Friday, March 28, 2014

20

Here's a little narrow take on the first day of Five Live - a success because of many more people than can be mentioned here.

The suits were trickling in from 0430. I was trying to bash out a newspaper review, which required complicated application of highlighter pens, otherwise it would crash and burn. It often did, but it was fun. There was a quiet message - Jane Garvey's cab had failed to turn up, so it might be a bit touch and go. We concealed this from the suits. We kept them out of the studio corridors, one floor down from the production desks, and only BBC snapper Geoff Overs and a few trusties were peering through the windows at the very start,
with Jane Garvey, Adrian Chiles doing "the business" and Marcus Buckland on sport. Morning Reports was put together by Phil Longman's news team. Philip Eden did weather, and Jo Anne Sale travel.






Overnight, Mark Sandell had assembled the first Breakfast programme - our lead was US tornadoes. The indefatigable Simon Calder was lost in East Anglia on a live OB that never worked.

Jane is one of the funniest and sharpest people you'll meet. She'd managed to convey a bit of that to the Radio Times.









We had less success in getting a cheerful picture of Peter Allen - brought to Five Live at the suggestion of Mike Lewis, Peter put a spring in all our strides from his first pilot.









This picture, from Peter doing Breakfast with Rachel Burden only this week, is much more typical, and remains a tribute to his dentist, 20 years on.





The best bit of the day for me was the Evening Standard's take on the morning output - it sounded as if it had always been there.

Peter and Jane are back together on Drive today at 4pm. There's some sort of nostalgia fest at 12.

I missed both a London and Manchester party this week (London for a woeful Arsenal v Swansea). You can tell, however, from various Facebook accounts, that early Five Live was something we all thought made sense (that doesn't half help), as well as a place of genuine laughter, laced with inevitable mickey-taking, creating friendships that have very happily endured.

1 comment:

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    ReplyDelete

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