Day 20: Thats a Wrap!

I know it’s Monday. I’m aware this is four days late. I understand that you’re meant to write a diary in the evening of the day you do the stuff. But I was out on Friday night getting drunk, and I used the weekend as a recovery period. Now I can write about what actually happened on my last day at Sky without worrying about if I’m going to keel over and be sick.

To be frank, my last day was probably the easiest of the lot. Pretty much everything was in place for the documentary. We’d planned it to the point where it felt like we’d booked interviews with everyone who lives in Wales. So it was just a case of tidying the schedule so even a toddler could understand it.

BBQ and a man playing guitar. Anymore perfect way to celebrate my last day?

Tim informed me that Sky’s canteen did amazing fish and chips on a Friday so we headed over there for lunch. Instead, we found a BBQ set up outside the canteen with seats, an ice cream van, a Costa Coffee kiosk and a guy playing guitar singing acoustic versions of rock songs. It was the perfect end to my 4 weeks sitting outside enjoying BBQ chicken listening to Californication. It also emphasises what a wonderfully relaxed working environment Sky is. It’d taken me four weeks to make the transition from smart trousers and shirt & tie to t-shirt and jeans so I matched up to what seemed to be Sky’s dress code. I always had this idea of Murdoch being some Stalin-like dictator, but everyone I’ve met at Sky seems incredibly relaxed, despite the fact they’re churning a high-pressure product like 24 hour news.

And so that’s it. With a Piccadilly Line ride home due East, my time at Sky was up. But I’m hoping this’ll be just the start. I’ve gained more contacts than Max Clifford, met more interesting folk than Ross Kemp and had a more fun time than a cat in a string factory. They’ve asked if I want to come back after my holiday, and I think I’ll take them up on their offer. I’m a bit sad that I’m not going to see this documentary get filmed, but hopefully I can watch the wizards edit it into some form of broadcast worthy bit of telly.

This also brings this blog/diary to an end. As I read back through it I seem to notice more grammatical and spelling errors so if you’ve been able to look past them I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you want to follow any stuff I write you can check out my normal blog (it’s a bit bonkers) or you can follow me on Twitter.

Ciao!

Day 19: Premature End?

I’ve been working on this documentary for nearly two weeks now, and it feels like I’ve set up, researched, found out, investigated and fixed so much. It’s been a project I never thought I’d undertake during my time at Sky, but I’m so grateful for the opportunity of being able to do it.

I’ll share a secret with you. When I went through that ‘Hollywood stage’ of deciding what career I wanted to follow (where it was actor or footballer), I always had aspirations of being a film director. I used to sit and write stories on my computer when I was 9 and 10 years old, anything that would spring to the imagination would get turned into some weird and warped story/screenplay. I guess I saw myself as a younger and more British Spielberg. By helping with the production of this documentary, I think I’ve rediscovered that little 9 or 10 year old Daniel who let his ridiculous imagination run wild. As a result, some of my more ridiculous ideas have made it into the documentary, and its just a fantastic feeling. When I said talk about the budget cuts with Celtic wrestling going on in the background as some kind of metaphor for ‘struggling’ with lots of visceral and gritty up close shots of the wrestlers, I never expected Tim to turn around and say ‘I really like that idea, go and get permission for us to film at this wrestling event’. Marvellous!

Other than that, today has been spent doing more planning and investigating. Finding different statistics to use in the script, writing the intro to the script, writing letters to old people so we can interview with them. It’s all so different, it’s all so fun, and it’s exactly the sort of thing that makes journalism a career path that I want to follow.

Sky's armada of satellite trucks. Of course most of them are around the country somewhere.

The last part of the day was spent in ‘the garage’. It’s a building round the back of Sky’s complex that from the way the cameraman all talk about it, you’d think it was some kind of Holy Grail. And it didn’t disappoint. We drove into this huge hangar to find the walls lined with Volvo estates, vans with editing suites in the back and several massive satellite trucks on a similar scale to that of the Death Star. Elsewhere in this hangar were aisles upon aisles of really high end gadgets. It was a nerd’s wet dream, and I was having a similar crisis. We collected our new little toy from its designated spot on aisle 3,429 and headed back to the car to have a play. It’s called a lipstick camera, because its a video camera in a case no bigger than a lipstick container. It’s what Top Gear use for their in-car shots, and we were going to be using it for exactly the same thing. Using the high-tech adhesive known as gaffer tape, we stuck our lipstick cam on the dashboard and voila, we had ourselves an interesting little shot for the doc. One more day of planning, fixing and all that jazz, and then it’s permanent home time for Daniel. And I’m gutted I’m not going to see this doc through to the end, especially as I’ve worked so hard on the damn thing. Still, when they play it on Sky at the end of August, I think I’ll feel pretty darn proud.

Days 17 & 18: To Civilisation and Back

I think the word ‘contrast’ is over used in this day and age when it doesn’t really apply. But over the last two days, I can safely say I’ve been to two of the most contrasting places in Britain.

Yesterday I headed into Central London to meet the presenter for our doc to get him up to speed on the situation (you know like ’24′ style for when they bring in a new agent and they need to know which terrorists have the nuke). We met Jeff Randall (our presenter) in the Gherkin, which is right in the heart of London’s financial district. Look left and there’s Lloyds, look right and there’s the Aviva building, look up and there’s Heron Tower (now the tallest building in Britain I’ll have you know). Inside the Gherkin, Sky have built a small TV studio which is run by about 5 people, including Jeff. It’s a fascinating set-up, one that I am wisely informed will become the norm for TV broadcasting in the future. So after explaining everything we’d set up, fixed, found out and researched over the past week and a half (trust me, it’s a lot), Jeff seemed pretty enthused and it sounded like finally, we had ourselves a documentary coming together. It was nice chatting to Jeff to, as he was an Essex man himself. He seemed to be impressed with the idea of me being an ‘Essex boy done good’, which was nice. I might give him a phonecall in a year to come and see if he’s got any work at his little studios going. Trust me, it’s a lot more fun than commuting to Osterley everyday.

Today was spent in my second home. Yes three times now in the past week and a half, I’ve had a lovely summer’s day in rain-soaked Wales. Today however was more of a tour than the usual direct route to Merthyr Tydfil. First stop was Cardiff, and at last, a piece of Wales you’d be happy to take a picture of and use it as a postcard. I say piece, it was essentially a strip of swanky dockside and that was about it. Convertible Ferrari’s, packed out coffee outlets, lots of men in suits. It was very chique indeed. Like if Paris was inhabited by a bunch of people that sound like Tom Jones. And it was beautifully sunny as well, which made a nice change from the usual rain.

That change was cut short after about 30 minutes. After deciding filming on Cardiff’s waterfront would be an awesome contrast to Merthyr, we headed up in the direction of Britain’s shittest town. And yes, it was raining, as though grey clouds position themselves there by default. Once in Merthyr, we had a few odd tasks to complete. First was to go and hunt down a Portuguese café, which we found in some dodgy high street near an air rifle shop (the last thing a depressed town like Merthyr needs is somewhere to buy weapons). Why Portuguese café you ask? Well, a meat packing factory opened on the outskirts of Merthyr fairly recently, but employs mostly Portuguese, who tend to hang out in this café. So why can the Portuguese get a job in the benefits capital of Britain when the local population are sat on their arses? Exactly the question we were going to ask.

After completing our little treasure hunt, we embarked on another. The opening shot of the doc requires a remote control car, gaffer tape and a camera (I’m sure you can guess where that’s going). Naturally Sky have plenty of cameras and gaffer tape, but no remote control cars. So, we hunted round Argos, Asda and Tesco for a decent remote control car that we could drive on the road (there are perks to this job). Unfortunately, we found only crappy battery powered cars that would entertain a 6 year-old for about 10 minutes and would have it’s performance seriously hampered by having a camcorder taped to the top of it.

We headed back over the Engine House (see the Day 14 post for more info on it) to meet our fixer who was going to hook us up with some people who lived on the fabled Gurnos estate. After he’s finished his shift at the Engine House, he directed us to the heart of the Gurnos and there we met two of the most interesting characters I’ve ever met in my life. They were 21 and 19, but you wouldn’t have questioned their ages if I’d have said they were 35. The guy, Davey, who was 21, had been in prison five times, for various offences including stealing a dozen cars and taking a guy hostage by stuffing a potato in a man’s mouth and try to cut his fingers off with glass. Yes I know, bonkers. The girl, 19, was a former Methadrone addict, who’d been clean for about a year. She funded her fixes by stealing racks of clothes and selling them for half price in the Gurnos estate, which naturally resulted in stretches in police station cells. Both these characters were on benefits, and both spoke so openly about life in Merthyr. It was just incredible to hear how callously they described how kids wouldn’t bat an eyelash at hot-wiring a car, or putting a brick through neighbours’ windows to steal televisions. It made me realise a) how sheltered a life I have lived and b) how doing journalism is such a great excuse to be nosey and find out stories from the scum of the Earth without being beaten to death.

I’m never going to voluntarily go back to Merthyr, but today was the last time I’ll be going there as part of my time with Sky. It’s a shame really, I think I’ll miss it, just simply because it was an adrenaline rush everytime you drove through the Gurnos estate. Hell, we had to lock the doors as we drove out when we passed the biggest group of kids I’ve ever seen. If we’d have driven slow enough, they would have stolen all the wheels.

So that’s my time in Merthyr done. The sort of place where Kamikaze pilots would turn around and fly home.

Days 15 & 16: Air Conditioned Livin’

I’ll be honest, I’ve had a really nice two days to bookend my weekend.It’s been a mad rollercoaster of three weeks, and it was about time (apart from my weekends of course) that I was spared a day where I wasn’t tearing through the news or the traffic on the M4 to get to Wales.

Anyway, day 15. Friday. The end of the week. It showed. Both me and Tim were fairly drained and prepping ourselves for a relaxed day. It started off by watching some of Tim’s previous documentaries in an attempt to stir the creative juices for the current doc. One of the docs was entitled ‘The Essex Factor’ (I thought I’d be a good judge on this one) and it was a 30 minute piece designed to predict where Britain would be in five years time by using Essex as a microcosm. It was really nicely done, with loads of awesome helicopter shots, showing my home county in the best light possible. Tim also showed me another half hour doc he’d done which focused on the psyche of Ipswich prostitute-hunter Steve Wright. It was super stylised and it looked epic. I know I’m probably quite biased but it was kind of a news version of the film ‘Se7en’. And that’s a pretty reasonable compliment. So after watching those and realising we couldn’t incorporate any of the kick-ass tricks into our current doc, we went back to the drawing board and attempted to bash out some ideas for tricks and style ideas to use on our infernal shithole, Merthyr. Unfortunately, apart from making it look more bleak than Chernobyl (which was not the idea), we were up shit creek without a paddle. So we turned in for lunch.

Our second assignment was to track down someone we’d seen in a British Pathé newsreel about Merthyr from 1946. Hollywood makes tracking people down seem ridiculously easy. Next time Jason Bourne has to track down an 88-year old pensioner who doesn’t have broadband or mobile to trace, and has probably changed their last name after marriage, then I can call him a true spy. Anyway, we pinpointed our elusive old lady to an address in Potter’s Bar. It took us about an hour to get there from West London, thanks to rush hour traffic (at 1 in the afternoon). Incase she wasn’t in, we’d prepped a letter explaining we’d like an interview and for her to talk about Merthyr. When she didn’t answer the door, the letter was looking like our best method of communication. We tried her neighbours, one was a particularly frail old lady who must have thought we were trying to fit a dish on her house when we said we we from ‘Sky News’. Nevertheless, she revealed the lady we were looking for had passed on about a year ago. It was a real possibility that a lady of her age could have died, so with disappointment in our hearts, Tim and I headed in home.

My final Monday morning commute was far less eventful than similar ventures. Apart from the fact the Central Line was abnormally busy. And apart from the fact an Asian teen was pressed against me for the whole journey, even when the train emptied out. It was surreal, scary, and a bit smelly. Anyway, I’d been set a series of tasks while Tim was out of the office, and they were all finished a bit quicker than I’d expected. So I did some more research on Merthyr, which didn’t turn out to be research at all, rather just continual views of the Newport Alicia Keys parody . Once Tim had returned, we set about establishing a schedule of filming and a useable structure for the doc. He also set me to work on the script for the intro, which I thought was pretty cool. Having a mind more bonkers and obscure than Tim Burton’s certainly helps when trying to come up with ideas for stuff, and fingers crossed, some of my ideas will make the final piece. The final task of the day was to find some kind of title sequence which we could relay to the graphics department to make our own title sequence. Cue an hour of scouring some of YouTube’s darkest corners, until I found this. I saw it, loved it. Showed to Tim, he loved it. Again, it’s a little something I’ve done that may just end up in the doc.

Day 14: Merthyrdrone

I went on holiday a few years ago to Las Vegas. It was absolutely incredible, I saw loads of awesome hotels; soaked up an amazing atmosphere and generally had a kick-ass time. But I feel I missed something, I don’t feel like I covered it all. So I really, more than anything want to go back.

That’s not exactly how I felt about going back to Wales today. But nevertheless, it turned out to be one the best days of my time at Sky so far.

So it was back to Merthyr Tydfil today. Although I feel like I’ve spent long enough there that I can shorten it to just Merthyr like the locals do. Me and Tim arrived In Merthyr at about 11 o’clock this morning. We drove around town for a bit, looked for a viaduct but couldn’t find it (I know, how hard can it be the find a dirty great big viaduct) and then headed back into town. In order to understand how bad the job situation is in Merthyr, I was tasked with a bit of undercover reporting. I had to pretend I was looking for a job (not too tricky seeing as I am chronically unemployed) in a series of shops. It’s annoying because I found a few nice little jobs in Nando’s or O2 that were going that I would have loved to do over the summer. Just a shame that it’s a bit of a commute to South Wales from Southend every day.

So after discovering that there are in fact a number of jobs available (in about half hours worth of research I discovered about 30 vacancies) and that the local population is just too lazy to do anything, we headed off to the Engine House Youth Club. The inclusion of ‘youth club’ in the title didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but this wasn’t any old youth club. It employed some of the local scallywags who are about my age to help out and do various chores around the town (think community service without the crime before it); and it has around 1,300 members. It’s an incredible building too, an old engine house in the steelworks converted into an indoor football pitch with a series of multi storey rooms full of computers, Xboxes, Playstations, books, drumkits, guitars, karaoke machines, pool tables etc. Basically, the sort of place you’d wish was available when you were a kid. It’s just incredible, and the guys who were employed there had some really amazing stories to tell. Stories of drug addiction, getting drunk at 10am, living off £50 a week. And to think they were only my age too (19). It’s astonishing to think these guys, who were all genuinely hard-working lads have been through more already in their lives than I could ever dream of.

So we left the youth centre and headed back into town. We stopped off and had gourmet lunch Merthyr-style (a Chicken Legend from McDonalds) and then went to Merthyr library for the second time that week. There, we tracked down a woman who had appeared in an old British Pathé news clip from 1946 that had appeared at our news desk back in Osterley. We believed she was still living in Merthyr, but turns out she’s actually in Potters Bar (isn’t the internet wonderful?). We then hopped back into the car, visited the eyesore that is the old dilapidated Hoover factory and then drove back towards the youth centre.

There, we picked up one of the guys who worked there who’d agreed to take us to the Gurnos estate to introduce us to one of the more scuzzy families. I’d been driven round the Gurnos estate on Tuesday, and whilst I’d described it as ‘Peckham after a nuclear war’, it turns out the bit we’d previously driven around was the outskirts. Our guide directed us into the heart of Gurnos, and it’s only what I can describe as ‘the rough parts of Mogadishu’. If you can imagine a scene from Black Hawk Down, where a thousand eyes are suddenly on you as the fairly unimposing Volvo estate your sitting in the front of trundles along slowly. We passed a couple struggling to walk because they were so smacked up on drugs; a man with a Doberman giving us a stare as if to say ‘keep going sonny or I’m letting go of this lead’ and some kids who could have been no more than 9 or 10 threatening to slash our tyres. Needless to say it was one of the roughest areas I’ve ever been to in my life. Our tour was cut short when we passed an ambulance and a big crowd. Turns out it was our guide’s girlfriend’s brother, who’d drunk himself to the point of near death. This was at about 10 to Six in the evening. Needless to say without the protection of a local, we swiftly headed back to England.

On the way home, me and Tim bashed out ideas of what to do with the documentary. We now had so many elements and a reasonable idea, but no coherent structure. As the documentary came together in the front of a Volvo V50 on the M4, I had the biggest grin on my face. I don’t know why. Whether it was because so many of my random ideas had made it into the structure, or whether it was because something I’d seen grow from just a few contacts was now materialising into a fully-fledged half an hour of telly right in front of me. I’m slightly sad I’m not going to see this through to the end, because I’d love to go back to Gurnos and see some more scumbags. As it is, I’m going to have to let go and wait for it to be shown on telly. Who’d have thought I’d be so attached to something about such a shit place in such a small amount of time?

Day 13: Lone Wolf

After my little Welsh adventure yesterday, Tim decided to give me the morning off. Well, I had to be in the office for 10, but in comparison to some of my start times it felt like the afternoon by the time I”d reached the Sky studios in Osterley. I was even too late for breakfast at the B&B! I wouldn’t have minded if I had rocked up to the lounge at midday demanding eggs and bacon. But it was quarter past nine, and I was told breakfast had stopped being served 45 minutes ago. Shambles.

I sat myself down in my chair and flicked through the Metro. Looking up from the paper, I noticed something odd. I was the only one in the office. No Tim. No Rob. Nobody. It was weird. I felt like Tom Cruise at the beginning of Vanilla Sky. Or Cillian Murphy at the beginning of of 28 Days Later.

All was quiet. Not even a mouse stirred in the Sky News offices.

So what was I meant to do? After phoning Tim and adding a series of missions to my notebook, I set to work.

I said last week I wasn’t particularly fond of planning. It’s pretty much what I’ve been doing this week. And everytime I pick up the phone, I end up with gold. It’s brilliant. Whenever I’ve needed something, I’ve picked up the phone and it’s sort of just materialised on the other end. I’ve set up and organised so much stuff this week, so much so I want to see this little documentary through to end. I feel like it’s my baby.

So I’d finished everything I’d been set. Like the kid with thick-rimmed glasses who’s done the teacher’s homework before it’s even been set, I was feeling pretty damn smug. I’d organised several interviews and investigated some pretty interesting places to film, all on my own. I sat back, basked in my glory and watched the news until home time. Inevitably, I’m going to get a big smack in the face of reality tomorrow, and that’ll wipe the cocky little grin I have at the moment right off of my face.

Osterley. 10.30am. That's me. Surrounded by nothing.

Day 12: Valley Ho!

The last thing I ever expected to do during my time at Sky would have been to travel to a different country. We’re always told to ‘bring your passport to the newsroom everyday, just incase!’ But then lots of people do the National Lottery. You never expect to get anywhere from it, more out of foolish hope than certain expectation.

So as the Volvo V70 estate I was sat in the back of trundled over the River Severn towards Wales, I was thinking I’d hit the jackpot. I love getting out and about away from a computer, but to be in a different country? With an overnight bag? Now we’re talking. This is why I want a career in journalism; so I can travel the world and see all sorts of different places.

And my god was this place a bit different. My best friend always moans at the fact I stereotype Wales for its constant rain. It started raining as soon as we saw the word ‘Cymru’ and it didn’t stop raining until we’d passed Bristol on the way home. Now tell me I’m stereotyping.

Look at it. I've made more sense out of sick.

Merthyr Tydfil is a dump. There’s no other way of describing it. Every building is dressed in dull, grey concrete; everyone under the age of 30 has to wear a tracksuit like it’s religious law; and the whole village is ominously shadowed by hills. As we drove round the town, I slowly realised why this place has previously been titled ‘the worst place to live in Britain’. Driving through the Gurnos estate was like driving through Peckham after a nuclear war and getting stared at by the locals was more frightening than if Medusa was to lay eyes on you. Fortunately we found a Subway (where they were criminally charging £2.19 for a Sub of the Day) and shacked up in there.

I was then sent off around the town on my own to do some research. I found myself in the library talking to the woman who worked there. She was like a wise old oracle that guides the hero in Hollywood films on their quest with mysterious and whimsical knowledge. It was a surreal experience, and after two hours in the library, I felt knowledgeable enough to give guided tours of Merthyr (as far as business propostions go, tours of Merthyr are up there with chocolate ovens). I was then tasked with finding the brother of Howard Winstone, a famous boxer who was named ‘Merthyr’s Man of the Century’. I started off in a bus shelter and then headed to the tourist information office to find the name of the sandwich bar that was owned by Winstone’s brother. As I walked into this sandwich bar, I got chatting with a few of the locals. Apparently his brother had gone bankrupt and sold the sandwich bar. More conversing (I say conversing, I was having real trouble grasping the thick Welsh accents) revealed that Winstone’s wife was still in the area and through a bit of begging, I managed to get the contact details of the wife. I arranged an interview, then headed back to tell Tim the producer the good news.

This is probably the nicest looking building in the whole town.

I was shattered by the end of the day. Whether it was the life-sucking Welsh air or just the fact I was wondering around all day, I had a little sleep in the car on the way back. Dreaming of how I would never have to go back to that crappy little village. Well, not until Thursday this week, a day off today should help.

Days 10 & 11: Documental

The two days acting as the bread in my weekend sandwich couldn’t have been more different. Almost like Friday was brown bread and Monday was white bread. But I like both, so it’s not a taste-based metaphor. I think it’s about time I actually wrote about what I did.

So Friday was my last day on the planning desk. I probably couldn’t have timed my week any worse; it was probably the slowest news week in living memory. Which meant I didn’t really have much to plan, so it was a tricky five days. On Friday morning I conducted my usual ritual of scouring the news for any little stories that may have slipped the net and generally getting acquainted with the big stories. I then had to finalise everything regarding the Balmoral Hotel that I had organised the previous day, which meant coordinating with the press officer, the camera crew and the reporter in Scotland. It wasn’t quite sitting on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, but it did feel pretty cool being the ‘go to man’ for this particular story. No sooner had I caught my breath though than I was organising some more interesting stuff. Sky had booked a representative from the ‘Save Concorde Group’ to talk about why Concorde should be saved (funny that). My job: find someone in the aviation industry who would vehemently oppose this man. So I hunted through Sky’s list of contacts and found one of British Airways’ ex spokesmen, someone who’d been involved in the reports of the Air France Concorde disaster in 2000. A good find I thought. The planning desk agreed, and awarded me with an early finish. Now thats an incentive to work.

I nearly turned London into this today

The Monday morning commute was no less eventful than last weeks. I never saw the point of a midlife crisis, but I could totally sympathise with someone if they wanted to stay at home and break down rather than try and board the Central Line every morning. It’d probably be more comfortable to ride a mountain lion through Central London, but no matter, worse was to come. Post 9/11 and 7/7, everyone is always a little bit jittery on the tube. Any kind of bump and people fear the worst. Well I pretty much gave everyone on the Piccadilly Line a heart attack this morning. I say ‘I’, I mean my phone. If you have an iPhone, you’ll know one of the alarms for the alarm clock is the sound you’d hear in a nuclear reactor, as if they were about to test fire some warheads. I’d forgot to turn this alarm off, and so when my alarm did go off, the looks of horror descending upon people’s faces was only beaten by the sheer embarrassment that was splashed all over my face. I’m sure most people are pretty confident that the Cold War is over, but for the brief moment it took for me to fumble around in my pocket to turn the alarm off, the folk inside that Piccadilly Line train probably had visions of an exploding train carriage and a huge nuclear apocolypse. All fun and games though really.

So this week I’m at the online desk. Well, I say that, that’s where I thought I was going to be during week one. And lo and behold, 20 minutes into my week at the online desk, I was given an opportunity to help produce a documentary. An opportunity that I wasn’t going to let pass me by. So I waved goodbye to the online desk (who probably thought I was allergic to online news after my two brief stints) and headed to meet producer Tim Gallagher. He’s one of Sky News’ most respected producers, and I was working one on one with him all day, fixing and organising elements for his documentary. It’s going to be a 30 minute doc addressing how life in Britain will be affected by the recent budget cuts proposed by the Coalition government. The focal ingredient to our documentary sandwich (I will stop these bread-based metaphors) is a town called Merthyr Tydfil (if you’re from Essex, just say ‘Murfa Tidfill’). It is one of the worst places to live in Britain and has been labelled the ‘sicknote capital of the UK’ in reference to the amount of people claiming benefits rather than working. I’ve spent the day gathering little elements for the doc, arranging to film in meat packing factories, football grounds, at Celtic wrestling events, at a male choir evening and so much more. I’ve also been relaying ideas to Tim about how I’d do the doc and I think he might have taken them on board, which would be awesome. I’d be over the moon if I got to leave my own little mark on Sky. And I’m not talking about all the crumbs I’ve left from my lunches like a warped Hansel and Gretel.

Days 8 & 9: Plan B

Previously when combining two days into one post, it’s been because I’ve somehow ran out of time at the end of the day to hammer away at the keyboard and document my thoughts and actions. Not this time though. This combination has a purpose.

The honeymoon period is over. No longer is there that manic exuberance for getting up anymore to go to Sky. If the last two days had gone any slower, I would have been going backwards. As I tap away now with an absolutely chronic headache, I’m kind of glad it’s nearly the weekend.

This diary is meant to be honest. I really hate feeling down about my time at Sky because it’s such an amazing opportunity. I suppose it’s because I’ve had a week and a half of non-stop journalistic fun, and yesterday and today have been when the train hit the buffers for the first time.

I’m not gonna lie, planning is hard. It’s capable of draining any kind of excitement, willpower and motivation from even the most spritely of souls. I sat there yesterday after so many wasted phonecalls that I’d lost count, wondering if I was ever going to be able to complete such a simple task. ‘Daniel, find someone whose home was so badly damaged as a result of the Buncefield Fire (the largest fire in Britain since WW2) that they had to move out of their house. Here’s a list of contacts we amassed when we originally ran the story. Go through them all and see which ones are back in their original house i.e. damage fixed and would be able to talk to us tomorrow’. So I trawled through the list of about 40 contacts, to find that just one guy who was available. One. Most of the phone numbers were invalid (the fire happened in 2005), either kept on ringing or went straight to answer-phone. When a miracle happened and a human voice appeared on the other end of the line, it was either ‘too busy’, ‘not here to be interviews’ or ‘don’t want to talk to the press’. By the time I’d reached the end of the list, I was sapped of any kind of mental strength. The last week and a half had been handed to me on a plate. Now I was really earning my stripes, and I so didn’t want to fail. By the power of Greyskull, I stumbled across a man who fitted our profile perfectly, so the interview was set and task was complete. Now all I had to do was read the news until home time.

Notice all the wonderful contacts. And then all the crosses next to the names...

I didn’t actually start doing any kind of work today till about 1pm. I’d been sat there since 9am scrutinising every source of news, whether it be the papers, their websites or the wires. Every so often I’d suggest a story, only to find it was already being covered or they decided it wasn’t worth following. Apparently July is a very slow month for news, and being in the eye of the shit-storm, I couldn’t agree more. This is where rolling 24-hour news is tough. Trying to fill every moment of the day with material means every little detail has to be nailed. And sometimes absolute crap appears that you wonder quite how it ever got past the scheduling meetings. And so as I sat there with my lunch, I switched over to the golf for some inspiration. You can tell I’m at the end of my tether when I’m voluntarily sitting there and watching golf.

Finally though I was able to get my teeth into some proper planning, and it proved a whole lot more fruitful than yesterdays efforts. I was tasked with tracking down a hotel in Edinburgh for a piece about ‘stay-cations’ (where the British go on holiday in Britain). I managed to get hold of the Balmoral Hotel (Edinburgh’s version of The Ritz) and get permission to film in there and get an interview with the manager. I also literally walked into another little gem, by finding an open top bus tours company that would let us film on the top deck of a bus. I will admit, when planning comes off, there is a little buzz of adrenaline that goes off. The desk seemed really pleased with my efforts and with that, I wondered off home with eyes more square than a South Korean hooked on computer games.

It’s not that I’m hating it, that couldn’t be further than the truth. I guess it was slightly naïve of me to think I’d be going at 100mph everyday. The last two days kind of surprised me in the sense I didn’t think it was possible to be going slow at somewhere like Sky. And I suppose I have to remember that I’m still the work experience boy at the end of the day. I suppose I’d taken having my feet under the table in Five News a little bit too much for granted. Time for Plan C.

Day 7: We Might Have Failed, But My God Did We Have Fun On the Way

During my time here at Sky, I’d like to think luck has been on my side. Today, my four leaf clover shed all it’s leaves, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was empty, and any other metaphors using superstitious ideals that basically meant, I was shit outta’ luck.

The QE2 Conference Centre. Named like the bridge, except you don't have to pay for going near it.

The plan for today was awesome. It was a ridiculously early start, so much so that not even breakfast was being served by the time I’d left. I arrived at Westminster at the eye watering time of 7.45 (just in time to witness a fight between two Somalis on Democracy Square). I met the crew I was shadowing just outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, which is where several high profile meetings have taken place, like the Iraq Inquiry. Today it was host to British Airway’s Annual General Meeting for all it’s shareholders, and Sky were extremely interested about the content of the meeting as BA had posted record losses for the past year. And, there was a real potential of an awesome protest from cabin crew members in relation to the ongoing strikes. Witnessing a live report was interesting, and watching the reporter Tom rattle off his two minute script flawlessly took me back to the days of school plays and learning lines. Plus it was cool looking at how the camera crew set up a live feed, using plug-in points that are strategically located across London to avoid needing a satellite truck (conveniently there was one just outside the QE2 Centre). That live went out at 8.30. From then until about 2.30 in the afternoon I did absolutely diddly squat. First I was meant to try and grab Willie Walsh (Head of BA) for a quick question. Instead he snuck round the back so fast and in such an understated car we all thought it was the cleaners. Then I was meant to go and help cover the protest. Unfortunately, the protest panned out like one of those events students organise: enthusiastic about it at first, then realise time can be better spent in bed. About 15 people turned up, and half of them were Spanish (incensed by BA’s proposed merger with Spanish airline Iberia). Even after drinking themselves to the ground with sangria to celebrate their World Cup win over the weekend, the Spaniards were still out in greater numbers than the Brits, which speaks volumes really. We were promised lunatics attempting to gatecrash the AGM and general heckling from a sizeable crowd. All we got was a man shouting ‘wanker’ at the cleaner Willie Walsh.

So after my slight fail in Westminster, I headed over to Westfield shopping centre to watch the illusionists Penn & Teller perform a promo stunt for their upcoming shows at the Hammersmith Apollo. Not only did my phone die en route (I’ve never felt so alone) but I was also rained on, and as a result of me not watching the weather in the morning, foolishly headed out in simply a shirt and tie (and trousers of course, don’t be pedantic). Not a great start, but no matter. I rendezvoused with the crew in Westfield after having a brief gaze in Hollister and Vans shops. The crew were all charging around the shopping centre, desperately trying to set everything up in time for the live interview and catching the illusion live. Fortunately, the reporter Steve turned up just after I did, so we sat in the Westfield atrium chin wagging about life while the crew performed a series of miracles to ensure we were ready for broadcast. So after several hours of rigging and setting up, we were ready to broadcast the illusion live on Sky. The trick that followed was pretty awesome; Penn & Teller were able to levitate a random shopper in mid air. Unfortunately, it lasted 30 seconds, and we were only able to get a shot from the next level of the shopping center overlooking the atrium and the stage. All that effort, all that madness and none of us knew if it had actually made decent telly. I was convinced that this wasn’t going to be my day.

I spotted the enemy on the way to Westfield

A surreal moment came as me and Steve were stood watching producer Anna do a piece to camera (standing in front of a camera and talking basically). An old man approached us proclaiming it was nice to see two good looking guys together. Enquiring if I was Steve’s son (he’s 32 so he was pretty stunned) his actions and speech pretty much screamed ‘pedophile’. Especially when he said I had ‘nice features’. He then told us to watch some of his movies, one was ‘Vanishing Point’. At that point we left the old man to himself. I’ve never been groomed by a pedophile before, but doing it in the middle of a shopping centre was a different tactic to the usual I guess.

The crew of four and me then took advantage of our location in Westfield and headed to the Mexican restaurant ‘Wahaca’. I suppose nothing says ‘getting in with the crew’ like them taking you for dinner. As they were all on the showbiz desk, they recounted tales of meeting Sir Paul McCartney and interviewing Slash while I sat there amazed, leaving my enchiladas to get cold. It was a really nice end to a pretty failed day. But like my old business studies teacher said to me, ‘we might have failed, but we’ll definitely have a laugh on the way’. And there wasn’t a moment in the day when I didn’t have a stupid grin on my face.