Paper Talk

It turned out that last week ended up being quite a prolific one for my appearances in assorted publications - not only the mentions of the Nexus documentary in the Radio Times and The Sunday Times, but I also had a newspaper feature I'd written published and was the subject of another.

Last week, last Wednesday in fact, saw the 65th anniversary of the first ever East Anglian regional TV opt-out on BBC Television, on January the 26th 1957. Not perhaps the most notable of anniversaries, but always being one for a bit of broadcasting history - especially for broadcasting history connected to the bit of the BBC where I work, and which nobody else is likely to notice or even mark - I decided to make a radio package about it to go out on our afternoon show. This was particularly driven by the fact that some audio from the broadcast actually still exists, albeit in quite poor quality.

The piece duly went out on Wednesday, but while I'd been making it I came up with the idea of seeing if the Eastern Daily Press might be interested in a feature about it, too. I submitted this to them earlier this month but wasn't sure whether or not it was going to be any use to them. As it turned out, however, they actually ended up running it on Tuesday - and it also appeared in Norwich's Evening News, and in the EDP's Suffolk sister paper, the East Anglian Daily Times, the first occasion upon which any of my work has appeared there. You can read the piece online on the EDP website by clicking here.

So, with the Nexus documentary having gone out on 4 Extra on Tuesday, I managed to be a writer and a broadcaster on the same day without having lifted a finger during the course of the day at doing either!

Then on Wednesday I had a message from Paul, an old friend of mine back home in Sussex, telling me that a piece about me and The Long Game had appeared on the website of one of my old local papers, the Worthing Herald. I'd actually written to them a few months ago thinking I might perhaps be able to get a bit of local publicity down there, but nothing had appeared so I'd assumed it hadn't been of any use or interest.

Then suddenly last week they evidently decided it was, and the piece appeared - I believe also in the print edition, although I haven't actually been able to see a copy of that. If anyone has one, or a scan, do please let me know!

Extra! Extra!

It was a very proud moment for me today, as after working in radio for 15 years I achieved a bit of an unexpected first - presenting a programme on one of the BBC's national radio stations.

I'd mentioned in my previous blog entry on New Year's Eve that there might be something more coming up from the Nexus documentary I made last year. What I couldn't say at the time, because it hadn't yet been announced, was that BBC Radio 4 Extra had decided to broadcast the programme. I'd pitched it to them not long after the original broadcast, suggesting I could make a 25-minute cutdown focusing on the more famous of the interviewees.

To my surprise, however, after having a listen they decided they'd like to take the entire thing - and it went out at 11am this morning. 4 Extra programmes get several outings in their week of broadcast, so it's also going out again at 9pm this evening, and twice again on Saturday.

This is only the second time I have managed to get one of my documentaries onto national radio, and the first time it's been one that I've presented as well as having produced. The previous one was my Ayrton Senna documentary, which BBC Radio 5 Live ran three times in 2014 and 2015. However, in that case, while I produced the programme I didn't present it - narration duties on that occasion were taken on by the great Rob Bonnet.

5 Live did also take another documentary of mine later on in 2017, and it was billed in the Radio Times and everything, but never in the event went out - due to a last-minute schedule change to cover England in the Rugby League World Cup semi-finals.

So I was, as you can imagine, incredibly pleased about the Nexus programme being taken on by 4 Extra - but even more pleased with the response it's already received. The Radio Times made it one of their 'Today's Choice' selections, and The Sunday Times also flagged it up:

It still amazes me to see just how far this programme has been able to go. When I came up with the idea of doing it, I did worry it was a bit niche even for a local radio station; that it might not interest anybody who hadn't been a student at the UEA, or even then who hadn't been involved in some way with the TV station. But it seems that I was very wrong about that - and very pleased to have been so, of course!

There's just something so wonderfully BBC-ish about having been on between one of Bert Coules' Sherlock Holmes adaptations, and an episode of The Goon Show...