yeah, and we were sort of wondering if you might be able to come on the radio and talk to us about pandas."
"I'll see what I can do."
I'm eternally grateful to Alison - at 5:55pm, with the seconds ticking away til the end of the show, we had her explaining to the county just what our donation would mean. For example, some of our money will go to increasing the quantity of bamboo in the area, since it naturally grows at a very high altitude and can be hard for pandas to find. Who knew?
Alison promises we can call the WWF for regular updates, which we shall of course do. Not so long ago a BBC reporter went to Sri Lanka to check out our local radio station's work with tsunami-affected communities there - I think it's only fair I be sent to China to check up on Zhu Xiong. I'll get my passport.
I really, truly and honestly mean it when I say that meeting new people is the best part of my job.
I do a lot of that - we all do - and today the entire radio station gave itself over to helping members of the public produce our output, from the travel news to the sport, the drivetime programme to the weather forecast.
The project, called Making It, involved giving no more than few hours' training to 20-plus local people prepared to try their hand at broadcasting, then supervising them as they spent a day taking charge of what we do. So we had a news editor, a newsreader, a sports presenter or two, co-presenters for all our programmes, reporters across the county, TV reporters and much more - all supported by the people who do those jobs day in, day out.
Which of course means our online team had its own new stars, and here I am with Pauline, with whom I crafted an article on some breaking speedway news during the afternoon. Note the new hair and my ability to appear drunk at 3pm having not touched a drop in days.
Pauline was fantastic - imbued with a fine sense of humour and a decisive nature, both of which are fine assets when you're doing my job. She was joined by Thelma, who wrote us a brilliant article on the architecture of the Ascot Grandstand one year on, perfect to fit in with the new BBC series How We Built Britain, and topical with Royal Ascot just around the corner.
Together the three of us edited Thelma's excellent but rather long article down to an in-depth but punchy assessment of the first 12 months for the new-look Ascot. Have a read here.
If only every day brought an eager correspondent carrying a well-researched article on a hot Berkshire topic. If they ever read this, thanks to both of them for making my life so easy today!
Thanks to Malcolm too, our sports journalist in the morning, who conducted a very funny interview with the manager of a Reading football team about to go on a short tour of Poland. It transpired that Malcolm and his interviewee, Josh, both managed community football teams in the same league - and had much about which to talk!
The 'interview' ends with me holding the microphone as the pair of them indulge in a light-hearted war of words over whose team is better. I would have been rubbish doing that interview, but Malcolm had so much in common with Josh that it made a great few minutes of radio for tomorrow night's Sportsweek.
Not everything ran so smoothly. As the interview came to an end, with us all stood out on the football pitch at the front of the building, the fire alarm could be heard from within. A few moments later the entire staff of the radio station, with members of the public in tow, came streaming out, and we had put our emergency broadcast to air. This lasted a full half hour before we were allowed back in - certainly not helpful on a flagship day of broadcasting with twice our usual number of people in the newsroom!
The most important thing, for me, is not to let this feel like a one-off. We don't make a habit of ignoring listeners and members of the public unless it's a day with a special name with special t-shirts to hand out. Take our junior football section on the website, powered in its entirety by dedicated parents and coaches on the touchline sending in match reports and great photos. We have 40 local BBC websites and I'd put any money on ours being the best for junior football, and it's all their work, not mine.
On a separate note, social networking site Facebook is adding dozens of new applications every day, designed to help you customise your profile far beyond the old limits previously allowed. Today I was very pleasantly surprised by Dogbook, an application which enabled me to create a profile for my dog, Toby, attached to my own page. It looks brilliant and I'm dead proud to have my dog alongside me online. Bless the internet, it's been a lot of fun today.
You'll recall I got drenched in champagne at the end of Saturday's play-off final. Here are the brilliant pictures:
Step 1: Enter pitch to conduct interview during celebrations. Hear manager say, "Fetch the champagne," just as the interview starts. Hear unpopping of cork. Feel icy sensation of champagne all over hair, neck, and expensive microphone.
Step 2: Look like a complete gimp while Maidenhead manager swigs from newly-acquired bottle of champagne. Check microphone still working. Try to carry on with interview.
Step 3: Recover composure and give chiselled look to camera, far, far too late to erase memory of gimp look. Maidenhead manager inspects bottle having apparently downed it during course of interview.
With many, many thanks to Nigel Keene, the photographer who captured these images. They'll probably never leave my portfolio (barring the gimp one). Click here for his full selection of photos - he's incredibly good. As a bit of an aspiring sports photographer myself when I get the chance, I clearly have much to learn.
How many commentators end up being doused in champagne at the end of their first game?
It was a privilege to be yapping away to what was no doubt an incredibly small but passionate audience back home as Maidenhead United wrapped up promotion to the Conference South, beating Team Bath 1-0 at Twerton Park, in Bath, in the Southern League's play-off final.
For the first time I'd had the chance to discover how hard it is talking for two periods of 45 minutes - with the fantastic help of Steve, one of the Maidenhead directors (and press officer for the club), who provided valuable insight all along, such as who the hell scored Maidenhead's goal (Errol Telemaque, but damned if I knew at the time).
But what a result to start with. The first half was fairly dismal with barely any shots on goal registered, but with forty seconds of the second half gone, Maidenhead scored. The tempo immediately leapt and we had a game on - so much for having to find 45 minutes of chat, the rest of the game flashed by as promotion crept closer.
After the final whistle there was a pitch invasion and, with the Maidenhead players gathered in celebration, I went down with my microphone to interview their manager, a very happy Drax Hippolyte.
As I was doing the interview the players were given bottles of champagne. Within seconds the pair of us were being showered in alcohol, which you can hear dripping fuzzily into the microphone as the interview continues:
I'm fairly sure there's a quality photo of the interview somewhere - I recall seeing a photographer in front of us as the champagne dripped. What a job, eh? You can't buy that sort of moment. Who wants to be a Premiership reporter? Try getting onto the pitch for their celebrations. A brilliant day.
I don't often mention work, but over the past few days a colleague and I have probably spent the best part of 50 hours between us trying to research and conclude the answer to a particular, seemingly simple, point of law / scenario. I've two observations: i) there is no way I can qualify into the Litigation / Arbitration departmnet. It would drive me insane; and ii) there is something wrong with the legislation in this country when we have a good called something along lines of the Export of Goods Act... and we don't define "export" or "goods". This leads to endless headache, trust me. Agh.
That there is the Maidenhead United manager, Johnson Hippolyte, training with his squad ahead of Saturday's Southern League play-off final at Team Bath.
If Maidenhead win they're back up to the Conference South. By non-league standards, this is a big game and the climax to a season where Maidenhead have crawled back from the dead. Halfway through the season the club were languishing a couple of places outside the relegation zone, without a win in two months. Then they started winning, and they haven't looked back. They beat Kings Lynn in the play-off semi on Tuesday in East Anglia, and now as little as 90 minutes stands between them and promotion.
It's a big day all round really, because sat in the gantry commentating will be yours truly. In the finest spirit of "stand back, I've seen it done", I'll be taking the lip microphone and guiding anyone who cares to listen through two hours of frantic non-league action, accompanied by Maidenhead press-officer-of-sorts Steve, who knows far too much about the club and is therefore a handy individual to have nearby.
Not, I hasten to add, that we're interrupting Reading v Watford for this defining moment in broadcasting history. If you want to hear the Maidenhead game you'll be able to listen online via a special link on the Berkshire website's home page on Saturday afternoon, from 3pm. Although if the final goes to extra time and penalties, don't rule out a burst of action from North Somerset some time around 5:30.
I'll be spending Friday night making meticulous notes (watch the technology die on me after all this work, and you'll get dead air for two hours), but first I'm doing my homework on a different matter entirely. With the polls now closed I'm off to Wokingham tomorrow morning, where the count starts at 9am, with a result expected by lunchtime. The commentary debut will have to wait while I don my Dimbleby hat and circle the returning officer like a shark, as per my performance in Manchester last year.
My time is further divided by the arrival on my desk this morning of the new Lord Of The Rings online game. I'd seen this in the shops yesterday and sort of pawed at it suspiciously, since it looked good but usually my enthusiasm for such things peters out relatively quickly. However, I got into work today to find one of our producers had donated it since it couldn't find a home elsewhere, having been sent to us as a freebie.
Clearly I can't just ignore it now, so I've given it a good home. Or I will do, once I free up the ten gigabytes of hard disk space it wants to run properly. I might even dust off my old laptop to play it - and I thought that had been consigned to Middle Earth years ago.
Ahh, this must be what the good old days were like. Sat at my desk, neck to one side clamping the phone to my ear, typing furiously away as a BBC correspondent in a far-off land dictates down a crackly line.
Who needs twenty-first century technology? It all feels a lot more exciting and, I dunno, reporter-like that way. Our esteemed colleague Ben has gone to Sri Lanka to film the work of a Reading-based charity, helping people rebuild their lives after the tsunami. His plan was to write for our website each day using his laptop, but he managed to electrocute that (and almost himself) plugging it into a particularly unreliable socket when he got to the capital, Colombo. So in its absence he's gone old skool and is filing copy down the line.
This is where the NATO phonetic alphabet comes in handy, and I start to sound like a police control room operator.
Ben: "So the monk's name is B-U-(static)-B-H-I..."
Me: "Hang on, go again. B for Bravo, U, B for Bravo..."
Ben: "No, D! Not B."
Me: "D for Delta?"
Ben: "Yeah, B-U-D-D-H-I-K-A..."
And so this continued for ten minutes, until between us we'd committed all 428 words to my computer's memory. This third instalment will be on the site tomorrow - parts one and two, which made it through by laptop before Ben nearly killed himself, are here and here. (His mum has left nice comments on both, which is fantastic. Only a couple of months ago he was practically garnering death threats for his piece on dividing by zero.)
Ben's now back in Colombo waiting for his flight home tomorrow, having been out there nearly a week. But there's just one problem. As I was leaving for home, this urgent Reuters snap appeared:
COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan authorities closed Colombo's international airport and cut power to the capital on Thursday night after suspicious airplanes were seen flying south along the coast, a military source said.
Witnesses in the area said they saw parachute flares fired into the sky and heard what sounded like anti-aircraft guns.
On the positive side, Ben could be ideally placed as a BBC correspondent should trouble break out. On the negative side, his proposed long weekend off is not exactly looking likely.
It may have been 12 months since the ever diplomatic Emma spared me the need to frog march my estranged desk back to its rightful home, but I can assure you her diplomacy remains as strong today as ever.
A couple of weeks ago, Radio Berkshire suffered the most severe IT failure I've witnessed since I joined the BBC five years ago. Computers were out of action for hours, the whole building remote from the internet, and even broadcast critical lines were being propped up to sustain travel bulletins and the like (no fault of our own, I hasten to add, and carried with little detriment to the listener).
When all was resolved, the BBC's Helpdesk sent us an email to explain what had caused the situation, and also to apologise "for any incontinence caused".
At the time, we assumed this to be either the most unfortunate of tryping errots, or a practical joke which had somehow made it to the inboxes of the 500+ staff in our building.
Firstly, I've interviewed an Elvis impersonator - sorry, "tribute act" - for the first time in my life. I hadn't really been expecting that to happen today, and certainly not at the speedway. But it turns out the boy Elvis is quite the Reading Bulldogs fan. Have a listen, he even sings a Bulldogs-themed Presley number:
The second point of note is that of all the celebrities in the world, my face most closely resembles that of...
Richard Hammond. And it's official:
I'm not entirely sure how Amy J will take this news. Is this Hammond immediately struck off "the list"? Click here for your own which-celeb-do-you-look-like gadget.
I've not yet had many chances in life to exercise the Old School Tie, but today I met one of the very few England test batsmen to have gone to my school:
That's Aftab Habib - member of Wills West house, Taunton School, in the early 1980s - departing the field of play having scored 12 runs for his new team, Berkshire. He played for England against New Zealand back in the late 90s without much success, then disappeared back into the depths of county cricket. After leaving Leicestershire at the end of last season, he's rejoined Berkshire (he was born in Reading despite his time at TS) and this was his first game back, a friendly against fellow minor county Wiltshire.
Berkshire lost by a fair margin, making 228 all out at Henley CC in response to Wiltshire's 313. At the time the photo was taken Habib had spent just under an hour at the crease, but the score on his departure was 98 for 6, far from healthy for a side which rates its batting above its bowling. Only Paul Carter, batting number 7, put up any resistance with 57 off 51 balls.
Having completed my umpiring course back in March I now know a fair few people associated with cricket in Berkshire - when I turned up to this game, my first ever in the county, I knew about four spectators, the scorer and one of the umpires. Here's my former instructor Errol waggling the finger of doom at a Berkshire batsman:
And the good news is it looks like I could be spending most of my summer doing this. I'm on sports bulletins duty each Saturday afternoon but have carte blanche to find a decent sporting fixture from which to present them, and the cricket looks odds on to win my vote since it's one of very few sports which can sustain a match from 1pm til 6pm on a Saturday, with something new to say each hour. Plus I'll take my trusty camera and put together a 'grand tour' of Berkshire's finest grounds - that's Henley in the can already, and possibly Thatcham to come next week.
I've really missed cricket, you know. It's good to have it back and even better to be paid to watch it. Plenty of photos and an interview with Aftab to follow on the Berkshire website tomorrow.
I've just come back from Bracknell's artificial ski slope and, tell you what, I've got a cracking little feature to come on the Berkshire website.
Earlier in the day I had the brainwave of taking one of the wireless lapel microphones we usually use with our video cameras. You clip a small pack to your belt, then thread the mic up to your collar and clip it there. It has a range of about 20 or 30 yards from the receiver, which you plug into the camera or recording device.
At the ski slope I interviewed a couple of great young snowsports stars called James and Sam (i.e. short for Samantha). James is 17 and still in sixth form but has won gold medals for his age group in a UK-wide freestyle skiing competition. Sam is only 15 and doing her GCSEs but has similarly racked up snowboarding honours.
I got both of them to wire themselves up, then stood by the side of the slope and chased them down it with the receiver. They described their moves as they went along. I haven't had the chance to listen back yet, but with a bit of luck there'll be a nice blend of sound effects (skis crackling over the artificial slope, then grinding on the jumps and rails) alongside the guys explaining what they're trying to do. It should at least be a bit different.
I found the snowsports folk at the ski slope to be among the friendliest group of people I've ever interviewed for radio - full marks to them. Most of them are young and keen, and I was approached loads of times by kids as young as 10 or 11 asking for photos of them trying to pull off moves on the slope.
But you don't have to be a teenager to throw yourself down a snowy hill with a couple of planks on your legs - James introduced me to his dad, Paul, who is 50 and now competing at Masters competitions in Switzerland having decided he'd rather take his son on, than stand by the sidelines watching.
Essentially it's nice to find out about a sport that's up and coming (freestyle skiing's only about 10 years old), rather than many sports I cover, where the participants worry that their game is dying out and lacking fresh blood. The ski slope is in the process of expanding and there's going to be a big competition in June - I can guarantee I'll be back to cover it.
Ah, Friday the thirteenth. Always a good laugh. You get up in the morning and have a quiet chuckle that this is supposed to be a terrible, doom-laden day. Then off you go, nothing untoward happens, and it slips gently by for another year and another quiet chuckle.
Sod that - today's been hell. Our radio station has limped through the day's programming like a squirrel on crutches thanks to two crippling defects, both of which we could blame on a certain well-known and formerly-monopolising telecoms service provider (think British Airways, but not airways).
I got in to be told that there was no internet access in the building because some wire had developed a fault. Now that doesn't sound too bad - no checking your email, no sneaky trips to Betfair for the Aintree racing, no idling on Facebook - but when you actually try to do some work, it becomes quickly apparent that we're absolutely buggered without the web. Especially when your job title involves "online journalist". If you're wondering why the Berkshire website didn't update til 8pm today, this will be why.
Around four hours after I got in, the internet was restored, and just for a moment it looked like Friday the thirteenth would rescue itself. But then we reached the 6pm football phone-in and once again, Mother Nature chose to let slip the dogs of war. Our ISDN line, connecting our presenter (at the speedway) with the studio, died 10 minutes before broadcast. We had to start programming half an hour late while our drivetime presenter span more records, as the speedway team decamped to the nearby football stadium and another ISDN.
It's funny: writing them down, these two events both sound incredibly minor. But it's been a long day for anyone involved, especially our engineer (although he looked like a pig in the proverbial scurrying round dealing with everything, which is precisely what I'd expect of someone doing his job - it's the equivalent of me being given a football commentary).
I've hopefully got the pleasure of Amy K's company at BBC towers tomorrow. This is a problem, because up til now I've tried to cultivate the impression that we work hard there. One fears that with a fellow Dayorama author present, this illusion could quickly dispel itself. But then it's not Friday the thirteenth any more, so surely nothing else will go wrong...
If my old University diary is to be trusted, three years ago to the minute I was busy pawing over Milton's 'Lycidas' as part of my specialist unit in elegy.
I'm certain it's not. In reality, I was probably in-transit somewhere between Bristol and Berkshire, having worked night and day respectively on their BBC local radio stations, alongside trying to keep the needles waggling at Burst, the student radio station of the former.
When I did get around to 'Lycidas', however, my keen thoughts would have been delivered in a tutorial to George Donaldson, one half of the tutoring duo who headed up the elegy course at Bristol. George was (and still is) a mild-mannered man who appreciated that, in his students, a passion for English literature might be secondary to other life ambitions. Alongside his teaching (and sparring) partner John Lyon, an amiable Scot, he quietly understood there was something on my mind besides Gray's 'Elegy'.
I remember one tutorial from which, with line of sight to the Students' Union building, I all but absented myself whilst watching Burst's transmission ariel being erected in readiness for the launch of our FM licence. George quietly turned a blind eye, whilst John with equal discretion mentioned afterwards that I ought to know about George's family connections; he was, of course, the twin-brother of the legendary BBC Radio 4 Announcer, Peter Donaldson, undoubtedly one of the most famous voices and broadcasters of our era.
Three years on, I find myself working at the centre of my biggest distraction. The subjects of my tutorial today were far from the elegies of Keats and Shelley (which, don't get me wrong, I still happily contemplate in my spare time), but scripts from Radio 4's morning paper review and 1400 news bulletin. Instead of scrutinising great words, I was having my delivery of words scrutinised by the great. My voice-coaching tutor: the other Mr Donaldson.
If it felt a little strange to be reading a 'dummy' Radio 4 news bulletin to the man who is Radio 4, it felt unreal to discover we had common friends - that he knew all about our Routemaster, "Deadly, Ken, Charles and Steve Mad-ooon", and wanted to know who drove it most often. A little twinkle in his eye prompted a long conversation about Radio 2 (where he started his BBC career in the '70s), and he showed in person the same great skill I so admire in all my heroes on the radio: he made me feel like we'd known each other for years.
My boss invited me for a drink with her and Peter after work, but busy at home, I declined and decided instead to press on. I now wish I'd gone along. After all, if 'Lycidas' can wait...
You know that part yesterday where I said something about needing to be nervous to do the job?
"I honestly can't see how you'd get through the day without being nervous. I'm always apprehensive at the very least when I'm reporting, let alone when someone's stuck me on a bike and made me pedal halfway across town to do it. If I didn't have butterflies I wouldn't feel like I was trying hard enough, and that buzz is part of the reason I love my job so much."
Well, look, I was lying. The occasional day without being reduced to a nervous wreck at some point would be nice.
I thought today would be that day but then, at around midday, we were told Steve Coppell would be signing a new contract with Reading FC. And who's the only free sports journalist in the building? Yours truly. So, having avoided Reading interviews for months, it's off to the Madejski Stadium to stick a microphone in front of the man and his chairman on this momentous occasion.
Yes, I appreciate interviewing Premiership managers is actually quite a good thing and, after all, this is not the first time - Stuart Pearce, Sam Allardyce and Bryan Robson are all ticked off on the list (and were all Premiership bosses at the time of interview).
But doing something for the first time is always going to make me apprehensive. It's the little things like trying not to forget any of the kit, finding the ISDN point I need to plug in to at the stadium, remembering the ISDN number, not being late, the kit working when I need to record stuff, asking the right questions, and generally not making a tit out of myself. Plus there's the knowledge that all the other people there, and plenty of people back at base, do this kind of thing all the time without a hitch - even now, 10 months into my job, I feel a bit of a fraud in these situations, especially when it's fairly high profile like this.
Now, the second time I do something I'm always very happy about it and keen to get on and do it. So I'm happy to report today's interviews went without a hitch and were generally a pleasant experience. You can listen to them and read a bit more here. I can also tell you that Steve Coppell refused his press officer's offer of a cheesy scarf and/or shirt with which to pose for press photos, insisting on making do with the chairman's handshake instead. No nonsense from our Steve.
And you know what? My job could be a lot worse. Take another, quite high-ranking BBC employee (not one you'd have heard of), who sent a rather fierce email to thousands of employees earlier this evening. I have reproduced the email below but deleted any names. I don't think it loses much in the translation.
It started by taking my desk, at the same time you decided not to renew my contract. I was given an alternative desk in C5 for "a few weeks, after which you'll get your old desk back". But I didn't get the old desk back. Instead I was simply left deskless … and ignored. Nobody bothered to take responsibility for providing me with a space in which to get on with my work. It was left to me and Miss P (who is apparently not responsible for finding me a desk) to scout around for a place.
I found a place that seemed free in C3, but Miss P did not know who owned the space and could not guarantee I wouldn't be asked to move … again. I shut up and squatted, as I've done for the past few weeks. My pedastal and other things (phone, stationary, files) remained in C5 as there is no space in C3 and I continued to lock up my notebook in the pedastal and return to the phone to pick up voicemail.
This morning the pedastal was gone … and for a moment I thought my IBM Thinkpad too. It seems (like my desk) someone else has more urgent use for the pedastal. Now how am I supposed to make sure it's kept secure? Nobody consults me, nobody says anything - like a pack of vultures, taking what they can in my last days. As if I'm already dead, it's like a silent death sentence that hangs over me.
And of course there's the lunch on Friday that I was never invited to - until I sent out an invite to my own leaving-lunch that happened to be at the same time.
It's like slowly being stripped of any dignity. But if it was your intention to have me feeling so left out that I would just sneak out the door and disappear, I'm afraid you're wrong. I know what value I've added to the BBC; and even if you couldn't (or wouldn't) support me in my work, there are people here who do.
If you're not ashamed, you damn well should be.
Yeah, no complaints here actually. Get off my desk, you miscreants...
For two months now I've been quietly petrified of today. I'm probably not alone since today was the Reading Half Marathon with well over 10,000 runners involved, not to mention all the volunteers and organisers, who were no doubt all pretty nervous about their big day.
I wasn't running it (you knew that). But I was cycling it. See, someone had had a bright idea a few months ago. Alright, so the roads are closed off and we can't drive around the course to do interviews - but we can sure as hell send some poor unfortunate on the engineer's bike with a half ton of broadcasting kit strapped to his back.
And by now you've guessed who that poor unfortunate might be. With one practice lap around the car park to my name in the last seven years, I set off to cycle the entirety of the Reading Half Marathon course, carrying four or five stone in outside broadcast kit, wedged into a rucksack on my back. Actually let's rewind a bit because the day started before this point - here are the events in chronological order:
7:00am Arrive at the BBC. Retrieve bike from bike shed, put bike in car.
7:10am 47 different attempted combinations later, bike will still not go in car. Leave bike next to car, go inside.
7:30am Put bike in the big radio car being taken to the start line by colleague Sarah. Wave goodbye to bike.
8:00am The roads are still open so I can at least drive to the finish and park there. Except I've got a permit for the 'White Car Park' and nobody seems to have the slightest idea where it is. Blag my way into the 'Red Car Park' instead. Take helmet and broadcasting kit.
8:15am Find radio car and retrieve bike once again. Bike and I exchange sceptical looks, but we set off past the start line towards the first drinks point, three miles into the course.
8:25am Thighs are already burning like crazy and it has clearly been a long time since we did anything like this.
8:30am Some idiot has put a ginormous hill in the middle of the course. 13,000 or so people will not be happy when they reach this. Get off and push bike up hill since thighs have pulled a Scotty and 'cannae give any more, Cap'n.'
8:45am Reach first drinks point, on the verge of being physically sick from the effort. Am utterly embarrassed by this. Seek solace in the remarkably good-humoured folk setting up the drinks point - 10,000 bottles of water, each of whose caps are first loosened by an armada of cub scouts with gloves on, in order to make them easier for runners to get into.
9:15am Talk to some of the scouts on air. They all know somebody running the race. One of them has those 'Heelies' on - the shoes with wheels in the back of the soles - and it strikes me these would make remarkably good marathon running apparel. Look out for some poor broadcaster wearing "radio heelies" when we can't find a bike next year.
10:15am It's my job to find our presenter, Maggie, in the crowd of runners as the leading pack reach the first drinks point. All I know is she may or may not be wearing a red fleece jacket - I've got no idea what time she'll be here. My sports editor back at base says spotting people in a marathon is like 'herding cats', in other words it's impossible. For some reason I can't shake that image and spend the next hour wondering about the practicalities of how one might go about herding cats.
11:00am No Maggie, but someone has rung the radio station to say they've seen her at the five mile point of the course, i.e. two miles down the road. She must have slipped under the radar (you try picking one person out of the hundreds of runners piling into the drinks point every second). I may have been working on my cat-herding technique when she went by. Nothing for it but to pedal like mad and head her off at the pass.
11:30am Have bombed it across Reading to the 10-mile mark of the course. Already there are plenty of people streaming through. Some chavvy kids are consuming fast food with conspicuous delight right next to the throng of knackered runners, which seems a little unkind. No sign of Maggie.
12:15pm Now we're nearly back at the start/finish. There's a horrible part of the course where all the runners think they're heading for the Madejski Stadium and the finish line, but then they all get herded off (like cats) for one last lap of a nearby park. Some people have already finished and, while talking live on air, I grab some poor bloke who happens to be walking past with a tell-tale 'I've finished the half marathon' foil blanket. He's come from Surrey to run and is happy with his time. Good man.
12:30pm Next task is to get into the stadium to join Sarah at the finish line for an hour-long special from 1pm. This is far, far easier said than done. No one but the runners can get to the finish line if you follow the course itself, despite my blue 'access all areas' wristband. The fact I'm on a bike is not helping at this point. A steward tells me I have to go right back down the bottom of a hill then up the other side to get where I want to be. Not thrilled.
12:45pm Have gone down and up said hill, and found my way into the stadium. But now I'm getting flak from more stewards for wheeling my bike inside. One particularly nasty steward simply shouts "take that bike out of the stadium" at me five times over, as I calmly ask to talk to him about how I can get both me and it down to the finish line. A far kinder steward tells me I can leave it in a corner at my own risk.
12:55pm Have abandoned engineer's bike to its own devices in the recommended corner. I haven't got the lock with me but, after brief internal debate, have reasoned people who've just finished a half marathon are unlikely to steal a bike on their way out.
1:00pm Reach finish line and Sarah just in time to see the London Irish mascot, Digger the Dog, cross the finish line. No sign of Reading FC counterpart Kingsley the Lion, last seen lagging behind at the first drinks point, where the hapless lion took a wrong turn and had to be fetched back by a member of the public.
1:15pm Maggie crosses the finish line in a time of just over two and a half hours, which is pretty bloody good. She has a smile as wide as the Madejski Stadium halfway line. Maggie goes off with my five pound note to buy herself a coffee and a Kit Kat.
2:00pm Kingsley the Lion staggers home, we're off air, and it's time to go home. Bike is miraculously still there. Bike lobbed back in radio car. Only five cars remain with mine back in the 'Red Car Park'. Part-timers, the lot of you.
By the way, I got some stick at work when I suggested I'd been nervous in the run-up to this. But I honestly can't see how you'd get through the day without being nervous. I'm always apprehensive at the very least when I'm reporting, let alone when someone's stuck me on a bike and made me pedal halfway across town to do it. If I didn't have butterflies I wouldn't feel like I was trying hard enough, and that buzz is part of the reason I love my job so much. How can you be given the privilege of talking to the whole county and not be nervous?
My oh my, do we have an audio-visual feast this evening. We will start with the chicken police, breaking up another gangland fracas in rabbit town:
I've never seen anything so funny. But then my brain is practically comatose from the ridiculous cold at the speedway earlier this evening. We had not only rain but snow in the build-up to the speedway starting, and the temperature plunged to freezing just as yours truly took up his position next to the track with a microphone.
Still, it was a fun evening. Reading won comfortably (my text report is here) and I got to broadcast live updates to, count 'em, six different counties. Hello Berkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Kent and Oxfordshire. I won't get tired of that for quite a while. Today the South of England, tomorrow... well, tomorrow not very much because I'm knackered and there's no sport.
My eagerly anticipated speedway debut arrived at approximately 7:20pm. I say approximately because Roger, the presenter (based in Kent) played a quick game of "guess the fader the speedway reporter's on" back in Tunbridge Wells. I have saved this precious moment from being consigned to history and preserved it on this very weblog.
To hear my inauspicious introduction to my six county kingdom, and listen to the kind of speedway information you never thought you'd need to know, use this audio panel:
Hostilities between myself and the weather are resumed on Friday, when Tim and I have the pleasure of hosting our Friday night sport show from neighbouring stadia. He's in the Madejski Stadium for the rugby, I'm next door at Smallmead for the speedway. You can never say "I don't get out enough" doing this job.
I suppose, it is time for a Kennedy update. Can't let all these men have their word. So, what have I been up to? The following is in no particular order:
1. Not getting enough sleep - out every night last week;
2. Going to the ballet at the ROH again (Children of Adam - amazing - especially when you aren't paying);
3. Lambing;
4. Seeing my family - especially the extended bunch;
5. Going on an outing to the car wash (I was too scared to go on my own);
6. DofE training with young people - lots of mud, I fell over. Lots;
7. Buying a ridiculous pair of shoes - peep-toe, 4" heels, platform soles; grey shiny leather - perfect for work...;
8. Fainting about the cost of a car service - £320?!;
9. Getting slightly obsessed by house plants; and
10. Going to Cyprus.
Oh yes, the latter. So, you get an email around 2.30pm. It is from an Associate you worked for in Corporate (I am now in Litigation), saying "CALL ME ASAP". My heart fluttered. Clearly I'd f'cked up utterly. I thought I'd face him in person, rather than the phone, so went to his office. "Amy, are you busy?". "No", I reply. "Good. I need you to do some work". "I need you to go to Cyprus". "Now". OK. I get thrown an SPA. I get given documents. I get on a flight. I drink bubbly and Baileys (it knocks me out). I arrive around 4am. I do what I need to do until about 1pm (no sleep). I do a walking-tour of Nicosia. I visit a museum. I see the things you "have to see". I watch the UN troops on the 'buffer zone' between the Greek and Turkish halves of the City - very strange feeling. I have a wonderful late lunch. I sit in the sun for a while. I get on the plane back to London. Whilst in flight, I see the "green flash" - a sunset where you acually see the red and yellow of the sky, merge with the blue, to create green. Amazing. I get picked up. I go back to my flat. I drive to my parents. I arrive around 1am. And then I fall asleep.
And the advice I received on going to Cyprus? On the basis I am going on my own, I have a degree of responsibility, and it is last minute? "Amy. You'll be fine. Go fly our flag. Keep your head high. And your heels higher." Fantastic.
I've reached the point where I'm covering more sport than I actually have time to sit and write up, for the BBC let alone for Dayorama. At the moment there are features on cage fighting, rowing and ice hockey all demanding attention when I get into work tomorrow morning.
The rowing on Saturday was brilliant. I received a phone call from a member of Reading Rowing Club late on Friday afternoon to tell me I hadn't yet missed the women's Head of the River race along the Thames, and immediately cleared my Saturday schedule so I could get to Hammersmith for it.
Reading had taken over the rather splendid Auriol Kensington boathouse, with a private balcony overlooking the race route just before Hammersmith Bridge. I got to stand on the balcony with the coach of Reading's top crew and interview him as they rowed past, which was very nice. Plus they had a bar on the floor below, always a plus on St Patrick's Day. Here's the view from the balcony:
You have to feel a bit sorry for the competitors. They had to push the trailer carrying their boats from the flyover to the boathouse since there was no parking, then unload, fix the boats together, carry them to the water, row in them, row back in them, get them out again, carry them back, dismantle them and push the trailer back. It's not quite a kickaround in the park, is it? Strangely enough the motivation cited by almost everyone I interviewed was "a pint".
On to today, and this evening has been spent watching the Bracknell Bees ice hockey team collect their English Premier League trophy from none other than Reading FC goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann (himself an American and therefore far more qualified to watch an ice hockey match than anyone else).
The Bees beat their opponents Telford 5-3 (they were 3-0 up after 4 minutes), then I had the privilege of being on the ice among the players for the trophy presentation. I spent most of it silently praying that I would stay on my feet, since I only had my old trainers on, and their grip is not brilliant at the best of times. I've no desire to fall over in front of hundreds of delighted ice hockey fans.
The Bracknell rink presented me with another gantry to add to my list:
But since I didn't properly use it, I'm not counting it until we've done a commentary from there or something. There has to be a threshold, or else there'd be Gantry of the Day.
Marcus Hahnemann is very much a pro at this kind of public appearance and he carried off the presentations very well. In our interview afterwards I asked him how he'd keep himself occupied during the break for internationals (Reading don't have a game til April), and his answer was a) fishing and b) repairing his broken car. Nice to see he's keeping his feet on the ground as a Premiership star - okay, so his actual answer was "repairing my broken Porsche", but still...
Continuing the irregular series I started by mentioning the gantry at Reading Hockey Club and at Reading FC, I present number three in the set: Smallmead, home of Reading's speedway team.
There has been talk of redeveloping Smallmead for a very long time. Suffice to say that in that time, actual redevelopment of Smallmead has been somewhat lacking. The commentary facilities at the track are certainly an interesting challenge for the budding reporter.
To get to your position you have to go to the end of the bar, through a door, up a rickety, winding, wooden staircase (the sort that threatens to collapse but you know won't, because it hasn't for the last century), then through another locked door and into a glorified shed atop the main building. The view out looks like this:
It could be a whole lot worse. For example, when Sky cover speedway at Smallmead, the local BBC team has to move to its back-up position, which is not a glorified shed. It is simply: a shed.
To get to that shed, you have to feed your cable out of the window, then shimmy out of a back door and around the roof a la James Bond, before grabbing the cable and tip-toeing over some corrugated metal to the backup commentary position. The alternative is to go downstairs and stand by the bar. Guess where I'll be when the Sky cameras move in on Monday night.
Smallmead isn't just used for speedway - it's also a greyhound track, so there's some interesting buttons in the commentary position, which doubles as a television point for dog racing's equivalent of a "third umpire":
So in a nutshell, that's the Smallmead gantry. In a word: "precarious". Having said that, I'm not complaining. From Monday my speedway reports will be live on evening share, which is the term used for programming that is carried by more than one local BBC radio station. From 7pm our station joins its siblings in Oxford, Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset to carry the same programmes, until 5am the following morning.
This means my speedway reports, from 7pm til 10pm, will appear across the region known as BBC South. So Amy J, in Oxford, will have the delight of being able to listen to the same speedway reports as Amy K's parents in deepest, darkest Kent, not to mention my grandparents in Brighton. This is all very exciting - even us reporters like the occasional "Hello, Mum!" moment (or I do anyway). Tune in on Monday from around 7:20pm...
Today was media day for our local speedway side, the Reading Bulldogs. In my quest to become an encyclopaedia of all things Bulldogs this season, I spent the afternoon filming interviews with the Bulldogs team in their pit area. You can watch the videos here.
My speedway knowledge is still increasing, shall we say, but on the plus side I could be doing a whole lot worse. The representative of South Today was 45 minutes late and Reading 107's reporter, equally late, had forgotten to put batteries in his recording equipment. He had to borrow my batteries instead (in reality radio stations are always kind to their rivals where possible, on the understanding that next time it'll undoubtedly be us cocking it up, and them digging us out of the subsequent hole).
I'd better start getting used to the Bulldogs' Smallmead track, since I'm going to be seeing a lot of it this summer. I've just done a quick count and according to the schedule in front of me, I'll be reporting live from no fewer than twelve speedway meetings this summer. On top of that I'm likely to be down in the pits during live commentary on a few others. So by September, when the season starts to wrap up, I'll be something of a familar face down at the ground.
The basics of speedway, in case you don't know, are thus: you have a motorbike with one gear and no brakes. You control your speed with a combination of throttle and clutch. Everyone has to use the same tyres and the engine is limited, but it can still do 0-60mph in two seconds from a standing start. You can get horribly injured, and indeed three of the Reading team spent the winter recovering from various accidents.
You win by scoring points, which each rider does according to where they finish in heats of four riders, two from each team. There are fifteen heats so you usually end up with something vaguely resembling a basketball score, and the scores can be very close indeed: last season, Bulldogs lost the play-off final, over two legs, by a single point.
The main controversy is a tactical rule designed to stop speedway meetings becoming boring if one team starts to dominate. The idea is that you can double the points one team scores if it falls more than a certain number of points behind the other team - so if Team A are 15 points ahead, Team B can opt for this tactical ploy and claim 8 points in the next heat where otherwise they'd have had 4. This is partly what led to Reading's demise in that play-off final, so it's not the most popular piece of legislation in this part of the world.
Reading could, and maybe should, win speedway's Elite League this year. They've got a cracking team on paper, now all they have to do is spend half a year delivering the goods. Preferably slowly and clearly so I can understand what's going on and convey as much on air.
By the way, we've got an interview with "Whispering" Ted Lowe, otherwise known as the Voice of Snooker, who spoke to my mate and sports team colleague Andy earlier this week. Highly recommended - click here.
If you were to chose two sports involving polar opposites of society, field hockey and cage fighting would probably be safe bets. Today I've managed to cover both.
We started up in the gantry at Sonning Lane, home of Reading hockey club. It's the first time I've found my way into a gantry, although I imagine that as gantries go, this is one of the riskier affairs. It's a wooden structure perched above the small stand at the ground, accessible via this ladder:
And missing a plank in the middle, thus making life a little dangerous for those who don't look where they're stepping:
Still, it afforded a great view of the pitch and the surrounding area.
More to the point, Reading ladies beat Wimbledon 3-0 to win their league title. I had a cracking time and there was a great "group interview" with the victorious girls after the match - I'll post a link when I've edited it and it's all online.
Into the car at the hockey club and off we go across town to the Rivermead leisure centre, scene of the return of cage fighting to Berkshire.
You may remember that last year I reported on cage fighting in Bracknell. This was the same deal, except this time I'd been allowed to shadow the medical team - filiming the fighters' medicals, sitting ringside with the paramedic, and even bursting into the ring with them when a fighter needed urgent treatment.
It was a fascinating evening and actually quite good entertainment. Whisper it quietly but I don't think cage fighting quite deserves the bad reputation it has. In fact I'm inclined to agree with the paramedic, who said it only suffers because the name involves the word "cage". Apparently local authorities have no problem if you say it's happening in a ring, but start using the world "cage" and often they don't want to know, even though the cage is probably better designed and more fit for purpose than the ring.
From what I've seen tonight the medical procedures in place are certainly adequate, and the fighters simply seem happy to be taking part. They've all got day jobs, they're all laughing and smiling. I'm struggling to see the harm and Rita, my work colleague who came with me, loved her whole evening to the point where she insists her name is first on the list to come to the next one. This despite nearly getting blood in her beer once or twice (we were that close).
Perhaps it's telling that there were almost 900 more spectators at the cage fighting than made it to the hockey. Me? I can easily watch both. But then with basketball, ice hockey, racing, hockey and cage fighting to my name this week, with speedway and a half marathon to come, keeping an open mind is becoming a part of the job description.
It shouldn't be this exciting but it is - I can get my work email at home and I'm thrilled about it. Most people would run screaming from the notion, but I've been in and out of my inbox like an e-ferret all evening.
When I joined the BBC I was quite surprised that getting work email at home was apparently not on the cards for most of our staff. It's all based in Outlook which means you can only check your email once you're logged in on a BBC PC.
Unless, that is, you have one of those exciting little key-fob things that you can see on the left of the picture. It generates a random six-digit number every thirty seconds - all you do is go to the special BBC Webmail site, pop your username and password in, then add the random six-digit number to a special four-digit number you already know, and you're in! Top notch security and email for all.
But perhaps the best part is it's not just email. The BBC intranet is called Gateway and it's huge - you can find all sorts of documents there and do everything, from signing up for Hostile Environments training to reading about what will happen on Radio 4 when Nelson Mandela dies. It's also got the news wires on it with all the clips you hear in your news bulletins.
Oh, and it's got every single thing that was on telly on BBC1 or BBC2 for the past fortnight, available to watch again at 350kb per second. So I've not missed last week's Life On Mars after all! It's almost too good to be true. I'll probably get a phone call shortly from some poor engineer trying to keep the whole network online under the strain of my telly catch-up needs.
The ultimate best bit? Take a look at the name of the tab in which my Webmail is displayed above. The system on which all this is based is called the "Whale Communications Portal". When you first install it, your computer proudly announces it is "Downloading Whale", then "Installing Whale", and finally "Launching Whale". Of all these brilliant design features, the name is by far the best.
Post title in honour of "Network Wail", written three and a half years ago, to show I can still butcher the same old pun.
What do you reckon a BBC local radio station has to do to get listeners threatening to boycott it?
Perhaps holding a Justin Timberlake day - "all Justin, all the time" with special Timberlake bulletins entitled "News Justin" - would do it.
Or maybe illustrating a news story about cruelty to animals by taking a microphone, strapping it to a hubcap, and setting out to run over some kittens.
Failing that, setting up an "Exchange" with a Swedish station - we go there and broadcast in English for a week, the come here and broadcast in Swedish - might prove unpopular.
All of which I'd consider far more heinous crimes than inviting a tabloid journalist onto a football phone-in, but a few people who contribute to our message board beg to differ.
Oliver Holt, Daily Mirror sports writer, is due to appear on Friday night's show. He has incurred the wrath of Reading fans recently by penning a series of very negative articles about the club - slating some of the players and the owner in terms a lot of supporters find deeply offensive.
Given the strength of animosity between Holt, the club, and its many fans, we thought it would be good to get him onto the show and make him accountable. He can write what he likes in the national press and it can be quite difficult to openly challenge a print journalist - after all you can write to his paper, but will they print it? Plus, nowadays, all the vitriolic emails you find the time to send can be deleted at the press of one, maybe two buttons.
So the plan is to get Holt onto the programme and find out what it is that makes him tick. Why, when so many people are so positive about Reading in the Premiership, does Holt beg to differ? Is it simply to sell papers or does he really believe in what he writes? Are there aspects of the club he doesn't properly understand (like the chairman's involvement), or aspects where he's wilfully blinkered himself? I for one would like to know what his priorities are for each article he writes - does he think he's writing serious football articles? Is he surprised that people pay his thoughts much attention? Had he always wanted to do this job, for this newspaper?
Alas, some Reading fans seem to think this is a step too far. All day I've been dealing with a small minority of supporters on the message board who insist they're not going to listen, and they'll blacklist the radio station for even giving Holt the time of day.
I think this attitude is a bit silly. It does not bode well for free speech in this country if a journalist who dislikes Reading is not allowed on air because Reading fans are uncomfortable with what he has to say. The whole point is that it's a forum to challenge his views that is otherwise quite tricky to come by - when was the last time you got to have your say to a national print journalist with whom you disagreed strongly?
Morever, the station is now being treated as though it's lined every Reading fan up, then run down the line kicking each one individually in the teeth. This is nonsense. We've spent all season talking to great guests on our phone-in about how well Reading are doing, and why that should be. The one time we introduce someone who doesn't like the club, and isn't prepared to indulge in the collective wallowing in all the recent success, it's as though we've shot Kingsley the lion (club mascot).
Personally I'd have thought it's an interesting exercise in working out why one journalist thinks it's worth sticking his neck out and trying to dislike a club that everyone else has welcomed into the Premiership quite gladly. Turning it into a witch-hunt and threatening a plague upon all our houses isn't making the most of what is a good opportunity to properly question one of only two or three real "Bad Guys" fans have come across in the top flight (we could possibly add Mourinho and Neil Warnock).
Tomorrow's also the first day of our new sports programme by the way, produced by yours truly. We've got some nice boxing stuff plus basketball and non-league football, to be followed by live rugby commentary. Tune in from 6pm!
Anyone who catches themselves listening to our radio station all day (and these people do exist) must vaguely wonder what my job title is.
I was woken up at 8:30am by work phoning to ask if I could go to the Madejski Stadium as quickly as possible, to be in place when the queues at the ticket office started to build. Reading fans are understandably very keen to get their hands on tickets for the FA Cup replay against Manchester United, and the ticket office opened at 10am. So I duly threw some clothes on and nipped over to the stadium for a piece on our mid-morning programme.
Only after that did I remember I was supposed to be on air talking about cricket umpiring, later in the same programme. So I had to dash back to the newsroom, edit all the stuff for the umpiring feature, and go and do that. From live reporter at a football stadium to extended umpiring discussion in two hours.
During the afternoon our sports presenter had to go and have his compulsory fire training (had mine: the essential message was either get out or stay in, but we're not sure which). So I took over sport bulletins for a couple of hours in his absence.
And just after 4:30pm, with no one else from the web team in work (one on holiday, one on scheduled day off), I did the "what's on the web" feature for our drivetime programme. The topic: an interview with the father of one of the men who murdered Reading schoolgirl Mary-Ann Leneghan. From football, to cricket, to bulletins, to murderers.
As David pointed out to me, this is by no means unheard of at our station. Our gardening expert routinely presents travel bulletins, for example. Not that I mind, and not that I think it really affects anything. We're not exactly overflowing with staff so it's by necessity that we take our Alan Titchmarsh and give him some traffic cameras to watch. Stay tuned for Gary Lineker with Crimewatch UK...
By the way, rather excitingly, I'm now definitely going up to Newcastle in a couple of weeks to follow the Reading Rockets basketball team. They're in the final of the EBL National Trophy, and I'll be on the coach with the team and supporters, at the team hotel, then courtside at the game, with a TV camera. Frankly I don't have a job title, because you can't call that a job, can you?
A very kind lady at the University of Reading press office has sent me this photo with, presumably, the aim of destroying my soul:
There is no redeeming feature to that photo. None. I don't even know why I'm sharing it, especially given I'm going to a party at OJ's place where, last time, lots of people said they read Dayorama. If you see me there tonight, don't mention this, thanks.
At some stage in their career, everyone in radio finds themselves locked in battle with their equipment. It's mutually assured destruction: your stuff isn't working so you're not working either. You can't get on air if you can't broadcast. It's seriously stressful in a live situation and you quickly learn which people around you can or can't cope with it when it happens. You also quickly learn if you can cope.
Even if you're not live on air, chances are you're working to a deadline and people back at the studio are expecting you to fill a sizeable gap in their running order. Today I abandoned a day off to go and interview the Olympic rower and twice gold medallist James Cracknell, who was opening a brand new multi-million-pound fitness centre at the University of Reading.
The centre is gorgeous. You can look at some photos I took here, but rest assured it's the kind of place that makes even me want to start going to the gym more often. There is a whole bank of plasma TVs showing BBC News 24 and Sky Sports on the wall in front of the running machines, while some of the step machines and cycling machines have their very own TV sets built into the consoles. There's light, there's space, there's all manner of equipment, and it's all brand spanking new. Reading's fine young rowers, eleven of whom are on special sports scholarships with a view to becoming Olympic champions, all had one word for it when I asked them: "brilliant".
Which isn't what James Cracknell thought of the facilities he had when he was at the University of Reading back in the early 1990s. According to him the weights room was a bit like a broom cupboard and nobody even knew where it was - other training facilities were frequented more often by drunks than by athletes, to the extent that it required a special key to unlock them in the unlikely event of anyone wanting to train.
Those days are long gone, and that's precisely the message I wanted to convey when I dragged the poor man into a quiet corner of the fitness centre to be interviewed. I'd recorded the opening ceremony in full but no radio package is complete without a solid one-to-one interview, plus, frankly, I'd quite like to speak to someone with two Olympic gold medals to their name. I think most people would.
I still use the recording equipment I was given in the first week of my postgrad. It has never let me down and I understand it inside out, having been thoroughly well trained on all the various menus and buttons. But it's common practice to do a quick "level check" on someone - ask their name or what they had for breakfast while recording it - before each interview, to make sure all is well.
All was not well. James Cracknell set off talking and the small lights on top of my recording device, which leap up and down according to the sound reaching the microphone, barely moved. I stopped James to solve whatever small problem was preventing the thing working properly.
Five minutes later I had an extremely polite but doubtless less than thrilled Olympic champion stood next to me, while I emptied out the batteries and ferreted around all those menus I thought I knew so well. The little lights steadfastly refused to recommence leaping, and abject panic was beginning to set in. Not only did I have a drivetime programme waiting for five minutes of James Cracknell, but I had James Cracknell waiting for five minutes of James Cracknell.
Somewhere in the distance lurked an equally unimpressed press officer (ITV having been and gone by now), with all the other dignitaries having gone for lunch. It's at around that moment, face burning beetroot, sweat tingling on the brow, that I'd have really liked all £2m of fitness centre to eat me up and bury me beneath a particularly heavy treadmill. Champion rower MBE remained utterly unperturbed. I became immensely perturbed.
After more fruitless faffing around I'd all but given up when suddenly I remembered a godsend from those halcyon postgrad days - the recording device has an internal microphone. Now I know what you're thinking: yes, internal microphones are shockingly poor and no match for a normal microphone. But when your normal microphone's taken the Robbie Williams approach to working (stopped lighting up and gone off), there's not much choice.
So having remembered how to change the appropriate setting and switch on the internal microphone, back I went to James Cracknell. The lights came on! Having established where the tiny little internal mic lived, I held the brick of a recorder at his face and recorded the whole interview. I then apologised around 30 more times than were probably strictly necessary, and scampered off home in a fit of deepest embarrassment.
To my absolute relief and delight, the finished article doesn't sound bad at all. In fact, you'd struggle to tell it apart from my normal microphone (being indoors with no wind helped - outdoors it'd have been a write-off). Have a listen here, and see if you can hear that little quiver of despair in my voice. Oh and if you're reading, James, sorry. Again.
On Friday night, one of the members of management at work came over and asked me how I'd feel about starting a marathon in front of a few thousand people, live on air and on a tannoy at the same time.
I was terrified.
It's all well and good doing sports bulletins etc on air - you're in a studio with your mates and no matter how many million people are listening, you can't see any of them. It doesn't feel like there's an audience there.
Stood in front of more than two thousand people about to start a 13-mile half marathon, it's a bit different. Everyone's watching you, and most of those people are willing you to shut up so they can get on with the running. Plus you've got to make sure you go live on air at the same time as the tannoy, and you've got to make sure the race starts at the right time.
Ideally what you'd like in that situation is plenty of time to get your bearings and feel comfortable about what's happening. That wasn't really on offer so Sunday morning came round in a bit of a blur, and I hardly slept a wink last night.
It was nervewracking to say the least, but it seemed to go fairly well - not least because, with the headphones on, you can hardly hear the tannoy so you could pretend it wasn't really there. In no time at all the klaxon had sounded and everyone was jogging past us. In fact, it all sounded a bit like this:
We were privileged to watch a gentleman named Williard set a brand new record for this particular half marathon - one hour, four minutes and fifty-two seconds (there'll be an interview with him on the Berkshire site tomorrow). We were less privileged to accidentallly bury our radio car in the sodden, muddy grass next to the start/finish line. It eventually had to be winched to safety by a kind gentleman in a 4x4 with a rope. Embarrassing but I'm sure there's some commitments to grass-roots sport in there somewhere.
All this in the same morning as England won the cricket! The first I knew was when someone else announced it in the tannoy, and I was listening with as much delight as anyone else to our reporter Pat Murphy during my sports bulletin. An unlikely victory in what was, in many respects, an unlikely morning.
I feel like I've been doing my job forever. And that's just today.
For today was one of those rare occasions when BBC local radio is given a chance by just about everybody to prove what it can do. Like the Fire Brigade, people find it reassuring to know we're there, but for many it would take a local emergency to break them away from their trusted morning routine to begin listening to the unknown. And besides, isn't local radio just for old people?
Our job as public service broadcasters is to give them what they came for: school closures, travel news, weather forecasts which mention their very hamlet, let alone their next village or town. But if we're worth our sorts as a radio station, we'll jolly well show them what else we do fantastically on a daily basis, and keep 'em on side for tomorrow. I, along with countless others, have spent my day trying to do just that.
My day started at precisely 0436 with a call to say the presenter of our Early Show was currently stranded in snow. By default, I made my way through the less exposed roads of Berkshire and skidded into the studio with two minutes to go, waking the county with the most heartfelt account of the local roads it could possibly have hoped for. Five minutes later, I was joined on the 'phone by a reporter at the opposite end of the county who, for the sake of finding out how long it would take Berkshire's commuters, had already set off on a journey across the roads of East Berkshire. He started his piece (at 0505) with the line "Hooray, hooray - we have some snow today!". It said it all.
Our regular presenter was, as I put it, eventually "dug out with teaspoons", and arrived with news of impassable roads to the north of our patch, and before 0540 we'd painted a faithful picture of the entire county that I'm certain no other station had managed to do. And we'd played REM and Nelly Furtado (you'll note there's very little room for Joseph Lock these days), with the usual belting stories and gags in between.
In flooded the school closure calls from anxious head teachers, each worried they'd be the first - by 0630, we were reassuring them that dozens had thrown in the towel before them. By 0830, we had a list which granted a snowman licence to pupils of some 110 Berkshire schools, telling us they wouldn't be holding lessons today. I remembered that feeling of listening to the radio and hanging off the name of every school, hoping that mine would be next; bizarre to think I now had a hand in it.
By 0845, I was put on standby to present the mid-morning show of one Henry Kelly, now fighting his way to Berkshire by train having been unable to part car and driveway. With some relief, Henry arrived in good time (and excellent spirits, too), and I was able to afford a moment for coffee precisely five hours into my day.
Back in the newsroom by 0930, I set about editing a second trail showcasing highlights of our snow coverage. Only then, listening back to the morning's 'output' (a very clinical industry word to describe what comes out of Berkshire's speakers as a result of all this hard work), did I get a chance to appreciate quite how engaging the whole thing had been. Of course, there was no sense of laboured public service announcements or information exchanges - that's all a myth about local radio these days. But for the fact we were talking about important local things, we sounded - as we usually do - just like one of the big networks to which many of our new found listeners would normally have been glued.
I'm willing to bet they'll be with us tomorrow, and not just because the thawed foundations of this morning's snow are re-freezing as I write. They'll be there because our foundations on the dial are just as solid. I'm proud that the roots of my career are in BBC local radio; you should try it sometime.
Our newsreader came over and asked if I knew how to switch one of our four newsroom TV sets to News 24. So I went to ferret out the remote controls, then wedged myself into the ridiculous little corner of the newsroom from whence you can actually get a line of sight to the digital boxes controlling them all.
At that moment, our sports editor started trying to manually get to News 24 by flipping buttons on the top of each TV. This has been known to occasionally work but since I was already on the task, I said quite loudly words to the effect of: "It's alright, I'm already trying to find News 24."
I eventually got News 24 on one of the screens, and added, quite loudly: "Right, we've got News 24."
It was then that our sports editor took a moment to talk to me, quite quietly.
"You know Faye's on News 24, don't you?" He said, pointing at Faye, our assistant news editor, sat at the desk next to us.
"How do you mean?"
"She's on News 24!" Again, accompanied by a gesture towards the screen. There was no Faye on the screen, just the presenters and some closed captioning.
"No she isn't!"
"On the phone!" In a frantic, hushed whisper.
I watched the closed captioning a little more closely. About three seconds after Faye spoke, her words were appearing, transcribed, in big yellow letters on the TV. I had just been shouting "We've got News 24!" on News 24.
Bulletins timed to the split second so that, in some cases, forty different radio stations can all start their own programmes off the back of your final sentence at precisely three minutes past the hour.
Live reports from international football matches, where commentators start at precisely thirty seconds past four minutes past the hour and last for exactly one minute, so that their report will fit into the news bulletin.
Timing the final song of a show to the exact second so that it'll fade nicely underneath the run-up to the news, giving the presenter time to talk their way up to the crescendo at the top of the hour.
But accidental timing is the best. My 8:30 sport bulletin started with a clip of our radio commentary for Leroy Lita's first goal against Manchester City yesterday. At the same time, by pure coincidence, the repeat of Match Of The Day on BBC1 - silently playing away on the small telly in the corner of the studio - had got to the Reading match.
At the precise moment I finished my cue into the clip and Clare pressed the button to fire the audio, the Match Of The Day highlights got to the bit where Lita scores his goal. Our clip and their highlights coincided exactly - our commentator talked the ball into the net as we watched it.
I hope, for anyone lucky (!) enough to have been listening to us and watching MOTD at the same time, it was as funny as we found it.
Yesterday was a very long day. I began it at 6:30am writing about the possibility of Reading signing defender Alan Bennett from Cork City, and ended it at midnight cropping a picture of Greg Halford signing for the club with chairman John Madejski.
So Bennett and Halford have both joined, and we've already had the chance to speak to Bennett, who sounds just like the other two players Reading have signed from Cork - Shane Long and Kevin Doyle, who both joined a couple of seasons ago. Bennett's interview finishes with us wishing him good luck, to which he replies, "Thanks a lot - sound!". More people should end interviews with a hearty exclamation of "sound!". He seems like a very nice guy.
It's fair to say it's all been happening this week as far as Reading goes. On Monday they were drawn away at Manchester United in the Cup - I ended up speaking to the chairman on air about the potential consequences of the draw, on the pitch and also off the pitch, i.e. financially. The also signed a young winger named Oliver Bozanic.
On Tuesday, havng barely done anything in the transfer window all month, it all kicked off. By about midday we knew that Alan Bennett was definitely going to sign, and then BBC Essex gave us a call in mid-afternoon to say that Colchester were almost certain to sell Greg Halford to Reading too. The advantage of working as part of a network of local radio stations is that someone has their ear to the ground in every part of the country (except, for some reason, Cheshire, which nobody seems to care about), so BBC Essex kept us informed right up til the moment it was a done deal.
Today Michael Duberry seems to be about to sign for Reading from Stoke (all three of these are defenders - clearly Steve Coppell's a man on a mission), and John Oster's signed a new deal. Meanwhile the United game's been picked for live TV coverage and two more Reading players have been called up to the Ireland squad. That's quite a lot to get into one sports bulletin (bearing in mind it's a sport bulletin, not a Reading FC bulletin!).
Not that I spent quite the whole day in the office:
For the very first time this season, despite dealing with interviews and match reports week in, week out, I actually got to go to the bloody game. We had tickets right behind the goal in the South Stand, which is fine by me - I'm very happy behind the goal and it's quite close to the pitch, even if the away fans are just a few seats away (they were pretty well behaved).
The general consensus seems to be that Reading were pretty poor but I've seen much worse in my time. Marcus Hahnemann pulled off a couple of cracking saves and when Wigan took a very early lead I thought I was going to turn into some kind of bad luck charm for the club, but they turned it around well.
Plus, I feel compelled to praise the public transport to and from the ground. We parked at the station and were on a bus inside ten minutes despite a fairly big queue, and the bus got us to the ground in only 20 minutes or so despite the Mad Stad having a dismal reputation for traffic. At the end we were on a bus within 15 minutes of the final whistle and again, back at the car in 20 more - for £3 return. That's a good gig! Being a night match might have made it a slightly easier ride but on that evidence I'll be taking the bus the next time I go. If there is a next time. Back to the desk... where's that bloody Duberry gone...
Sundays are very much "off" days for many BBC local radio stations. Ours was barely populated after 2pm today, with one or two people recording shows, and the occasional passing broadcaster (including one gentleman who appeared to have come in purely to ring up National Rail Enquiries and yell at the poor lady whose job it is to man their phones on a Sunday night).
But we'd better hope Al Qaeda take a similar approach to their weekends, for two reasons. Firstly the massive barriers which traditionally guard the entrance to the car park have been down for the last day or so, presumably because they've gone for a burton again. This means that, despite having the sort of security developed to keep the Russians from infilitrating local radio and gleaning precious travel bulletin information, any terrorist only has to nip round the front and they can walk in without bothering to scale any of the more formidable defences.
Secondly, we have many, many cameras all around the complex to allow our security guards to keep watch over things like the barriers, be they down, up or otherwise (once they caught a car containing a local band coming in to record a live session - it tried to follow a friend in without letting the barrier go up, and the barrier elevated the car at a hilarious angle, wrecking it in the process. Amusingly the band were called The Skies.)
So, in theory, even if the terrorists had been rota'd in for Sundays and noticed the absentee barrier, they'd have been picked off by our crack security squad in seconds. Especially if they did more than 15mph down the drive.
But it would seem the security staff, watchful as ravenous hawks when the barriers do work, take the malfunction of the barriers as their cue to chillax a little. I got in this evening to discover the pair on reception giggling at a computer screen. On further inspection they were watching clips from The Wedding Singer on YouTube.
"It's alright," I said, "I'll let you know if there's any terrorists in the building."
(In reality I don't begrudge them their YouTube at all. There's about as much likelihood of us being the centre of a terrorist attack, on a Sunday or otherwise, as there is of me winning the Reading Half-Marathon. Or even running it.)
I went birdwatching on Tuesday morning in order to create a feature marking a new RSPB campaign.
My mother has always done a very good line in birdwatching - on hearing birdsong two miles off she can tell you which bird it is, its vital statistics, its home address, phone number, political disposition and inside leg. I've no such skills, so I dragged local RSPB member Ken out into the freezing conditions with me.
We went to Lavell's Lake, a remarkably tranquil spot in between Reading and Wokingham, where there are a couple of hides for birdwatchers. Despite the sort of wind traditionally reserved for exclusive Eskimo use, there were a few hardy souls trying to spot the one bittern which has apparently made Berkshire its home. Nothing doing there, but I did get some very nice photos, including this one:
You can see some more in the proper feature here. I'm not afraid to admit I found the hour and a half I spent there so remarkably calming,I may sneak back when nobody's looking.
There's also a brand new competition on the sport section of the website, which, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, is now lovingly tended by Andy while I lie in bed watching one-day cricket. Though I'm not at all sure about this "have a good idea while Ollie's away" lark, I have already entered the new caption competition and I suggest you do too.
Finally, get a load of that snow this morning! But I'll leave full snow discussion to Amy. She's in charge of all things Kent, where I'm led to believe the snow was heavier, and she likes talking about this sort of thing:
Oh what fun we had this afternoon. For those of you who missed all five hours of David's show today - greedy little beggar, I know - he got a text message from a man named Stan midway through the afternoon. In fact, he got several messages from Stan.
Here are the messages, displayed on AirShare, the system we use to receive texts. You'll need to start at the bottom and read up to get them in chronological order:
David is not disturbed by much, but he was a bit of a worried man at the sight of all these texts. He doesn't know a Stan in Winnersh, let alone a Stan who can't spell Winnersh, and he couldn't recognise the phone number. He felt sure it must be a friend playing a prank, but who? There was the distinct possibility that some 100 per cent genuine psycho was out to stalk him.
It hadn't been me (despite having the accusation levelled at me), so even I was intrigued by the prospect of this rather elderly-sounding Stan trying to chat David up.
But it did look as though somebody with inside information was at work. For a start they knew the last four digits of David's phone number, which - granted - you could find if you put enough effort in. But they also called him "Davey". Now, if you know David at all, you know that his name is David. He gets cross enough if you try to shorten that to "Dave", but "Davey" is another matter entirely. That could be lethal.
All this suggested a friend or work colleague pulling the strings, but their phone number wasn't in David's phone contacts, or mine - and between us we've got just about everyone connected with the radio station.
We bunged the number into Google, but to no avail. As a last resort we put it into the search box in ENPS, the piece of software the BBC uses for radio scripts, news bulletins and the like, as well as for storing details of all our contacts.
Immediately, up popped the name of Michael - the young broadcast assistant who's been working weekends here for about two months.
Not long enough for his phone number to be in our contacts, but just enough time to have established how utterly hilarious it would be to send Mr Sheppard prank text messages while on air (David read a couple out to the entire county before he realised they were turning sinister). Michael had been sat in our phone-in booth all afternoon composing saucy text messages from "Stan" in between editing clips of rugby commentary. He'll clearly fit in.
Here's our victim, on the left, with the cunning perpretator, moments before the grand revelation:
Good to, er, see Amy back by the way. And yes, I have read all fourteen contributions from the lady herself. For those who missed this, the long-absent Amy Kennedy returned to Dayorama life by promising one post for each day of the year so far, plus one for luck. Which she then wrote in about an hour. I'll be impressed if she can keep that going...
So The Truth About Food exemplified one of the many things the BBC does well.
Keeping things going when all else fails is another of our specialities:
Yesterday brought one or two technical problems to the door of BBC Radio Berkshire. In time honoured tradition, those listening would never have known, and it may have surprised even the keenest of ears to learn that our programmes were being made without presenters, producers and journalists actually being able to hear them.
Of course, in all other respects, programme makers were fully in touch with what was going out on air - but a windy January has knocked our receiver out of alignment, meaning that we're unable to listen to our own (or indeed any other) radio station inside the studios. Where once the great Henry Kelly did boom, the sound of a gentle hiss now fills the corridor.
We passed the test of a professional outfit, coping against the odds to safeguard our product from harm. Others, yesterday, did not...
A long running problem with my work computer came to a head yesterday, and having spent months baffling our long suffering station engineer (he of bent aerial fame), I decided to take specialist action. I called the BBC's IT Support team - outsourced a while ago to a company who, mercifully for them, I shall not name here - hoping they may recognise symptoms and at least be able to suggest a fix, if not do the necessary remotely as they often can.
After much sucking of teeth, the technician on the other end of the 'phone told me it was a job for a specialist, and he'd be dispatching one to my location straight away. What service!
Twenty minutes later, a man did arrive at the request of IT Support; it was Martyn, our station engineer, who'd been called to duty from the desk next door. Apparently, this happens a lot.
Of course, and through no fault of his own, he was no more able to fix the problem than he'd been over the preceding few months, and reported this back to IT Support. Later, I received a message to say that IT Support had called our Newsroom (via the general enquiry number) and asked the first person to answer whether he could "pick up the repairs". A senior sport journalist, I gather he gave a short talk on how to take a running jump.
I received an email last night from IT Support telling me the matter had been "closed". Ah, good - that's a help. Lucky that Martyn and I had, between us, managed to sort something out by way of a short-term fix...
Having just done my Saturday morning show, I'm back on air for five hours this afternoon bringing the County coverage of London Irish versus Toulouse and, among other things, Tiddles' operatic debut. I'm sure it'll be a quiet afternoon.
Football matches postponed at the last minute are a massive hassle for the players and supporters alike. Today, not only did Amy J's beloved Cheltenham see their home game with Scunthorpe called off, but Reading's FA Cup game against Burnley went for a burton in torrential rain at the Madejski Stadium.
Any Burnley fans who'd made the journey down the M6 and M40 cannot have left too happy - particularly as they'll have to do the whole journey again in three days' time if they want to see the match (it's been rescheduled for Tuesday).
But last-minute postponements aren't exactly ideal for radio stations either. Suddenly, at five minutes to three, our local BBC station was left with nothing much to do for the next three hours, as an entire football match plus an hour or so of reaction to the game went by the wayside. We had a bit of warning but essentially, a three-hour gap in our schedule materialised at an incredibly inconvenient point.
Even without the services of Mr Sheppard, lurking like a bad smell lest we need a stand-in presenter for the next few hours, we managed to cope. Thank the lord for the 2006 Sports Review of the Year, which is fairly long and quite interesting, and found itself dusted off for an encore appearance.
The state of the pitch means there'll be no London Irish match there tomorrow either - ironic, given that the two London Irish folk we interviewed earlier in the week sang the praises of the Madejski Stadium and said they were looking forward to getting back to a well-drained pitch.
Still, at least the day wasn't entirely wasted. We got to hear our sports presenter Joel make a brilliant blooper just as the one o'clock news started. In the run-up to the news he'd been regaling us with the story of a rather large spider that had been crawling over his and colleague Tim's notes in the gantry.
Tim had thrown the spider at Joel (you can tell there wasn't too much going on at the Mad Stad at 1pm). Then, as the news began, his microphone at the Mad Stad hadn't entirely been faded down. In the background, faintly audible beyond the voice of the newsreader, we heard Joel's voice:
"Now you've killed the bloody spider!"
Beautiful.
Speaking of things which appear where they probably shouldn't, here's another culprit:
My mobile phone camera finds the dark quite a challenge, so you may well need telling that you're looking at a cat, sat at the end of a pedestrian crossing in the BBC car park.
This, you understand, is a BBC car park guarded by a massive fence surrounding the whole complex, plus all kinds of barriers and additional security measures. Recently we've all been given "Internal Safety Zones" or some such - the general consensus seems to be that this is where we hide should anyone mount a land-based attack on the premises. Given the international monitoring work of our colleagues on the other side of the complex, I think it's probably more to do with them than angry licence-fee payers trying to get at us.
The basic idea is: you don't get in, but that doesn't seem to have fazed our moggy friend. I'm told we're regularly visited by several cats (obviously Tiddles has to get in, but I assume he has a pass). Let's hope nobody has progressed from bombdogs to grenade cats.
From the dross of broadcasting, to the boss of broadcasting; or certainly - as Russell Davies put it in his Radio 2 documentary 'From Broadcast to Podcast' on New Year's Eve - one of its rather talented Uncles.
This week I have the pleasure of working with the great Henry Kelly on his radio show, and although my role is restricted to pressing the odd button on behalf of a regular minion completing his festive holiday, I'm only too pleased to begin 2007 in such a way.
The delights of a morning spent in a confined space with a broadcasting legend like Henry are many. He'll disappear seconds after the start of a record and reappear seconds before its end, clutching two cups of fresh soup, one for him, one for you; he'll regale you with irreverent stories that leave you crying with laughter long after he's regained composure enough to rattle off a (slightly) cleaned-up version for the benefit of his listeners.
But above all, you always learn so much. Did you know, for example, that Henry is the only man in Europe to own a bouncy castle made entirely of PVC leather? Or that Henry launched the highly successful Llama Wear clothes label, whose jumpers and cardigans were critically acclaimed at Milan Fashion Week? No, neither did he...
In today's show, one of Henry's regular technology pundits was extolling the virtues of Wikipedia, a phenomenon which was apparently just as new to Henry as it would be to the listeners. To illustrate, Mr Technology tried to impress Henry by quoting a string of Henry Kelly facts from his page in the Wiki annals, and duly impressed Henry was.
Had that reading of 'facts' been allowed to continue south along the page, I'm certain the result would have been quite different. Later during a record, Henry's producer called through to the studio and demanded to know more about "the Crawford Baptie scandal", in which "(Henry), Bob Holness and Bruno Brookes had (allegedly) spent £10,000 of BBC money at a Liberace auction house in Stoneybridge".
Henry was equally surprised and amused to read about the scandal, just as he was to learn about his supposed ownership of the bouncy castle and his pioneering role in the llama fashion market. The horse's mouth playfully dismissed it on-air as "nonsense", and promptly went back to drinking its soup. Great radio.
Besides, it's not the first time Henry's been exposed to a little online indiscretion, and it's a delight to note that like so many of the broadcasting greats, he doesn't take any of it too seriously. As Henry himself remarked as he pawed over his Producer's lovingly crafted script to introduce today's classical music spot, "It's amazing what you can download from the internet these days..."
You find me in the early hours of Thursday, preparing for bed.
This bed:
Every Christmas, radio stations up and down the land prepare a treat for their staff, in the form of a compilation of all the outtakes from the past year. At ours, the task of putting this together falls by default to me, as the man who not only makes many of the blunders, but also delights in hearing and saving other people's.
An hour ago, I was deeply engrossed in editing this little project (tradition has it that it's made under cover of darkness), when my 'phone rang. It was our Head of Programmes, calling to say that our Early Show presenter was feeling a little under the weather, and that I'd therefore be needed to present tomorrow's Early Show... in 6 hours time.
Dashing to my car to return home and claw back a few 'Z's, I was confronted by the most bitter, freezing fog imaginable, and a blanket of ice on my windscreen which screamed "just you try, matey".
I did try, but not for long. I figured it would take at least 20 minutes to clear, and in any case, I'd be repeating the process in 5 hours time and fighting my way into work again. It just wasn't worth the effort of going home, not to mention the potential danger, I decided. Instead, I called at the BBC reception to ask for a room in our on-site lodge, which caters very well for unexpected overnight stops such as this. Too well, it seems, since I was told that every room was taken by people similarly caught out.
So, I'm preparing to bed down on the desk of BBC Radio Berkshire's Studio 1A, from where in under 5 hours time, I'll be preparing to warn the Royal County's good people of the dangers awaiting them on their drive to work. Luckily for me, I won't have to endure one at all.
Knowing that Ollie's day has gone along similar lines to my own (three jobs, one person, etc.), I'm sorry to see that he's also been having to fend off what appear to be the rather misguided "bickerings" of a fellow journalist.
I'm pleased to say, in true BBC fashion, Ben Goldacre's hostility has been balanced with some altogether more "pleasant, positive" exchanges with people in his industry today, as this MSN conversation (from moments before Ollie's 1430 sport bulletin) will prove...
I think you'll agree, the fact that I didn't even flinch when he complained I'd brought only a glass, and not an entire bottle, is indicative of a very "pleasant, positive" colleague. A lesser, more prickly man might have tipped it all over his spikey little head, the lazy little...
Alongside Ollie's own number crunching, Dr Anderson's not the only one who's been doing the maths.
Today was the long awaited culmination of my CPC training and, you'll be pleased to know, this is the last you'll be hearing about it for a little while - probably until February 1st, when the results come back to bite.
And bite they may, since today's exam was played on an entirely new field for me. One of only two candidates (out of 25 or so) who'd opted to study the course at home, I was also among the handful who were under 35, and almost certainly the only one who wasn't studying as part of their day job. Conspicuous? Moi?
The exam was held in a building which, for all the world, looked just like Sunshine Desserts from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. I almost expected red and green telephones to start setting each other off, or for CJ to burst in with the line "I didn't get where I am today by failing my CPC...". (It wasn't the actual building it turns out, but it certainly got me looking for it the moment I got home.)
Rather like Reggie's place of work, the exam was filled with all the comedy characters that used to make a school exam such a colourful place to be: the loud and cocky boy, with a punchline for everything (usually one we were already thinking); the girl with the wax crayons who pretends to have done no revision at all, but secretly knows the syllabus inside out; oh yes, and the chap who follows me to just about every exam I've ever sat. The one with the cough.
I have to be honest and say it could easily have gone either way. To undertake such a huge syllabus in a few short weeks is a bit of a task, and today's papers came as something of a challenge. If I've passed, it'll mean we can forge ahead with our plans to become a licenced bus company. If I've failed, it'll mean a lengthy wait for a retest.
My pride in the event of failure, however, will be safeguarded by a conversation I overheard between an invigilator and a fellow home-study candidate, who'd enquired about the pass-rate. Apparently "less than 40% of home study candidates pass first time around, and those are usually the ones who've been in the industry a long time".
Sod's law says it's probably the one CPC minority group I won't be joining...
It's not often you'll find me commenting on sport. Normally, I'd be happy to leave that for Ollie and his considerably more than passing knowledge of such matters, but since he's been busy posting about buses of late, here's a full account of Sunday's match between London Irish and Northampton. They're both teams who play rugbee leeg, I'm told...
Actually, you won't come close to getting a match report from me. It's a wonder to me that even the most talented of commentators (such as 'our Graham' at BBC Berkshire) can decipher what's taking place on a rugby pitch, let alone manage to describe it with any clarity for the rest of us to comprehend. What I can do, though, is give you an account of the day's entertainment, both up-front and backstage - for I was one of the lucky few who got to see both.
Courtesy of the Voice of the Balls and Seamus O'Connor (manager extraordinaire), I was amongst those enjoying the views from Suite 3 at the Madejski Stadium, being kept well fed and watered as you can see. The party consisted of the two acts who opened the match, Eurovision alumni Donna & Joe and the legendary Foster & Allen - all providing as fine entertainment over lunch as they did on stage - plus Michael King from Radio 1, Deadly, myself, and some of Seamus' family and friends. Sir Terry had threatened to put in an appearance, but as Alan pointed out in his opening, "decided he couldn't afford to be with us after all".
Having been snatched from the sponsor's hospitality suite, Alan was pressed into service as compere for the proceedings, being handed the microphone by the Madejski's regular announcer who was slightly awestruck at the prospect!
First up, Donna & Joe, whose performance was first class, if a little wasted on the small crowd who were still trickling in from the rain. Their latest, 'Hands Up', is a catchy number, and sounded great on the Mad Stad's sound system.
Thoughtfully, Joe McCaul came off and immediately warned Foster & Allen that the 'live' pictures being beamed to the big screen, directly in the performers' eye line, were a good few seconds behind reality - "Don't look!" was the advice. Undeterred, the boys took to the stage, and the crowds went wild.
Despite our best efforts to put him off from the box, Deadly completed the wooing of the crowds, who were left in high spirits for the start of the game. We munched meantime, and enjoyed a great 80 minutes of rugby (even I found it nail biting, although Irish maintained a good lead throughout, finishing London Irish 40-5 Northampton).
During a quiet moment, Joe managed to tempt the Irish mascot, Digger the Dog, up to the box. Dogs love their wine, it seems...
Irish coffees downed, farewells said, it was back to our drivers for the journey home. Or so it seems. My next memory is waking up at home around midnight, dressed in just a shirt and a sock, wondering if it had all been an elaborate dream...
A fantastic day - with thanks to all for having me along.
You might be a basketball or ice hockey fan. You might support your local non-league football team. You might watch rugby in National League 1. If you're any of those things, you probably know what it's like for the media glare to point squarely... elsewhere.
Minority sports, and majority sports at a minor enough level, are very easily ignored. After all, the people who shout the loudest often get the most attention - and there are more Reading fans to shout than there are Maidenhead United fans.
That's why it usually takes something like the FA Cup, or a bizarre story, for local sport to hit the headlines. But therein lies an advantage for anyone with the freedom and inclination to devote a little extra time to these sports - if you go to places no one else goes, you'll find stories and characters no one else knows about.
We have two world-beating hockey teams, an Elite League ice hockey team, a top basketball side, two or three top rugby clubs and plenty of strong non-league football sides in our patch, so there's plenty of people to be talking to.
For our first week we've got interviews with figures from Newbury rugby club, Basingstoke Town FC, Reading Rockets basketball team and Slough ladies' hockey club - plus London Irish analysis from our reporter Graham.
Click here to take a look. The Reading Rockets interview is particularly good, since the team are embroiled in a tapping-up scandal with rivals Worthing Thunder. Just because a sport's out of the public eye, doesn't mean nothing ever happens.
From women and rugby (see below) to women and cricket: it's a fine night for Oxford University's female cricketers, honoured at tonight's Sports Federation Ball as the Team Of The Year. Congratulations!
To quote team member and Dayorama regular Amy J, pictured above with the Team Of The Year trophy:
"Howzat? Tell Fletcher and Flintoff we're available to fly to Australia at a moment's notice."
I think that's a plan, if only to dispel the popular Aussie notion that the England team play like girls. Our girls are better.
Although as for 'a moment's notice' - with proceedings likely to go on for some time at tonight's event, it could take them til the third test to even regain consciousness...
In the past, I've often gently scoffed at people who lay claim to that near-oxymoronic status, "working at home". It's a little like those students who write into radio programmes and claim to be battling with a dissertation, or intensely revising for an exam (I did that throughout my GCSEs, A-Levels and degree courses, so I know it's a lie). Really, they're listening to the radio.
But in my case, over the next 23 days, I will be working at home. More precisely, I'll be working my way through this:
This is the home-study course which prepares you to earn a Certificate of Professional Competence in National Passenger Transport, or Passenger CPC as we budding experts are allowed to call it. It's a qualification which the transport manager of every bus and coach firm in the country must have to his or her name, and since we aspire to begin running our own bus company in the new year, I too must have it.
It's surprisingly comprehensive. Roughly equivalent to an A-level in its difficulty, it covers everything from the rudiments of running a business, to the very specific laws affecting bus and coach operation. I'll be required to answer 70 short questions, and 8 extended response questions on a case study.
When will I be required to do all this? Well, in precisely 23 days from now...
The exam, a full-day affair, takes place only three times a year, and if we miss the next one, we can wave goodbye to our hopes of being up and running much before July 2007. So with great haste, I journeyed to Wembley to pick up my CPC pack from instructor Henry, who thinks it may be just about possible to meet the December 8th deadline.
It's been over two years since I last crammed, and then it was done alongside running a student radio station and working at two BBC local radio stations in the evenings and at weekends. Today, I fear I may have to combine the two once more, and since time is of the essence, I may even end up taking the books into the studio.
Let's see if it really is possible to listen to the radio and study at the same time...
Great excitement! A wonderful, lovely person turned up this morning to deliver a shiny new (well, shiny-and-new-to-me) video camera and all its accompanying goodies.
I am now the proud owner of a camera exactly like the above, except my microphone is fluffier and there's a radio mic kit in there somewhere, which is very nice indeed.
The only problem now, of course, is that I have to put my camera skills where my mouth is. Ever since coming back from my video training in Newcastle last month, I've been hassling for a camera and the prerequisite editing software, promising all kinds of lovely video the moment these things were put in place - but all the while safe in the knowledge that acquiring the kit would take forever.
So the blindingly improbable speed with which someone has actually found me a camera - and I'm promised the software in the next week or two - is frightening enough that I now need to find stories to go with it.
It's a shame the camera didn't turn up earlier in the week, or else I could have used it for my barometer story. The gist of this is that new EU legislation banning the use of mercury in products has certain ramifications for people who trade in antique barometers or build new ones (the real problem is for the latter group, since it looks very much as though the EU will call a halt to the production of new mercury barometers). You can read the full story in this feature about one of the world's leading barometer specialists, who happens to live in Berkshire.
Barometers are fairly photogenic pieces of wall furniture so a short video piece would have been nice, but that was far from my mind this afternoon when the phone went. Blow me down, it was only the European Commission ringing up, wanting to know more about the morning's radio piece and asking to be given a platform for their take on barometer legislation!
Apparently the European Commission has people monitoring the media for this sort of mention. They must do a damned fine job, because with the piece coming up at 10:10am, the first anyone listening would have known about it was when our presenter mentioned it at 10:07am. That's a whole three minutes for the European Commission to get on the case.
Clearly it is somebody's responsibility to listen to BBC local radio and make a note of such things, since my understanding is that the gentleman from the European Commission hadn't actually heard the piece go out on air. All highly unexpected (though they're perfectly entitled to get in touch, and actively encouraged - certainly not complaining).
By far the most enjoyable moment of the barometer story was when our presenter, reading the carefully prepared introduction to the piece which I had written for him, suddenly departed from the script entirely:
"Hang on a minute. I've got a barometer hanging up on my wall at home and I'm certainly not getting rid of it!"
Always nice to have a presenter with a little personal interest in a story.
Tomorrow there's a meeting with Reading Traffic Control (yes, I know, I'll be breaking a lifelong moral stance and taking Pro Plus beforehand), then it's a weekend of sport - starting with a trip up north to cover Stafford v Maidenhead in the FA Cup. The very first long trip for the Dodge to cope with! Let's hope I don't end up on air from the side of the road awaiting recovery again...
The following things went wrong with tonight's Basingstoke Town v Worcester City commentary:
1. The commentary team were unable to use their broadcasting kit of choice because it was locked in the car of our rugby reporter, who proceeded to lose his car keys and was thus unable to rescue the kit from his car. He later found the keys in a local newsagents.
2. The commentary team therefore had to drive to the Madejski Stadium, where I was covering Reading's reserves against Arsenal reserves, to pick up two spare microphones. It took the team an hour to travel the three miles from our newsroom to the stadium.
3. It took the team a further hour and a half to reach Basingstoke from the Mad Stad. This meant they were still in traffic when our sports special started at 7pm. Our 4pm-7pm presenter had to stay on and present 45 minutes of the sports special in their place.
4. Our commentary team finally appeared on air at almost the precise moment the match kicked off, but they were unable to use their headphones and therefore had no idea if their commentary was going out on air. For the entire duration of the first half they continued with their commentary in the blind hope that it was being broadcast.
5. They would have been told all was well by our producer back at the studio, but the "talkback" function allowing presenters and producers to chat was broken. Our producer could communicate with the commentary team solely by text message (she sent them 22 messages over the course of the evening).
6. The moment our commentary team took over the broadcast, I was no longer able to hear them in my headphones at the Madejski Stadium. This meant that if the commentary team chose to cross over to the Madejski for an update from me, as they undoubtedly would at some point, I wouldn't hear them and would not speak on cue. Our producer spent 15 minutes hitting buttons until she found one which improved the situation. In the mean time I had to deliver one update while listening to the radio station on my mobile phone to hear the commentators cross to me - the mooted alternative, as in the title of this post, was that the producer would yell "GO!" in my ear the moment it sounded like the commentary team wanted me to talk.
7. It later emerged that while dashing from the car to the gantry to begin their commentary, one of the commentary team had to vault a fence, live on air, while talking.
8. To complicate matters further, during my first update a goal was scored, then disallowed. During a later update a penalty was awarded and scored. It's good to be kept on my toes.
9. Midway through the second half the battery on the commentary team's broadcasting kit died, causing them to temporarily drop off air.
10. As though all this weren't enough to kill lesser broadcasters, the match went into extra time, then penalties, then sudden death penalties. It took eighteen penalties for the match to be decided (Basingstoke won). The commentary team returned to base at 11:35pm, just as I was leaving.
And if you were listening, you'd never have known a thing was wrong. I am surrounded by some of the best professionals you could wish for.
Not least Amy J who, while a lazy student and not a professional, accompanied me to the gantry at the Madejski and proved extraordinarily helpful. It's useful having a second pair of eyes - ones that can see better than mine, come to that - to pick out which players did what, and when. It's far more useful to have a second pair of hands and legs which can nip down to the concourse, buy hot dogs and chicken balti pies, and rush back. Our desk looked like a picnic area by the time we'd finished.
So I've spent the evening at a reserve match, shivering to death in an all-but-empty stadium, listening to FA Cup commentary being held together by the skin of its teeth, talking down the line to a producer on the verge of self-destructing with the stress of it all. And I wouldn't have swapped this evening for anything else. Happy Birthday Me, I'm doing what I love.
Today at the BBC's Newcastle training centre has been all about sending us out to film. We weren't given stories, just locations - after a couple of hours with the cameras and a safety session, off we went.
My destination was another training centre, except this one's for budding builders, not junior journos. In a quiet corner of an industrial unit near the Tyne, a man who used to work for Barclays trains all comers in the basics of plastering, plumbing and tiling. And today is the beginning of his latest four-day tiling course, costing upwards of £350.
Some people on the course are craftsmen learning a new trade, like plumbers learning how to work with tiles so they can offer that service too. Others are unemployed and trying to get into the trade (on the wall is a pinboard with the business cards of successful graduates).
But some, like John, are just doing it because they want to do their house up, but don't have the skills and don't want to get someone else in. John's coming to the end of his 25-year stint in the military, including tours of duty in Bosnia and Northern Ireland, so it feels a bit odd to find him - in green army overalls - being taught how to tile a bathroom in a Newcastle industrial warehouse. Yet according to him this is a really popular option with people leaving the military. A fair few of his friends have already done the course, many of them with a view to a new career.
John's an interesting guy but even he'd be the first to admit he has nothing on the star of my colleague Laura's video.
She went to a miniature farm populated by goats, and met a young man whose job it is to feed the motley goat collection. His story is a harrowing tale of what could so easily happen to you... if you're trying to dose up a goat on antibiotics.
One day, as he was preparing the needle for his latest victim, a goat stood behind him appears to have taken umbrage to the treatment. Our man, steadily lowering the needle, was rear-ended with some force by this angry goat - thereby driving the needle, full to the brim of goat antibiotics, into his own arm.
Half an hour later he's stood in the hospital reception, trying to explain the precise circumstances in which he injected himself with goat drugs. Well, you know what these port towns are like for dodgy substances...
Welcome to Newcastle, or more precisely the seventh floor of the Jurys Inn (why have they so callously butchered their apostrophe?), overlooking a rather grand courtyard. There I am in the hotel room except, when I look at my own picture, my dodgy net access makes it look like I'm on videophone from Kabul.
It's certainly noisy enough in the background - a Chelsea fan is playing club theme tune "The Liquidator" from his nearby apartment, screaming "Cheeeelsea!" at appropriate moments. I expect devout Newcastle fans to terminate him within minutes.
Now I've not been on a GNER train for ages and certainly don't remember being packed in like sardines quite like we were this evening. When I got onto the train I saw just one person sat in the carriage in which my seat had been reserved. Then, to my horror, I discovered that my seat was on the window side of this same person. So, in a 50-odd seat carriage, I had to disturb the one other person sat in it to reach my allocated seat. That was a little silly but there were reservation tickets everywhere, and soon the train was crammed full.
As it happens that one other person was a lovely gentleman who had been to visit his wife in London. She has been admitted to hospital for plastic surgery. Last year she was diagnosed with a form of facial cancer - the resulting radiotherapy and operation has left her with what is tantamount to a hole in the side of her nose, which has been covered up with a triangle of bone cut from the forehead. This week, the surgeons will attempt to restore her appearance to something bordering on normal.
My companion even, unprompted, turned to discussion of local radio. I then asked him if he listened to BBC local radio and his response, quick as a flash: "Yeah, of course I do! BBC Radio York, all the time." He had many kind words for his local station - it's fantastic to meet people like that.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to find wireless internet has made its way onto GNER's trains, but why does it have to cost so much? Granted, it's a convenient service, but you have to pay £10 for a three hour journey. Given the tickets just to get on the train are pushing three figures for a return to Newcastle, an extra £20 to use the net in either direction seems steep to say the least. (Then again this simply extends the traditional British Rail concept of the fiver for a crap sandwich, packet of crisps and drink, which is precisely what I paid.)
My three-day training course starts tomorrow, including filming a story. As far I can tell there are a number of set venues us journalists are taken to for our stories: I'm told possible locations include a cake shop, a dry cleaners and a factory, none of which exactly inspire me, but then it's my job to make these things inspiring! Bring it on.
In the spirit of the old mantra "If you want something done, ask a busy person", we should never be astounded that busy people manage to cram quite so much into their lives. But we usually are.
Would it surprise you, for example, to learn that Henry Kelly - doyen of radio and television, former host of TVAM, Game For A Laugh and Going for Gold, regular Sky News and Daily Telegraph pundit, BBC radio and Classic FM presenter, and these days making occasional appearances on the Ollie Williams show - is about to make his film debut?
It certainly surprised me when, this morning, a summons was received for "the cuddly one" to visit Henry's capacious Radio Berkshire suite to view the trailer for his new film, Saxon. Billed as Unforgiven meets Trainspotting, it's not traditional Henry territory, and indeed the trailer came with its very own Kelly classification of "gruesome".
I confess, I initially thought I was the subject of Henry's latest jape, but a quick IMDb search confirmed that, indeed, Henry makes a cameo appearance as Nicko. In line with his plethora of other broadcasting commitments, I'm sure he's done a grand job.
But further searches held surprises for more than just me. It was with a blush I watched as Google committed an indiscretion of the worst kind, and tried my best to shield Henry from the screen. But it was too late. He too had seen the third entry in the list, and insisted that I click the page entitled: "Rochdale Observer - Henry Kelly does not know what he is talking about".
Suitably amused by the content, Henry sat back and wryly smiled.
"I didn't realise I'd been in the Rochdale Observer", he said.
It's not every day you get to visit an oxygen chamber, and certainly not every day it has a Premiership footballer sat in it.
This one's the only one in Berkshire, and today it had Sam Sodje sat within its confines. He's one of Reading's defenders but he's injured his knee, so he's one of two players who've spent the past couple of weeks getting daily doses of oxygen treatment.
In the spirit of hair product adverts, now the science part:
As the body normally heals itself using oxygen from the air, additional oxygen can extend the body’s ability to heal and can limit some of the damage which the disease causes.
Breathing oxygen under pressure causes dilated and leaky blood vessels to constrict back to normal size and reduces swelling. At the same time, more oxygen is delivered to the bloodstream so increasing the amount available to help undertake repair.
Sam was there for his dodgy knee. Endearingly, he said he'd been scared at first because the people at the centre compared the experience to going swimming - and Sam can't really swim.
Stepping into the chamber's like going into an aircraft. The whole thing is pressurized then you pop a separate mask on, which pumps 100% oxygen into the lungs. The session lasts for well over an hour, during which you can sit reading the paper and, er, not do much else.
The list of items prohibited in the chamber makes good reading. Most banned items are those which wouldn't withstand the pressurized atmosphere, but some are unlikely candidates to even find their way into the chamber's vicinity. For example, would you bring "unauthorised furnishings" into the room? Don't forget to obey the very last bullet point and leave any explosives at the door...
Forget the Premiership. Forget the FA Cup. Forget the Carling Cup, the Johnston Paints Trophy (I kid you not), the FA Vase, the Conference and the rest. Today was all about the Berkshire & Buckinghamshire Under-13s Minor Cup. Preliminary Round.
While our sports team travelled to London to watch Reading edge out West Ham 1-0 in torrential conditions, I parked my doomed Nissan Micra at the Elizabeth Ground, Wokingham, to watch Reeves Rangers take on AFC Crowthorne.
And what brilliant fun. No wonder everybody I spoke to on a touchline packed with parents told me they'd rather be here than at the Reading game - even if, in one or two instances, fathers' voices quivered as they said so. One admitted he'd managed to get the fixture times re-arranged so he could dash home and watch Reading v Man Utd on telly.
This was match number 48 of a 64-game draw encompassing the two counties (although a few teams were lucky enough to draw byes through to the next round). Reeves have never played Crowthorne before - they're in a different league, in a different division, and might as well have been from the land of the giants when they took to the field. The Crowthorne players towered over their poor Reeves counterparts. I questioned whether they were even from the same age group.
When Reeves conceded a cast-iron penalty inside the first five minutes, things looked bleak. But then began a rollercoaster 35-minute first half, the ball zipping up and down the pitch as both teams realised the other's defence was, well, all but non-existent. It's difficult to expect 12-year-olds to operate mean, impenetrable sweeper systems, after all.
By half time Reeves had conceded a second penalty and let two in from open play, but in return they'd scored three of their own, the last a beautiful solo effort from a lad who reminded me of Paul Gascoigne - not the fittest player on the pitch but blessed with a great first touch, silky dribbling skills and something of a swagger.
I sat in on the half time team talk, which was your traditional junior football fare. Let's not forget that I, not so long ago, was having my ego crushed on a weekly basis as goalkeeper for a junior team, then having it merely trampled at a better - but still fairly hopeless - university side. I have much experience of the we-can-do-this half time pep talk.
I have less experience of it working quite as well as it did on Reeves, who waltzed through the Crowthorne defence on three separate occasions within the first ten minutes of the second half. They then missed a series of sitters but allowed Crowthorne barely a sniff, recording a 6-4 victory as memorable for those watching it as it would have been for those playing. Hardly the most fluent football you'll see but full of passion, energy and earnest determination.
I'll be doing a separate write-up for the Berkshire website - including a few cracking photos, if I do say so myself. I managed to get a snap of a Reeves striker tucking their fourth goal past the keeper, the holy grail of any amateur photographer after a good action shot at a sports event.
The best bit is I get to go and do it all again. When I got my job some people said our commitment to junior football was unnecessary, unproductive and a drain on resources we could better spend elsewhere. That's rubbish - it's our job to reflect the community we serve and the best way to do that is to go out, get involved and meet the people in the community.
The plan is to follow the U13s Cup all the way from this preliminary round to the final, starting with this game. Reeves won so I'll be there at the next Reeves game in the Cup, then I'll follow whoever wins that into the next round, etc etc until the final. The idea - as suggested to me by the very welcoming Kevin, one of the club's co-managers - is that I'll end up on a tour of Berkshire at the same time. If I get to see 10 goals a game while I'm at it, I might just have to buy a season ticket.
Yesterday afternoon between 1pm and 6pm brought David presenting a show around our coverage of a London Irish rugby match, with me doing sport bulletins for it every hour or so.
David is not the greatest oracle of sporting knowledge known to man, so I took the opportunity at the end of each bulletin of lobbing a few basic sporting questions at him. He got by relatively well, thanks mainly to cheating by getting his producer to frantically write out the answers on the talk-back monitor we use to communicate between studios.
Then David got an email from a listener which went, roughly, as follows:
"David,
To help you get back at your Mr Sport Know-It-All I've included three sports questions. Let's see if he really knows his sport!"
David read this email out on air with me sat there in the studio, then said he'd ask me the questions after a song. Naturally this wasn't good news - I'm no fan of being humiliated on air, even though you'd think I'd be familiar with the concept by now.
But the moment we went to the song (Suburbia by the Pet Shop Boys, an excellent choice) I had a flash of inspiration.
The questions had come via email, and I happened to know that David had left himself logged in on a computer in the newsroom.
So I dashed down the corridor to the newsroom, found his email inbox lying unguarded, and found the email with the questions in it, which went something like:
1. Who are the Oakland Raiders playing tomorrow?
2. With the regular Raiders quarterback injured, who will deputise for him?
3. Who is the Raiders' third choice quarterback should they both be injured?
Okay, I'm something of an exceptionally fair-weather American Football fan. I will occasionally watch it and I used to play the John Madden computer games, created by EA Sports, quite a lot. But ask me any of the above questions and you'd get a blank response. (OJ would be much better than me, in fact, given he consumes internet columns like Tuesday Morning Quarterback regularly). But at least now I knew what the questions were, which gave me a head start.
So I set about finding the Oakland Raiders website in the vain hope of finding some quick answers (bear in mind Suburbia had a minute or so left to run at this point - good job it's a song I know, so I could time when I had to be back in the studio).
Then, just when I thought all hope was lost, I realised that - of course - the bloody answers were at the bottom of the email for David's benefit! One hurried bit of printing later and I sauntered casually back into the studio as Suburbia finished.
David began by saying the questions were about the Raiders. "Oakland Raiders?", said I, innocently. "Oh right, I'm quite a big Raiders fan," I lied, hoping David would think the piece of paper in front of me, replete with answers, was just my sports bulletin script from earlier on. "Go on, ask me the questions."
And he did. And each I answered perfectly:
1. Cleveland Browns
2. Andrew Walter
3. Marques Tuiasosopo
That last one took some pronunciation, but we got there. With each answer David's face grew a little more memorable, to the point where he cut to the next song in disbelief that I actually did know my Oakland Raiders. Only with the microphones faded down did I waft the piece of paper with the answers on it and own up. And we couldn't have broadcast much he said after that...
What a long week that was. The other half of my team at work is away in Newcastle on a training course, so I've been holding the fort in the same week that I've had loads of stories to go out on: ice hockey, clay pigeon shooting and, of course, morris dancing.
Forget the treadmill or the exercise bike - morris dancing will get you twice as fit, twice as quick. I couldn't believe the sheer amount of energy needed.
This coming week I'm hosting several News Online journalists who are coming up from Southampton. They've just started and want to get to know more about the Berkshire news patch, so it's down to me to give them some help. Wait til I threaten them with morris dancing... they'll be back by the sea before you can say "accordion".
It's been a very busy few days. First of all a second warm welcome to Mr David Sheppard, our fourth blogger and a very funny man indeed. He would not want me to tell you that it took him a long, long time to compose that introductory post of his, so keen was he to make a good impression on our regular reader. Now that's out of the way he can get on with the business of contributing the usual waffle we magic up.
Yesterday took me to the Bracknell Ice Rink in, er, Bracknell, where Bracknell Queen Bees train. They're a Premier League women's ice hockey team and they've got their first home game of the season coming up this weekend, so I wanted to see how things are going - they're in with a good chance of winning the league title this season so it's important to get a good start.
Only problem is they train at 11pm at night! That's the only time they can get the rink to themselves (the men's side train at the far more sociable time of 9pm, the swines) so it means plenty of late nights for women travelling from all over Berkshire and as far afield as Basingstoke or London. Then they have to get up and get the kids to school! It's a mark of true dedication that the team exists at all.
I turned up for the novice women's training too - that takes place at the reasonable time of 7:45pm. Now here's an oddity: there are only two divisions to women's ice hockey in the whole of the country. So if you're a novice team and you want to play in a proper league, either you play in Division One - i.e. the tier immediately below the Premier League - or not at all.
So Bracknell Fire Bees, the novices, end up playing teams of Premier League calibre who've just been relegated or narrowly missed out on promotion. That will explain why their three matches this season have ended 0-20, 0-11 and 1-11. Their team comprises people aged 10 right through to their 40s though, which I think is a triumph, especially when you consider it costs £500 to play ice hockey before you've even stepped onto the ice. That's according to one player I spoke to, who says you need to pay hundreds in joining fees to maintain the ice, and you need the right kit.
I left the newsroom at 3am this morning having finally finished editing the audio for a radio piece on the hockey team today. Then, this afternoon, it was back out to the National Clay Shooting Centre at Bisley, in Surrey, to meet Berkshire clay pigeon shooting champion Keith Kilvington.
He's a lovely man. He and Lee, a shooting instructor, showed me the basics of shooting and then handed me a gun. It's the very first time I have touched a real gun, in any shape or form, in my life. Up into the air went the clay pigeon and I did my very best to wave the gun in its general direction, then pulled the trigger. There was a bloody loud bang. I had absolutely no idea what I had achieved, so I asked where it had gone. Keith, cracking up behind me, told me I couldn't have hit the clay pigeon more in the centre if I'd tried.
Sadly I didn't quite manage to reproduce such stunning results thereafter, but I don't think I was too bad either. At the end when we recorded me taking five shots, I hit the clay four times, which I think is a pretty decent run of form! I actually really enjoyed my afternoon and I'm tempted to go back some time to see if I can improve - as Keith pointed out, it's a sport ideally suited to those of us with the aerobic capacity of a brick.
Morris dancing tomorrow night! I'll be presenting a how-to on the Berkshire website in the near future. Stay tuned...
The alert among you will notice something highly unusual and dramatic is about to happen here on Dayorama.
Others among you will not, so I'll carry on like nothing's happening. Yesterday I had a highly enjoyable time working for BBC South On Tour, on the BBC Bus at the Royal County of Berkshire Show.
There I am jealously guarding my beloved BBC Bus lest any small children attempt to board it. (Some of them got through but they barely had time to put together a BBC web page before I chased them off.) And I do mean beloved - it had six computers in it, a satellite connection to the internet (you can see the dish at the top), its own broadcast studio replete with On Air light, and most importantly it had air conditioning. I want one!
Sadly that bus was on loan from BBC Derby and we don't have our own so, with deepest regret, it and I have parted company. But at this point let me tell you that if buses are your thing, you will do well to stick around these parts in the weeks and months to come. Frankly even if buses aren't your thing you could find yourself won over. You may wish to look up the definition of a 'Lodekker' in advance.
Now most people at the Berkshire Show did not, if we're honest, give a monkey's about the BBC Bus. After all, why would you when there's a TV studio and radio booth next door, offering you the chance to present a special BBC South Today news bulletin or read the news on radio?
There you can see two of our lovely members of staff - Emma, left, and Lizzie - sat in the TV presenters' chairs, miked up ready to record their bulletin. We had thousands of people visit our stage and bus over the two days we were there, and many, many children (and adults!) went away with DVDs of their performance on radio or on TV. You could even try sports commentary with our own BBC sports team!
I'll confess I had in many ways not been looking forward to this day. I wasn't sure how the visitors to the show would react - it could so easily have been a damp squib - and I wasn't sure precisely what I was supposed to be doing, lending the show an air of uncertainty I really didn't want it to have. But when we got there the atmosphere was excellent (helped by gorgeous weather... and air conditioning on the bus), the people were brilliantly enthusiastic and all the technology just worked.
Needless to say the combination of glorious weather and BBC staff was too much for some people. One gentleman spent 20 minutes chastising me for the BBC's new-look weather forecasts, despite my protestations that it was really a matter in which I - and every other member of staff here - had very little say.
There's only so much I can do, culminating in advising him on where best to take his complaint, but I fear some people are just glad to say their piece. Far better they do it in front of a BBC On Tour camera then go away with a DVD of it for posterity, though.
1. When you know you're going to spend 1 1/2 hrs of your day in a Black Cab, make sure you have plenty of "wittering" conversation to hand. 3 Cabs. 3 life-stories. 3 lots of wisdom. 3 interesting journeys. £54.
2. Accept that you tidy and organised flat will suffer during the week - especially if Monday begins with a 14hr day: that's what Saturday morning is for, right?
3. Go to the Gherkin. It's very cool. But don't get confused by the lifts: I did - it's quite embarrassing.
My arch nemesis, Barclays. They are no longer. I have seen a personal banker and I'm now free of my "student" banking and have moved up into the world of being a "graduate". The personal banker chap was rather dismissive at first: he asked the dull questions, filled in his questionnaire on the computer and seemed to have no enthusiasm to help me at all. That was of course until I was asked what my expected salary would be. He then said, "oh right Madam..." and continued his questions. In reply to "how much is your rent", I stated what my "mortgage" payments were. Wonderful. A degree of superiority. I've also managed a proper Barclaycard and contacted the Student Loan Company. Now if that isn't enough contact with financial institutions for the day, I don't know what is. Tomorrow I have an appointment with my solicitor with respect to my will... Maybe then I'll be ready for work!
I'm out filming the main festival campus with Ben, our TV reporter. He's recording a piece to camera, which does what it says on the tin - reporter faces camera and speaks.
Ben's line goes something like:
"For most people, this is what Reading Festival's like. But if you want the full experience..."
And at that precise moment I pan the camera to the right very quickly towards the backstage entrance, so that it'll blur. That blur effect will then be used to join this segment to one with Ben inside the backstage area, where we blur into the shot. Does that make sense? Ben says "full experience...", massive motion blur effect, Ben reappears inside backstage area and carries on talking.
The reality
We start filming. Ben delivers his line:
"For most people, this is what Reading Festival's like. But if you want the full experience..."
I pan the camera round very quickly. It falls to rest with a bright, alert hippie squarely in the middle of the shot, who shouts:
Wow number one: Muse are the greatest band on the planet right now. I've been in the middle of the crowd for the first three quarters of an hour and I could listen to them all day, all week, forever. I've been waiting to hear "Map Of The Problematique" live for ages and it was superb beyond words.
Wow number two: I've just got back into the press tent to edit up some Muse photos and had a look at our Reading and Leeds website. Looked at the Jet photo gallery and my photos from earlier are there - had a moment of not quite believing it was me who took them! It's so very, very cool to see photos I've taken get that kind of outlet.
I've got every single photo myself and pal Chris have taken over the weekend on my laptop. When I get a spare moment I will pick a 'greatest hits' selection and put them on here. There's so many amazing images - Chris is a legendary photographer (or deserves to be), his website's here. I'm chuffed that I have a complete photographic record of the festival on here! That's priceless.
My voice pieces are recorded for tomorrow morning's news bulletins with a thumping Muse chorus in the background. Why can't that happen more often? Ought to shake a few people out of bed given that it'll probably be interspersed between hymns. But then, the news team did ask for live festival atmosphere behind my voice...
I'm delighted to report the heavens have opened at Reading Festival and it's tipping down. Just what I wanted. Fed up wearing these wellies with nothing but sun to bake them!
It's been quite a good day - we've overcome our technical problems and it's fantastic to see our pics online at the BBC's Reading/Leeds site moments after we take them. Not many photographers here will have a bespoke website built around their output! We have Lucy at BBC Music Interactive to thank, she's putting in a Herculean effort with her team back in London.
Remember, all the stuff is here. Some of the photos are amazing, especially the ones from Chris, our Main Stage photographer, who's putting in a massive effort. He's just gone out in the rain to Dizzee Rascal on the Radio 1 Stage because my camera's died. Hero!
Oh, and I'm also keeping a festival blog via SMS on the site, along with a couple of other BBC journos. Click here to read it. It gets sporadically updated when I and the London folks have time...
Be under no illusions. Working as a journalist at a rock festival is not the easiest job known to man, easy as it sounds.
For a start it's a battle just to even get in the festival with the right accreditation. So many people have a finger in the pie determining who does what, and goes where, that it's nigh on impossible just to turn up and claim your passes. We spent a good hour sorting it out this morning, even then not entirely to anyone's satisfaction.
Now I'm in the press tent filing photos - you can see the fruits of our labours here.
Even here no journalist is safe from the perils of festival work. The wireless network everyone is trying to use to send their images has failed on the lot of us - except me. For some reason my little laptop is persevering! So naturally I'm using it to write on Dayorama.
In summary, this is very much work and not at all gig-going. Although I did enjoy Guillemots on the Radio 1 stage earlier, and it's a privilege to see good bands like that up close from the press pit.
See, I've reminded myself how lucky I am. You don't even need to do it! I'll go out and stop moaning now.
I spent a large part of my day at the London Irish training complex in Sunbury-on-Thames, south-west London, and very nice it was too.
They're an extremely friendly bunch of people and the atmosphere at the training ground was suitably buoyant. The team had a great campaign last season so they're looking forward to trying to outdo themselves this time around. Plus it's a media day, with a team photo, and that's always a guaranteed laugh.
Here's the team making their somewhat unorthodox way to the team photo:
I spoke to Mike Catt, Aidan McCullen and Brian Smith, all of whose interviews I also filmed. Alas the audio went a bit wrong and while it's audible, it's not broadcast quality, so you'll be having to make do with a transcript and some nice photos on the site tomorrow.
We did however get one video on the site today - a harrowing story of bunny abuse. 80 rabbits have been rescued from a house in Wantage and are now being looked after at an animal shelter in Bracknell.
Our reporter Ben went to the shelter and filmed the rabbits. Some of their injuries are shocking. Particularly gruesome are those born as a result of in-breeding, whose teeth are chillingly deformed.
If you've a strong enough constitution to find out more, click here.
That there is the Barclays Premiership trophy. Except I can't show you that image in full, because the uncensored version in all its pure, unfiltered glory would destroy the very foundations of the society we live in.
Actually that's bollocks, of course it wouldn't. The photo is of what I am reliably informed is the 'back' of the Barclays Premiership trophy. It looked exactly the same, to me, as the front.
But one the Barclays Premiership trophy's two quite burly minders came over to me and actually stopped me from filming it.
"You can't take a photo of that," he told me, as though this were the most obvious rule in the world. "Go round the other side."
Not being one to risk a brawl in a broadcast studio I naturally complied - just as I'm referring to it as the 'Barclays Premiership trophy', as I have been told so to do.
It's a shame really, isn't it? We live in a world where a (Barclays Premiership) trophy comes along to a radio station where a lucky young man has won the chance to have his photo taken with it, and suddenly there's so many rules and regulations.
Okay, so you're not allowed to touch it, which makes perfect sense in order to maintain its pristine condition. But not photographing the back of it? When it looks identical to the front? WHY?! What's the worst that could happen?
As far as I'm concerned this is symptomatic of the world in which we now have to live. Absolutely everything with so much as a minute commercial value is promoted and policed to within an inch of its life. I never expected to have to say this, but it feels like the Barclays Premiership trophy is threatening my basic human rights! If I can't take a photo of a piece of metal from an angle of my choice, what can I do?
Still. It's a very nice Barclays Premiership trophy. Here's the front of it:
What a brilliant first football match to be covering for my job - Reading FC came behind from two goals down to beat Middlesbrough 3-2 in their first ever Premiership clash. Cue much excitement all round.
In fact it's a bloomin' exciting day all round. Aston Villa have just smacked home the first ever goal at Arsenal's brand new Emirates Stadium as I watch the highlights on Match Of The Day, and the half hour or so I caught of Alan Green's Five Live phone-in was buzzing with hyper fans up and down the country. It's great to have football well and truly back now that all four divisions are off and running.
Just two people successfully predicted 3-2 to Reading in our online Fantasy Football comp (I was relatively close, at 2-1, but not close enough). Even the most ardent optimists would struggle to have justified it beforehand. What a great game.
With a bit of luck - oooh, Arsenal have equalised - I'll start again, with a bit of luck we should be getting the technology to allow me to produce online coverage from within the stadium. That'll mean I can watch the game at the same time as editing photos, audio and text for the website, which would be absolutely ideal - not to mention being relatively close to the commentary team.
Coming up in the next week I've got meetings with folk from Reading FC (Monday) and London Irish (Tuesday), then a couple of days to prepare for Reading Festival, which runs from Friday to Sunday. After that it's off to Canada for a week!
I'll also be writing up my meeting with the UFO expert last Thursday for the Berkshire website. It's had to take a seat on the back burner while the football season kicks off (and you know what, I'm quite proud of today's coverage).
Today I met a gentleman named Michael, a UFO expert from Oxfordshire with a dossier containing sightings of unidentified flying objects that have made their way across Berkshire in recent years.
He is a very nice man but it's fair to say that if you think UFOs are a load of nonsense, he'd come across as quite the eccentric. His house has much UFO paraphernalia dangling from the trees and fence outside it, not least a rather large dish with some wires attached, and - though I didn't actually step inside - I was able to see quite a lot of boxes and papers spread out in less-than-immaculate fashion.
Michael told me it had been even worse a few years earlier, so much so that in order to enter the building he'd had to climb in through a window and shuffle into the space between the junk and the ceiling. Then it seems the council got involved when a next-door neighbour complained about rats (rats Michael says didn't exist). The council have since backed off and the house did indeed look pretty inhabitable, if a bit scruffy with the boxes.
I noticed that his hall mirror had wires attached to it, which I found a somewhat unlikely set-up. He explained that he used it to receive - and, from the bottom of his garden, transmit - "imaginary frequencies", which, he told me, are similar to the imaginary numbers one encounters in advanced maths. Apparently you can get speech, music, the works, all on frequencies which technically do not exist.
I took him up to Wittenham Clumps, a rather scenic hill affording views of Berkshire, where we did an interview. On the way we established that he's a keen fan of the author Philip K. Dick, We also established his theory that some form of human drone, mass-produced in robotic fashion by earlier extra-terrestrial intelligence, built the pyramids.
At the end of the journey home he demonstrated to me his home-made method of creating oxygen, should one come under attack by sarin gas on the tube.
It is safe to say that I am not particularly convinced of the presence of extra-terrestrial life, but nor - as with the ghosts I went searching for a couple of weeks ago - am I unwilling to entertain the theory that such things may exist.
I certainly am convinced that people like Michael are very much an asset to British society. Imagine if all the people getting wasted in town of a Saturday night took up UFO-watching instead. The world would be a better place. (If only because they'd be abducted.)
Post title taken from the Klaatu and, more famously, Carpenters track, which was played immediately prior to today's interview, thanks to a particularly hilarious gentleman operating the studio at the time.
I don't think I've had a particularly tiring day today but for some reason my legs are burning with exhaustion as though I've run a hundred miles.
This morning was fantastic. I went to Odds Farm Park, just down the road, where they raise all kinds of rare breeds of animal. They're doing really well with some Bagot goats, which look a little something like this:
Bagot goats are, I'm told, extremely rare, and Odds Farm Park has the second largest herd in the UK. So that was certainly interesting and I had great fun talking to livestock manager Clare, assistant Shelley and work experience girl Katy, all of whom had the dubious pleasure of being dragged to a microphone by yours truly.
The highlight for me was, however, the sheep racing.
This was sheer brilliance. Five sheep racing round a short rectangular track towards a trough of food, negotiating a series of jumps along the way ("woolly jumpers" as Linda in the newsroom later observed). My chosen sheep came a disappointing third but I was amazed at the sheer speed - and comparative grace - with which they took the jumps.
I recorded Clare's sheep racing commentary while the event was taking place. Tomorrow on the BBC Berkshire site you'll be able to pick your sheep from the list of competitors, then listen to the commentary to find out if it won!
Meanwhile on the site you can already see an exclusive extended interview with a lady named Paula. She emailed the site a few days ago with a tale of woe from Gatwick Airport - her luggage, like that of many others, had been slashed open and ransacked for valuables. Certain unscrupulous individuals are targeting luggage stowed in the hold because, with increased security measures in place (i.e. no hand luggage), valuables had to go in the hold in these cases.
Our BBC reporter Joe Campbell spoke to Paula about it and provided us with the full interview. This is the second time in a week that Joe's delivered a small but perfectly formed video report created especially for the online team, which is really putting the idea of convergence into practice. We officially like Joe.
So it's not a bad job when you get to create broadcast and online coverage of football (and most sport, really). Today was our 'trial run' for the season ahead with Reading FC entertaining Feyenoord in a friendly and London Irish rugby club taking part in the Middlesex Sevens tournament at Twickenham.
I'm really getting into this football season, so much so that having spent all afternoon working on sport I came home and watched Football Tonight on Sky for another hour for highlights, results and interviews. Why can't I find any football league highlights programme anywhere? Who's got the rights? Don't tell me I've got to wait til Sunday night or Monday, bloody hell.
Good job the Premiership starts next week so I'll have MOTD to come home to (with Reading on it!). Reading v Middlesbrough on Saturday, Chelsea v Manchester City on Sunday, fantastic stuff. I even get to run a fantasy football league and get paid for it this time!
Very quick update: ghost story and accompanying photos here, and please do stay tuned to the BBC website tomorrow. There will be a feature on a man dressed as a red squirrel using a tiny motorbike to travel the length of the country.
I am thinking of setting up a special section of the website dedicated to every similar expedition passing through Berkshire. In recent times the county has played host to a man swimming the length of the Thames, two gentlemen cycling to Scotland and stopping off in Middlesbrough to set a bouncy-castle related record, a cycle ride to France, a two hundred kilometre trek for Sport Relief (admittedly our own doing) and now squirrel man. I reckon I could find at least one per fortnight.
Meanwhile, on the BBC Berkshire kitten camera, things are becoming overwhelmingly cute:
Yes, they're playing with a tablecloth. I want a kitten right now. Owning a kitten has shot up my to-do list. For now I'll be watching this webcam day and night.
I spent last night - by which I mean all of last night - wandering the grounds and corridors of Ufton Court manor house, south of Reading, hunting ghosts.
Or not hunting ghosts. Call me a cynic, call me boring, call me anything you like, but I don't really think there were any ghosts there.
This puts me in a minority of about 1 compared with the other 25 or so people there, all of whom were convinced they experienced incredibly cold moments, saw 'orbs' of light in response to asking questions of 'spirits' in the room, watched unexplained shadows move across the floor, and witnessed hazy, wispish outlines of dead people in the house.
I was there from 7pm until 5am and I saw, felt and heard none of that. And while I'm no Sherlock Holmes I'd like to think I'm not totally switched off to these things, either. I didn't go in with any preconceptions - I'm perfectly happy to entertain the existence of spirits in some form or other, and still am. But I've seen no conclusive evidence that there were any in Ufton Court last night.
Tomorrow on the BBC website I'll be explaining in greater detail with the use of photos and interviews from our night's work. Just because I'm not convinced, doesn't mean you won't be - I'll put all the evidence online and let anyone reading it decide for themselves, based on my observations and those of the people around me that night.
My scariest moment? Locking my car keys in the boot of my Nissan Micra when I arrived. Thankfully I'd not locked the driver's side door and could clamber into the back, lift off the inner boot casing and fish the keys out. But for a good thirty seconds I looked like I'd seen a ghost. Pity I didn't.
Sorry, couldn't resist a couple more photos. The website of the band I had playing live for me has been down for a while. Tonight it's back up and bloody hell, there's a photo of me on the front of it!
Here's a couple more photos from their collection:
The second one is hilariously captioned "Mr BBC trying to dodge Andy's spit valve" on their website.
What a bloomin' great day that was. I hope they had a cracking time in the UK and their CD's still on heavy rotation in the car.
Today's been a day of tidying up after WOMAD and getting ready for August. Typing up the events guide for each month always takes ages but plenty of people seem to rely on it (I've had abuse by email for not finishing it earlier) so it's a must-have.
Also delighted to receive word today that South Reading Vixens, the girls' football team nigh-on adopted by our site, got to the semis of a prestigious international competition held in Manchester last week. They lost 4-0 to the team who went on to win the tournament - Manchester City's U-14 girls side! I don't think I could have asked for much more than the Vixens to do so well and for City to lift the trophy. (Actually I'd probably rather have had Vixens win it, having met some of the team, but they still did really well.)
A man has left a comment beneath one of our WOMAD photo galleries claiming my colleague Linda was the most beautiful woman attending the entire festival - she rather enjoyed that one. No one has, as yet, left a message proclaiming me the most handsome male, but it's only a matter of time I'm sure...
Had Charles Runcie, head of sport for English regions, make a brilliant cameo appearance in my life earlier. He came to Radio Berkshire for half an hour, sat down next to me, discovered he'd lost his diary, decided he must have left it on the train, checked his voicemail, received a message from the train manager - who'd read the diary, found his number, dialled it and said the diary was safe and well - then got up and left the building. Very impressive.
I've got two days off - tomorrow and Thursday - in return for all the WOMAD action. Not sure if they'll be used wisely or not, to be honest I'm just looking forward to the lie-in. I need all the sleep I can get - at the weekend I'm going on an overnight ghost hunt with former drag queen Jamie Wake, which should be as interesting as it sounds, so I'm storing up on kip ahead of that.
Plus in a few weeks' time rumour has it I'm going up in a helicopter to partly re-enact one of the first airmail deliveries every made. I missed the meeting about this through being at WOMAD but note, to my intrigue, that my name is down next to it on the list of who is covering what. Lovely! I'm also on the trail of a Berkshire UFO society who reckon they're seeing lights on the South Oxfordshire border, as though helicopters weren't an interesting enough aerial challenge...
Hello and welcome to the part of WOMAD where I post humiliating photos of myself!
In the first two photos I'm taking part in an Indian dance workshop on the Tri-Span Stage. I've joined Indian dancer Pallavi and a selection of children to, er, 'dance' in front of a few hundred people.
The second image above shows me appearing seductive and lovelorn as I wait for my husband to return home late at night. But I'm sure you'd worked that out from the photo.
Of course I'm more than just an Indian dance expert - I'm also a photographer and a sombrero model. The sombrero is now in the back of the car awaiting its next outing, which I suspect will be some distance away.
My hair and overall appearance deteriorated in stages as the festival went on. In the following photo, taken while on air with presenter Phil Kennedy from the WOMAD fairground, I look uncannily like Fred Flintstone.
There are worse photos than these but I'm not subjecting any of us to horror of that magnitude.
Other WOMAD stuff:
I returned to my car on Saturday to find someone had placed a postcard underneath my windscreen wiper. It was blank on the reverse but the front showed a selection of sunny views with the caption "Around Bognor Regis". I would dearly love to meet the person who put it there and have, to my eternal shame, since lost it somewhere. It was a nice touch though.
It pays to turn up early. I was so early on Friday that the office issuing press passes hadn't opened. They gave me a guest pass instead, which over the coming days entitled me to park in the guest car park, a damn sight closer to the entrance than the press car park in the dim distance. While every other BBC employee had a press pass with their full name and BBC station on it, I had a guest pass which simply read "Ollie". I found that quite cool.
I've bought two CDs on the back of WOMAD - Batucada Sound Machine (they played a track live for me and it was amazing) and Kanda Bongo Man (on the main stage yesterday afternoon, irresistible). The prices in the WOMAD shop are sky high. One CD was £8 for two tracks! Absurd.
Right then. Reading Festival next month! Same site, entirely different line-up. I was working the early shift at WOMAD and saw plenty of great bands without ever seeing an evening act. I certainly won't be going home early at Reading though - not with Muse to see...
If you came here earlier today you might have happened upon a Dayoramoblog post from me - that is, an audio post recorded using my mobile phone at WOMAD.
It has come to my attention that is was barely intelligible. Lesson learned: never use a mobile phone, re-routed via the USA, to produce audio from a music festival. Particularly not when blessed with the professional outside broadcast equipment I had at my disposal.
I'd like to think I did a better job with that. In fact, I had my most enjoyable broadcasting moment to date earlier this afternoon.
I surrounded myself with the fifteen or so members of Batucada Sound Machine, a group hailing from New Zealand with a heavy Brazilian influence, and their assorted horns and drums. Then, after a quick interview with two of their number, they played a live and exclusive track for BBC Radio Berkshire. It was beautiful music and a pleasure to be right at the centre of it.
You can listen back to their performance (including my thrilled "How about that!" at the end) and look at photos from day two of WOMAD here.
One more day to go - I'm worried I might really miss being there. The last two days have been very long but I've loved every minute and done so many things, from taking photos of policemen wearing BBC stickers, to helping our presenter Jules learn to play the didgeridoo, to battling with a strange woman on a walkie-talkie while trying to talk live on air, to interviewing the youngest solo performer at WOMAD, to performing my own little version of Indian dance on stage. All in two days! Who knows what will happen tomorrow...
Goodness me, loads to say tonight. But if your attention span won't stretch then I'll start with cute baby wolves, because no one can resist a cute baby wolf:
Look at that. Gorgeous. I spent the morning at the UK Wolf Conservation Trust, near Reading, and enjoyed every minute. The centre had invited children along to learn how to be wolf-keepers - from mucking out to stuffing melons with wolf treats - and I tagged along.
You can read the article here and look at the photo gallery here. You can also access, from either link, a two-minute video of the centre's wolf cubs being taken for their first ever walk with children. It's narrated by one of the senior wolf handlers explaining more about the new arrivals and I think it's a must-see, they're so beautiful.
I went on air twice during the morning to provide updates from the wolf centre and it was great, checking the Berkshire website's inbox just before leaving this evening, to find someone asking for more information having heard one of my reports. It's reassuring to know people do listen, and do take an interest!
Use the audio player below to listen to me signing off from the wolf centre live on air. Henry, our fantastic Irish mid-morning presenter (whom you may remember from Going For Gold), was less than impressed...
Also worth a note today:
A local Berkshire band, The Skies, got stuck on the ramp while arriving to perform on our new music show, The Session. They had two cars and had tried to tail-gate through the barrier. There's a sign outside the barrier warning people not to do this, and to enter individually. The second car got hoisted up into the air. Whoops. At least they can say their music's breaking barriers.
My sat nav died on the journey back from the wolf centre - it wouldn't switch on when I got to my car. Panic? I nearly died. My knowledge of Berkshire is growing day by day but I still didn't feel too prepared to be stuck in the small village of Beenham, needing to get back to the newsroom, with no sat nav. I made it eventually and the sat nav has started working again, a blessed relief for which no words will suffice.
Remember the sheepdog trials last weekend? The shepherd I featured in my article was a man named Colin Turland. The organisers have now been in touch with me to tell me Colin won the competition outright! He and his dog Kelly also won the novice competition. Colin knows how to pick his dogs (he's the one who told me a dog could fetch as much as £5,000) and I obviously can pick a shepherd!
It's WOMAD from tomorrow until Sunday and I fully expect to barely have time to breathe, let alone write much here. You can, of course, follow all the action (and see what I've been doing) on the Berkshire website, and at the moment I'm likely to be on air from the festival at roughly these times:
Friday 10:10am, 11:35am, 12:35pm
Saturday 8:30am, various times 1-4pm
Sunday 8:40am, various times 10am-1pm
Listen live online and get all your WOMAD news and photos here.
I get the feeling I'm very much alone in my family in quite liking some forms of jazz, not that I could name a single jazz musician if I tried. It's just one of those things. I used to do the same with classical music: I'd listen to Radio 3 and enjoy it but I wouldn't have a clue what it was I was enjoying. I just know what I like.
But I want to change that. I want to be able to find some jazz musicians playing locally and playing well.
This all came about because I put together a brief guide to jazz events coming up in Berkshire this August before I left tonight. Two different people sent us press releases about local jazz so I combined them. As I wrote it I realised lots of the events being mentioned sounded great.
So the plan of action is to gatecrash some local jazz events over the coming month and decide what's good, and what's not so good. But I'm not bloody going alone so if you happen to live in Berkshire and feel like seeing some jazz, I want you as a new recruit, two or three nights a month.
Stay tuned here and at the Berkshire site for updates.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine at work told me she went for an interview at the LCC yesterday - to get on my old course.
Sadly she wasn't offered a place (perhaps if she'd bloody told me she was going I could have helped, given interview tips or something) but she did tell me that I am apparently the talk of the interviewees!
According to her, some of the interviewees have been reading a weblog by a guy who used to be on the course but now works at Radio Berkshire, to find out more about what to expect from the LCC.
It hadn't occurred to me when writing about the LCC that this would end up being used in that way, but I have to say it's very cool that it is. And just on the remote off chance that someone's reading this and thinking of applying, by all means drop me an email and say hi. I'm sure that goes for Amy and the LPC, OJ and politics (the man has a job! I'll let him tell you all about it) and any of us for Oxford, too.
Apologies for my absence over the last few days, I've been quite busy and today's been a productive day off. You know you're enjoying your job when your colleagues practically drag you off the premises for the first time in a month. Alternatively you know your colleagues despise you. I shall optimistically believe it's their concern for my work/play balance.
So, what's been keeping me occupied?
The weekend was all about sheepdog trials near Henley. I've never even seen "One Man And His Dog" so sheepdog trials are new ground for me to cover. The people organising it made me feel very welcome, let me park in a special spot (always a good way to endear me to you if I'm covering your event), provided some great interviewees and generally proved interesting folk.
The big sheepdog news is that these trials might not be around for too much longer. Okay, there were quite a few kids there with their families and that was good to see, but how many of them are going to take up dog training when they're teenagers? My guess is: none. There were no shepherds there under the age of 40 and I'm told no one in Berkshire even trains dogs like this any more - all the competitors were from surrounding counties.
There are many reasons for this decline and most of them are part of the wider problems farmers face. During my visit I was told there's no money in farming, kids don't want to stay in farming because they can be better paid for easier work elsewhere, farmers are now little more than glorified park-keepers in some instances, and training dogs can take up to three years - far too much dedication for younger people in the 21st century.
So if farmers' sons and daughters are your most likely candidates to become future sheepdog trial competitors, and none of those sons and daughters are sticking with farming, there's your problem. But modern technology is also making sheepdogs redundant (what an odd plural "sheepdogs" is).
I'm told most farmers now use quad bikes: they pop a collie on the back, drive up to the sheep, let the collie off now and again to round up a stray sheep, then toddle off back home. Previously you'd need multiple dogs to keep all the sheep in check - now you can cover miles in moments with a quad bike so, like a put-upon parent, you can ferry one collie from sheep to sheep as the day goes on.
This means there are fewer collies knocking around now. Guess how much money you could fetch for a top-of-the-range sheepdog?
£5,000. That's according to Colin, a shepherd I met at the trials. He's no farmer - he worked in factories until he retired and then took up dog training by purchasing a puppy, renting two acres of land and borrowing half a dozen sheep. 18 months later he was competing and now he says he averages just under £1,000 for each dog he sells on. The top ones go for five times that amount.
Read my full report here and look at a photo gallery here.
Finally we've got a mention on journalism.co.uk - "the essential site for journalists", no less. Click here to read their feature about blogging. It mentions BBC blogging expert Robin Hamman's recent meeting with the BBC Berkshire team, and the subsequent story I unearthed from a local weblog (including quotes from my blog entry about it here!). Very nice.
Oh yes! I admit to being rather proud of myself. The exam which was a "b*tch" (see post on 19th June) was actually my best - so it just goes to show how you can't always be the best judge of your own abilities. I'm so pleased that my results have arrived (and they are positive of course). It's been a rather strange period of tme in the last week or so: course over but results not yet out - am I starting work in September or not? Can I plan everything or is that tempting fate? Can I buy that reduced suit in the hope it will be useful for work, or should I wait until results? Do I want to start work? Do I even want to do law? Do I want to crawl into a ball and hibernate aka the world's most efficient hedgehog? What do I want to do with my time off in August? Can I properly relax? A horrid, insecure, emotional few days. But that's over now. So thank you everyone for sticking by me through the LPC, through the exams (you know who you are) and expecially over the last couple of days! ...back to that fizzy grape juice stuff now...
How many times do people strike up bloody irritating phone conversations on trains about the most boring topics, refusing to be quiet or shut up? Well, this one was different:
That's my fellow online team-mate Linda, sat in Coach F of the 16:45 service from London Paddington to Swansea, speaking live on Radio Berkshire and perfectly audible to the entire carriage.
At 4:40pm each day one of us goes on air to explain what we've been doing on the website, and since we were both on the train one of us had to do it down the phone line there and then. Linda was the unlucky one who got the call. The rest of the (packed) carriage listened in:
"We've spent the afternoon in London working out how to cover Reading Festival with Radio 1 and 6 Music..."
"Yes, it was all about the caviar and champagne..."
"I'm so hot and sweaty, I really need a shower..."
Just three choice clips of the live-on-air conversation she had. Of course the rest of us could only hear her and not presenter Phil Kennedy drawing daft answers out of her by pretending all BBC meetings involve caviar. All credit to her for having the confidence to go through with it in front of a captive audience like that - I had been praying it wouldn't be me...
Also spotted during today's excursion:
Yep, it's a simple ice cream vending machine, but look at the 'Reject button'. How brilliant is that? If you're feeling like a reject, alone and unwanted, cast out by the rest of society, press the special button and get a free 'sympathy' ice cream. Or something like that I'm sure.
The meeting itself went really well. One lady is essentially in charge of getting a special website for the BBC's Reading and Leeds festival coverage off the ground, and she appears thoroughly well-prepared and enthusiastic about the project, which is exactly what we wanted to see. There is potential for it to be a great little site and it looks as though I'll have loads of fun gathering content for it over the festival weekend, from photos to audio to reports by text message from around the festival site. I'll let you know where it is when it's ready.
Off to see the Pet Shop Boys play in Thetford forest tomorrow - yes, that's right, in the middle of a load of trees just outside Thetford. Last time I was in Thetford the locals were just heading off to start burning those trees for kicks (no exaggeration), so it could be an interesting experience. We are also forecast a lot of rain tomorrow night, which had better hold off til the end of the concert or I'll be annoyed. Audio report to follow from the venue on Dayorama tomorrow evening.
Mark Thompson spoke to everyone today about the BBC's "Creative Future" and then moved a lot of things around into different places which make a bit more sense.
Stay here for discussion of the restructuring and my last day on the UpFront induction course, or click here for the tale of Öscar the Crapping Guide Dog, which follows.
Previously there'd been a 'petal' system with around 17 different petals in it. This was alright on paper but in practice it was, for me at least, tricky to even remember which petal I belonged to, let alone where everyone else was.
This much was evident on the first morning of UpFront this week. The hostess went through each petal one by one and asked the 80 or so of us present to raise our hands according to which petal we were in. I could have reasonably been in at least three: News, New Media and Technology, and Nations and Regions. Other people had the same problem.
Now it's a hell of a lot clearer. Look at the diagram above: I am pretty damn sure I fit under 'journalist'. (This is where I discover I actually don't and am crowbarred in somewhere else.)
I like this restructuring. I've not been working with the corporation long enough to really know how it will affect most people I work with or any other departments of the BBC but, applying what little knowledge I have, I like it.
To me it seems like some basic things have been done right. All the audio and music is now in a section called "Audio and Music"; all the visual stuff is in "BBC Vision". All the journalists go in "Journalism" and all the new technology gets produced in "Future Media and Technology". That makes quite a lot of sense. The emphasis is on what is being called "360-degree commissioning", by which is meant the idea of signing up for a new TV series, radio show and website all at the same time as part of the same deal, rather than one or the other being an afterthought. This I also find encouraging, seeing as I consider it part of my job to bring audio, video, images and text together whenever I have a realistic opportunity.
And speaking of that, it's all being put into practice already. We spent our final UpFront afternoon in groups of 15 putting this 360-degree commissioning into action: five doing visual, five doing audio, five doing online. The idea is to try something you're not used to, so I ended up leading the visual team, which was so much fun and so terrifying that I'd really quite like to do it again every day. We produced a two-minute teaser for a series of three hour-long shows about taking risks with your life - dropping everything and starting all over again. This involved a Syrian man named Mustafa pretending to be a young father of two quitting his job as an engineer at a petroleum company in favour of selling marijuana seeds (quite legally) online. That got laughs. Great fun.
The emphasis there was on convergence and the emphasis tomorrow's on convergence. I'm going back into London in the afternoon to meet with Radio 1 and possibly 6 Music about the Reading and Leeds festivals. We want a mini-website where BBC Berkshire, BBC Leeds, the two radio stations and BBC3 television can all pool their content for maximum impact - otherwise our audience (or to borrow the point of view of the editorial in the BBC's in-house magazine, Ariel, today: customers) will be dragged hither and thither finding the stuff they want. It'll be nice if this collaboration actually occurs. Tomorrow will be the acid test and hopefully we can all work together.
I've gassed on far too much (I promise to cut post length and improve on content as part of a Dayorama creative future restructuring) but one final tale from UpFront: The Tale of the Crapping Guide Dog.
Öscar the German Shepherd lives on the floor where one of the BBC's data analysts, whom I met last night, works. Öscar is the White City on-call guide dog, in that on any occasion a partially sighted individual turns up minus a guide dog, Öscar stands in. This is a relatively infrequent occurrence so Öscar spends most of the time with the data analysts or the Factual and Learning team, eating Haribo (other sweeties are available).
Öscar's digestive system does not respond particularly well to Haribo. One fine and recent afternoon, Öscar's stomach responded so badly that Öscar felt unable to make it out of the building to a suitable piece of BBC pasture. Öscar instead opted to defecate spectacularly on a small patch of carpet next to the chair of a lady in Factual and Learning.
This lady was suitably unimpressed despite Factual and Learning being - allegedly - primarily to blame for the incident, having fed the dog on Haribo for most of the day. She marched over to the data analysts and explained that a copious quantity of dog poo had appeared by her chair, with only one sickly-looking guide dog in the vicinity.
The response she received from the data analysts, I shall not print. Suffice to say I am left with the impression she cleaned the carpet herself. Öscar, meanwhile, has since gone on to greater glory, careering through a glass partition after romping across a wooden floor and failing to create sufficient friction when applying the brakes. Just what blind visitors to the BBC need: a suitably creative guide dog...
As the famous Honda advert goes, "Isn't it nice when things just work?"
Yesterday I met BBC blogging expert Robin Hamman. I am wary of blogging experts. Just as some people, deep down, fear that all bloggers have absolutely nothing valid to contribute, so I harbour an irrational fear that all blogging experts are only blogging experts through lack of anything else in which to be an expert. "What am I good at? Hmm. Writing lots and lots of stuff on the internet. I'll be an expert in that."
Robin Hamman is not a blogging expert through lack of alternative, I assure you. He knows what he's talking about, he makes sense, and some of the stuff he had to show was genuinely not what I expected, or what I expected the BBC to be grappling with. In a good way. There was a lot of encouragement for going out and doing things with all the wonderful third-party software the internet can offer, from Google Maps to Flickr, both of which we'll hopefully put to good use soon.
The overall message was: "it's okay to try to be clever with the internet". There was a real sense that creativity is still A Good Thing and will be rewarded as such provided it's focused in the right areas and isn't creativity for creativity's sake.
So that was nice, even if I had just eaten a whole packet of polos washed down with chicken tikka masala, which let me tell you is an explosive combination just before an hour-long meeting.
One of my little plans of campaign following the meeting was to put together a list of all the people I could find blogging in Berkshire and preferably about Berkshire. The latter is a little trickier to find but certainly exists, and by the end of yesterday I had 20 plus Berkshire blogs sat in a Bloglines feed reader, ready for consumption.
Of those twenty - a list which includes Boris Johnson since he occasionally talks about Henley - there was one blog which stood out. It was written by the mother of an autistic child going to a mainstream Berkshire school. You can read it here, although make sure you read this post first to understand her story.
I was captivated by the story of her son, endearingly referred to throughout as "Little Monkey Nut", and the school he attends. He has many problems there, from interaction with other pupils and staff through to escaping the classroom and dashing out towards main roads unaccompanied. I don't agree with every point of view expressed on the blog but it's well written and really conveys the day-to-day stress and strain of caring for, and being, a child with autism.
One of the latest posts to that blog told of how the woman had become so fed up with what she perceived to be the school failing both her and her son that she was taking her story to the newspapers. That was posted yesterday afternoon, I read it yesterday evening.
This morning, when I went into work, I flagged this up to our news editor who immediately recognised it as a powerful story. We were able to establish which school the son attended and Laura, one of the news team, worked wonders getting in touch with his mum.
None of that would have happened without that weblog, and without Robin's visit on Monday to set that train of thought into motion at precisely the right moment to catch this story happening. It's an immediate vindication of a far more active, go-getting, enthusiastic approach to weblogs and the internet - not to be feared, but harnessed. We can marry good old-fashioned newsgathering and editorial judgement with the raw experiences of people who, like me, just like to write about what happens to them on their website.
Within 24 hours of adopting our new approach we were involved in a meaningful, captivating story which otherwise would have reached us via the national newspapers tomorrow morning (look out for it). And similarly within 24 hours of writing her intentions on her blog, a frustrated mother who felt she was being ignored had been given an outlet by the BBC. It's nice when old and new media just work.
I would give you a DayoRimet entry on the two semi-finals, but what can I tell you that you don't know? Italy match good, France match bad. Simple. And it's those two teams in the final of course. I want Italy to win, since it'll boost the healing process of their national game after the torrid time it's recently had, corruption scandals and all. And because the Italians are quite endearing, really. And the French aren't.
No, forget the World Cup, since that's what I had to do tonight. It was off to the Henley Festival instead and you know what? It was a good decision. Sod the football, it was lovely to be sat in the open air with a couple of thousand other people watching an orchestra bash out songs by Leonard Bernstein and Gershwin. There was real gusto to that performance, particularly on the behalf of the conductor, who gave what I reckoned to be a masterclass in the art. Of course to a trained musician he might have been woeful, abysmal, horrendous beyond redemption. But to my thoroughly philistine eye he was bloody marvellous, throwing himself around like a man possessed with a range of facial expressions matched only by Nikki off Big Brother.
Theatrical as that was, it was nothing compared to the supporting cast of men and women on stilts, mechanical horses and submarines-on-wheels ouside the main 'floating stage'. We had a 12-foot Scotsman named Big Rory with his dog (also an actor, one who must possess superhuman limbs to remain in canine pose for hours on end), two equally tall ladies wearing powdered wigs standing literally head and shoulders above the masses, two gents riding a submarine, two gents accompanying a fire-breathing mechanical horse, angels on what looked like Segways, and a bunch of hippies plonked down on the middle of the grass (which gave off a funny smell of cheese in some areas - the grass, not the hippies).
There'll be photos up on the Berkshire website tomorrow, where you can also find plenty of stuff related to an archaeological dig taking place near Marlow. Having studied archaeology as part of my first degree it was great to be able to marry the disciplines of history and broadcasting on Tuesday, when I went down to the site itself and did a few live broadcasts for Radio Berkshire from the dig. The local archaeological society have successfully applied for lottery funding which has turned this into the biggest dig in their history - three large trenches, one of which will be expanded to a whopping 20m x 20m. They reckon they're going to find one of the earliest Thames Valley settlements, going back to Bronze Age or even Neolithic times. I'm going to keep returning to the dig over the next few weeks to see how things progress and update the radio and website accordingly. At the moment there's photos, audio and video from day one in the dig's own mini-section of the Berkshire site - click here. (The video's not as good as it could be, but lessons have been learned and the next one should be better. Amazing what you can do with Windows Movie Maker.)
It's not really a job when you get to while away your Sunday playing American Football in the name of journalism. I spent this afternoon as a Reading Renegade, training with the squad at Reading Rugby Club. It's fair to say they are not the best American Football team in the world, Britain, the South or possibly even Reading, but they're a very friendly bunch of people doing something they love, and it was a pleasure to be involved.
Read the full article on my afternoon and the team here.
Things I learnt this afternoon:
- I'm not quite as unfit as I thought I was
- it is possible to drink 5 litres of water and not need the toilet for four hours owing to sheer sweat
- it is a bad idea to spike one's hair up before playing American Football since the helmet destroys it and then the hairspray mixes with the sweat and stings the eyes.
I also learnt that American Football probably isn't for me. It was a lot of fun but the idea of being part of the Defence, spending one's whole career blocking, did not appeal. And frankly I've always been annoyed by the need for a little huddle after every play, which I appreciate is central to the game but even so. I'm sure Americans feel the same way about cricket ("Five days?"). It's just one of those things.
Not quite as dramatic as that, actually. My exam today was a real b*tch. Some questions which you just knew you had nailed, and others which you had no idea about. We aren't allowed to leave in the first 30mins, or the last 15mins. With 20mins to go I had done all I could. Even if I had done more work this weekend, all things considered I doubt I would have answered the questions any better. I may perhaps have been able to spend the remaining 20mins perfecting my answers, but I wasn't in the right frame of mind. I left with 16mins to go. I aiming for 51%. Let's keep those fingers crossed. The hardest exam is on Wednesday. Then I too will probably have a drink or two. Lucky OJ for finishing already! B*astard!
So I've finally finished my course, with a three hour exam this morning. In the spirit of finals last year, here are my questions:
Section A
1: Was Frederick Jackson Turner's noton of the 'exceptionalism' of American experience his most valuable contribution to historical scholarship?
7: How advantageously did Bernard Bailyn and those influenced by his work weave a consideration of ideology into their studiyes of the revolutionary era and the early republic?
Section B
9: Have the New Western Historians suceeded in transcending a 'good guys/bad guys' approach to their subject?
These were the three questions I wanted to come up. The first two were great but, despite at least three weeks of study on New Western History, I still don't have a clue about what the hell they are talking about. I assumed they were talking about Indians, and wrote as much as I could in the half hour I had left. Eheu. The first two were good though. Anyway, after a week without alcohol, I'm off to get even more drunk! Woo! Have already done punting and pool...
So, instead of writing anything vaguely sensible, I'm just going to link to a couple of legal blogs.
Firstly, my favourite: the famous anonymouslawyer, which has been described as putting "-a certain firm- right into the satirical frame" with the posting of 25th May 2006 (you need to scroll down the page, almost to the bottom to read it). It's an interesting blog for anyone who keeps their eye on the activities of the main law firms.
There's also a uklawstudent blog, amusing to read for anyone who has searched for a training contract and gone through the necessary milkround of "how to get through interviews" and "which firm to apply for".
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I'm really enjoying this revision thing. Reading thelawyer is such a great excuse not to work: I feel like I am working, because I am reading about legal issues, even if they are not directly connected to my exams. I even cut a few articles out of this week's edition and sent them to the b/f with the note that he "was free to throw them in the nearest bin, but he may find the articles vaguely interesting". Isn't he a lucky thing! Actually, the revision is "going badly" (to quote the Curl). Where is my G+T comrade when I need him, eh? Damn him working in SA. My finance is bloody hard, the advanced facts are totally confusing and I've just had to have a lesson with my Father about how to calculate percentages (they were complicated ones, OK!).
Earlier this evening, having played an epic game of football in the back garden, three of us were in the kitchen listening to Five Live. A World Cup debate of some description was taking place. My dad and his friend John both bemoaned the blanket coverage of the World Cup on stations like Five Live when the tournament doesn't even start for another couple of days.
It's a tricky issue. No radio station, and certainly not one like Five Live whose reputation is staked on news and sport, wants to be seen to be ignoring the World Cup. For many radio stations this is taken to mean devoting bags and bags of airtime to an event this big, so that no one can question where the World Cup coverage has gone. If someone tunes in to Five Live this week and thinks the station isn't bothered about the World Cup, that would be tantamount to suicide as far as the station's concerned. Thus the World Cup saturation - to make sure you know damn well where to find World Cup coverage once it starts.
That doesn't mean the 'filler' World Cup radio leading up to the competition has to be formulaic, though, and it's difficult coming up with new ways to flog the horse until it can safely be left to expire on Friday. Which is why I was so pleased to find out Berkshire's plans for the World Cup campaign. Local radio stations have an even harder time than network - fewer resources, less pulling power - so they have to make the best out of whatever can be drummed up.
And here, occupying the same huge building as BBC Monitoring comes into play. Outside the Berkshire front door is a large, immensely well-informed team of journalists and researchers constantly monitoring the output of hundreds of media organisations around the world. If you want truly involved, global World Cup coverage, these are probably the people you want to come on your radio show and talk about what's going on. And that is exactly what is going to happen. Commentary clips from overseas radio stations, descriptions of the prevailing mood following each national side into battle, analysis of the foreign media reaction, the lot.
Local radio is often accused of being parochial, insular, a glorified community notice board. If you listen to it long enough you'll catch occasional moments which reinforce this perception, but how better to demolish it than expose Berkshire listeners to World Cup tales from across the globe, not just a narrow Eng-er-land obsession. It's going to sound brilliant.
(And finally, surely this must be almost the last usage of 'wireless' to mean radio in this day and age. Who knows what it'll mean a hundred years from now.)
...and you might remember me from past posts such as... well, I'm sure I've posted something somewhere.
Some days you win, some days you lose. And some days you win big.
Most of my last eight days have been spent furiously typing my thesis. It's invovled very little sleep, a lot of grouching, and about 20000 words. It's been enjoyable and frustrating, as these things usually are, but with the deadline fast approaching, I'm getting a little sick of it. Today I finished the second draft, and have about a day's worth editing left to do. At last! Immediately after rewriting the conclusion at 5pm today, I threw my cricket gear on and rushed to take my place in Lincoln's 2 XI. It was time for something rewarding, given that I haven't done anything but work and sleep for eight days. Literally. There have been cricket related posts on Dayorama in the past, which conclude (see, still writing in thesis speak) that the College 2nds league is dangerous (see Oliver C. Williams, Ow, I can't see (2005)), and that I'm not a very good cricketer. But suddenly I've hit a purple patch. In my debut game this season, not only did I take a catch (rare), I also ran someone out (rarer), and bowled well (extremely rare), and had two dropped catches at slip off my bowling. That was pretty good. Today, I took my first ever wicket as a bowler. It was a beauty, swinging in (have no idea what I'm doing to make that work) and destroying the off stump. The batsman even congratulated me on it. Even as I write, a tear is forming in my eye, so beautiful was that ball. A once in a lifetime delivery. I also had a catch dropped by the wicket keeper off the very next delivery. Where did I manage to become a good bowler? (Or, when did standards drop so?) Beats me.
And then. We were playing the Keble MCR team, who were very good. They posted 147 off 25 overs (our extras rate was appaling, myself included), and then after a good opening partnership, our batsman started dropping. I batted at 6, and came in on 47 for 4, and had to face four very tense balls from their best delivery. I was nerve wracked - in the last match, I was out for a golden duck. Somehow, I managed to make my way through those deliveries, defending each one and taking deep breaths between balls. And then it clicked. I hit a massive straight drive off him the next over, and broke his spirit. He soon bowled his allotted overs, and suddenly we were into my territory. With solid support from my partner (Wortho, for those in the know), we tried to rebuild our innings. Time was against us, but I ended up carrying my bat, scoring 47 not out, my highest ever score, beating a 36 I scored for the U11 against Sherborne. I had the eye, was hitting long and smooth, and forcing field changes. I even varied my shots, picking up quick singles, punch twos, a few fours, and suprisingly (for me), no sixes. It was, quite simply, glorious.
We lost, though. Our run rate was too low, and we lost by some 40 runs. And I still have my ultimate weakness, the inability to play on the off side and concrete feet. Keble eventually worked this out, and despite having only nine men, stacked five on the on side, and only two on the off. Oh well. I also dropped a chance, a hard one but a chance nonetheless, beacuse I tangled my feet up.
I feel on a high. I also got another job interview for next Monday, so things are finally happening again. I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I'm even posting again (though I'm going to disappear to finish this thesis). But wow. Some days you win, and some days you win big.
There's been a very poor squirrel-to-email ratio since yesterday's plea for more photos of squirrels in Berkshire, but I live in hope. I have, in the mean time, had photos of swans, flowers and wisteria, and am promised one of a robin on a kayak. Personally I think a robin on a kayak is a must-see (akin to snakes on a plane) and am looking forward to that one intensely.
In the absence of squirrels, robins and kayaks you can still enjoy the seven new galleries of user-submitted photos we've set up, as well as a short preview of the Windsor Wheel, Windsor's answer to the London Eye (with appropriate mocked-up photo supplied by yours truly).
Now, the idea of sensationalising a story is common to many British folk. You'll find newspapers like The Sun are often cited as the main culprits when it comes to ever-so-slightly overdoing a story. But they've got nothing on a report from the Awareness Times of Sierra Leone. The Awareness Times documents a native Manchester City fan's trip from Africa to England in the sort of glowing terms normally reserved for, say, the pope:
[The man] was received as the Club’s Ambassador from Africa, and was accorded the honour and dignity he deserved while on the visit in England. Accordingly, he was received by no less a person than the Manager of the Club, players and other fans on arrival in the United Kingdom.
At a special dinner organized by the Club in his honour, he had the opportunity of meeting with the most important officials of the Club who posed with him for group photographs and also joined him to sing Sierra Leone’s National Anthem and raise the Green White and Blue, symbolizing the country’s Flag.
The event was so touching that most of the Man City fans promised to take Sierra Leone’s Flag to the World Cup, to fly it all over the place as a way of demonstrating how important the country’s support is to the Club.
I started it entrenched in my student status - a status which hasn't changed since 1991, if six-year-olds starting at school count as students. I'm ending it as a fully employed member of BBC staff, which makes quite a nice change, I must say.
I'll be working at BBC Radio Berkshire in Caversham, helping to look after and improve the bbc.co.uk/berkshire website. It's great to have the chance to get to grips with a BBC site and see what I can contribute. And of course I'm delighted to be working in the environment I so fell in love with at interview last week.
This doesn't mean I'll be departing Dayorama I hope - far from it. I want to carry on using this website as our collective home on the web, and hopefully now as a showcase for what we produce at BBC Berks. Any ideas for features will always be appreciated and taken on board, I should now have the resources to really pursue exciting stories.
There has, however, been a minor Dayorama change: the "BBC Watch" category has departed. This more often than not provided a home for extremely positive comment, but I can hardly claim to be watching the BBC with any objectivity now that I work for it (for which read: I don't want to get myself the sack), and nor can either OJ or Amy in the knowledge I'm there (read: I don't want them getting me it either).
In the place of "BBC Watch", in accordance with Amy's request in the last post, comes "Weather". We discuss it enough on this site and it's actually becoming front page news far more often than you'd expect: think everything from broad climate change issues to drought in south-east England. And let's not forget my obsession with hurricanes ever since childhood.
Right, I'm off to watch my colleague Terry host a celebration of fifty years of the Eurovision Song Contest. Thank god that BBC salary mole's been caught eh. I don't know what you'd all do if my package was open to the public...
I was thrilled, getting in to work this morning on my last day, to discover I'd be interviewing Bryan "Captain Marvel" Robson that afternoon. He captained England, of course, as well as spending over a decade at Manchester United before going on to manage Middlesbrough and now West Brom.
He's up in Manchester to promote his new autobiography, so the interview was to take place just before the start of a book signing at the Trafford Park ASDA. This is home to the ginormous Trafford Centre, so you can imagine the ASDA itself was huge in its own right.
I turned up with time to spare, then made my way to the Customer Service desk to track down someone who'd lead the way to Bryan. And lo, down the escalator came the PR lady.
"Are you him?" She asked.
I found this a little abrupt, but nodded.
"You've not come here hoping for an interview, have you?" And suddenly a reproachful look. "Your radio station didn't publicise any of this, you're not getting an interview - there was never one agreed, I didn't reply to your email, there was no fax, you've no right and there'll be no interview. He's here to sign books, not talk about relegation."
All this in a raised voice in the middle of the packed shop floor. Then Bryan Robson himself materialised behind me and she scuttled off. I tried to find a hole in the ground to jump into, then rang my sports editor to report this minor technical hitch and see if we could do anything.
But just as I got off the phone, back she came. "I am so, so sorry. Please, come and talk to Bryan, he's just up here. So much confusion! Not anyone's fault, not your fault at all."
Well, yes. I knew that! I have no idea what caused this absolute sea change in opinion and attitude over the space of no more than five minutes, but the difference was immense. The four copies of Robson's autobiography I had asked her to pass to him to be signed - "I might be able to sort that but they won't be personalised," said the dragon pre-change of heart - came back immediately, personalised exactly as requested.
The interview was great too. Bryan Robson - who of course had nothing to do with any of this - is a lovely man, warm and friendly, fire in the eyes still, a genuine pleasure to talk to. The man either talks naturally in fifteen second commercial-radio-friendly soundbites, or he's a seasoned pro at this sort of thing. I suspect the latter.
So, one vicar. One vicar would be fine, wouldn't it? You only need one vicar to get by in life, that vicar can take care of just about all your spiritual needs. But a Morris Minor can cater for just about all your vehicle needs, and that doesn't stop the manufacture, sale and enjoyment of many 4x4s. I have no excuse, I hold my hands up to my greed - today was a two-vicar day for me.
We'll start with vicar two - *entering Cilla mode* - and that was our Chris, from Eccles. Chris is part of a new Church of England initiative where priests come into your home, say some prayers in various rooms, and offer a blessing. This was news because they launched it at the top of the Beetham Tower, Manchester's tallest building (and the tallest residential building in Britain). In the words of another vicar, the new residents of the tower have already "shown their desire to be closer to heaven", and are therefore particularly deserving.
But vicar number one - Rob, from Hazel Grove - stole the show. He's holding a seminar next month about the Da Vinci Code, highly topical (still) what with the movie about to be released. He welcomes the book, as a significant minority of Church folk have done, expressing a sincere belief that it shows interest in Jesus, even if that interest may be a little misguided in some.
While commercial radio demands I scythe the poor man down to a prudent 90 seconds, Dayorama gives me the space to indulge myself a little. There was an extended silence when I asked him about the movie. Granted, he welcomes the book, but would he have welcomed a film crew into his church to film the movie?
Update: On Sunday 20 May 2006, Rev Rob Green wrote to me with this response (see below for mine):
A response from Rev Rob Green:
Ollie came to interview me on behalf of Key103. My understanding was that we were recording an interview that would be suitably edited before going out on air and that it would appear only on Key103. I am disappointed, then, that without my knowledge and consent, he has included the full interview on his Dayorama web site. In any unedited interview even the most seasoned of interviewees will sometimes need to say "stop, I'll rephrase that" or "just give me a minute to think". So, for someone like me, who has only been interviewed in this way once before in my life, that need is much greater. However I have not asked Ollie to withdraw this interview - I don't feel that I have anything to hide! But I feel I must respond to the issue of Ollie's highlighting the "extended silence" regarding the question of filming the Da Vinci Code at Norbury. This was an entirely hypothetical (but not unreasonable) question, but it was unexpected and I did need time to think about it. Interestingly whilst the Westminster Abbey authorities refused the filmmakers permission to shoot there, the authorities at Lincoln Cathedral took the opposite view. With regard to Ollie's interview, I was mulling this over during the "extended silence" and I would stand by my eventual answer which was that, first, I would need to see the script and, second, to talk to the Director and producers about their intentions for the film. If I then felt that the film was a deliberate attempt to undermine Christian teaching then it would, of course, have been a contradiction to have allowed filming to take place in a church. However if I felt that the filmmakers were simply trying to ask questions and raise issues, that would be a different matter. I believe, from what I have read, that the Da Vinci Code movie does the latter - however, without having yet seen the film ( I will be going on 27th May) it is impossible to answer that question definitively. I am very keen to engage with others who have seen the film and read the book and to hear their questions and comments - which is exactly why I have put on the event at Norbury Church. It will be on Wednesday 7th June at 7.30pm."
I apologise to Rob - it was unprofessional for me not to have asked for his consent beforehand, and the last thing I ever set out to do, here on Dayorama or elsewhere, is cause anyone any harm. As it happens Key dropped the interview in its entirety and have not, to my knowledge, run it since. I felt this was a sad waste of an extremely interesting interview with Rob, one I enjoyed doing and wanted to share. That doesn't excuse putting it online without his consent, of course, for which I've apologised to him and do so here too. If only I were still in Manchester I would have loved to go back to Norbury Church for the event Rob is hosting, too. I've removed the audio - though please note not at Rob's request - and hope to avoid any further offence!
National Condom Week's nearly upon us, where we rip open the seal and allow sexual health to roll its wholesome, lubricated self oh-so-smoothly over ourselves.
Or something like that. But perhaps not with an Atomic Kitten in the room. Kitten Liz McClarnon's coming to see me on Wednesday to record an interview promoting sexual health - more specifically, the importance of women insisting men use a condom. To quote from the accompanying press release:
"In a nutshell, National Condom Week will aim to arm young women with snappy responses to the lines men often trot out when refusing to wear a condom. The campaign theme is 'he says, you say'."
Okay, so this is where you come in. Liz is going to have plenty of those 'snappy responses' up her sleeve, so I need to have some superb lines to 'trot out' in order to properly test her. You're a bloke, you don't want to use a condom, and Liz is your target. Think of the best line you can for that situation, then email me: ollie dot williams at gmail dot com.
If it's good enough, I'll be sure to use it in the interview, which I hope you'll be able to hear on Dayorama shortly afterwards.
So, I got taken apart a bit by a Harlem Globetrotter on Thursday. But Friday was a whole new day, and off I went into Manchester for 'Paralympic Day', a celebration of the Paralympic World Cup - it starts in Manchester on Monday.
There were plenty of schoolkids there along with Britain's top paralympic athletes, and I had great fun weaving between cyclists and runners young and old. But I couldn't help myself - the wheelchair basketball sent out its siren's call and over I went, helpless, ready to shred my sporting integrity once again.
And so it proved. I am as useless at basketball when the opponents are in wheelchairs as I am when the opponents are Harlem Globetrotters. Not that being in a wheelchair makes basketball any easier - far from it, I found it really tough getting the distance and trajectory right, not to mention the strain of moving around the court.
Michael "Wild Thing" Wilson, of the Harlem Globetrotters, stopped by on Thursday morning. I took him outside the building with a basketball and put him through his paces to see if he could live up to my exacting standards. He just about passed the test.
I was further humbled by wheelchair basketball players in the centre of Manchester today, accused by one of having a "good netball throw". Any man knows that's fighting talk. I also spoke to Matt Walker, a paralympic swimming champion from Stockport who's overcome mild cerebral palsy to set a new world record last week - he sounded really up for next week's Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, and he's got to be in with a fantastic chance of a gold medal.
Finally, at five to six tonight we had what was later referred to as a 'news moment'. A hit-and-run killer who knocked down a nine year old girl was given a fifteen month sentence; Phil Scolari announced he wasn't going for the England job; and Charles Clarke made a statement about the minor matter of foreign nationals released from prison, ignored, and then found to have re-offended. All this moments before our major evening news bulletin.
Pandemonium ensued, including two of us literally bouncing up and down in panic as two different newsreaders demanded to know where audio and story updates were. It was genuinely great fun, though as our news editor observed, an LCC newsroom would have collapsed and died at the sight of all that news at the last minute. We live and learn.
Don't You Lose My Number
Inland Where Are You?
Incontinentia Inbox
Welcome to Newcastle, or more precisely the seventh floor of the Jurys Inn (why have they so callously butchered their apostrophe?), overlooking a rather grand courtyard. There I am in the hotel room except, when I look at my own picture, my dodgy net access makes it look like I'm on videophone from Kabul.
Be An Oxford Student: Masters Edition