“But now on BBC1 it’s time for the news where you are, good night.”
“Thank you Sophie, good evening from Look North. A baby who died at just 10 …..”
Every day is different at the BBC, it starts in the same way, I’ll get to my desk in
the morning, I’ll be reading the papers, I’ll answer the phone, I’ll discuss with
the producer what things they need for the programme, what sort of stories are interesting,
what’s making us talk, and then we’ll make a decision about what we want to go for.
Then after that the day is yours, you get a camera man, you get a vehicle and off on
the road you go. You’ve got to find the interviewees, you’ve got to make them talk
to you, you’ve got to go find the pictures. You’ve got to assemble all that in a limited
space of time, get back to an edit suite, put it together into a story and then present
it at half past six. Sometimes present it at half past one if it’s needed for the
lunch time news, and then you might be doing a live broadcast as well.
The technology is changing so quickly we can go live much more easily than we ever could
before and that’s a thrill to me because I really enjoy that, that skill of
'Hey come over here, look at this, this is live this is happening now and here’s something
that happened earlier, here’s a report.’ I love all that and so the challenges in the
job are evolving all the time so it keeps you interested.
One of the perks of the job is trying to persuade toddlers to climb all over contemporary sculpture
first thing on a Wednesday morning, she’s doing very well.
When I left Bradford I went to work for a cable television company called Channel One,
which isn’t in existence any more, but that’s nothing to do with me, I just want to put
that on the record. But I wanted to come back north, I didn’t really get on with London
so the first thing I did was get a job with Yorkshire Television and I worked there for a year
and that was really good fun and I was able to develop my live skills, my packaging skills
particularly and then one day, I was extremely flattered I got a call out of the blue
from the BBC to say there is a job coming up, would you like to apply for it.
That is the only time that has happened to me in my life, it will never happen to me
again which is why I like to say it, but that was very flattering and I went to the interview
and I got the job and nearly nineteen years later here I still am, still covering the same patch.
“Barnsley council say they do maintain the
culvert but given the exceptional weather conditions, no sooner is it cleaned than it
is refilled with debri.” “Well it’s just after 4 o’clock and
we’re back in Chapel town, proof if you needed it this stories been developing all day.
When we filmed down there this morning just after 9 o’clock the road was free and
open to traffic. Just look at things now. Two, three, four feet deep of water, the houses
around here have been evacuated for the second time in just over a week, the last thing these
people wanted.” I’ve covered a lot of really big stories
for the BBC and for ITV as well. I think the biggest would probably be the Sheffield floods
of 2007. I remember, well we had two floods actually. We had a flood in Barnsley the last week,
and we had just finished dealing with the aftermath of that and suddenly the heavens
opened again and those reall serious floods kicked in and it rained steadily all day,
suddenly the story changed at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon when it was clear things
were getting very very serious and that’s when the city centre bridges looked like they
were disappearing under water, water started lashing over walls. And I worked a shift that
started at 8 o’clock in the morning and did not finish until 10 o’clock the next morning,
we worked right through the night as the story developed and changed and it
was a very exciting story and slightly scary as well. I imagine that’s what covering
the end of the world would be like; you never know where to turn for the next story.
The course was very new, it was the very first year so people were getting together and they
were finding their feet. It was all about that new partnership between the University,
the college and the museum. And actually, pulling all those elements together, pulling
all the different expertise together, meant we got a really broad education, there were
people firing different ideas at us all the time, and there were things that have gone
on to inform my everyday life, and there were things that actually I’ve never thought
about again, but it was really an enriching process.
And what really impressed me was just the range of disciplines it was going to cover,
photography, radio, television, a bit of stage work a bit of computing. And that was great
for someone who hadn’t really made their mind up but knew they liked to have their
fingers in lots of pies, so that’s really where it started.
One of the things you need to think about when you come into a story,
and that’s what this job is all about, telling stories; is you might be right at the start of it,
you might know it really well, you might be leaping in the middle but you just got to get on
and tell that story quickly, economically in time terms.
You’ve got a minute and a half, two minutes maybe and you got to deliver it and get it on the air
so you’ve got to be able to sometimes just go for it.
Bradford University was absolutely critical
and pivotal to the work I do now, and the way I have an outlook on life. It was about
teaching you that you didn’t just have to focus on science or just focus on arts; you
could have a focus on all sorts of things. As long as you showed an interest in things
that was great, get stuck into life. That’s what Bradford University taught me.
I was very heavily involved in the Theatre there, I got to be President of the Theatre Group,
I got to direct plays and stage plays. Such an important time, it taught me how to
direct and how I could take those skills into television. That taught me about how to be critical,
how to accept what you’re doing and actually how you could improve it all the time.
So the work I did at Bradford, and the outlook Bradford gave me really helped inform my later life,
and I wouldn’t be doing what I do today unless I had such a rounding experience at Bradford University