All this week I’ve been working with Andrew Gilligan. I’m going to write a bigger post about it once I’ve let the whole experience settle in, but until then I thought I’d write about just one incident.

On Wednesday, I arrived at the Standard’s newsroom about 12 and got stuck into a task I’d been working on the previous day. Sworn to secrecy I’m afraid.

Anyway, I’d been working on it for a while when Andrew called me and told me to get down to Westminster to meet him in Port Cullis House. Which, I now know, is a whacking great building that you can’t miss. Unless you go the wrong way, of course, which is what I predictably did.

Can’t tell you much else about what happened in Port Cullis House either, but I felt incredibly dwarfed by it all. I’d never felt so out of my comfort zone — but felt it’s a place I could learn to feel comfortable in. Eventually.

We’d been in Port Cullis House for about 45 minutes when the bell went. Which means everyone takes a bit of a sprint to Parliament for a vote on some issue or another. Andrew was off like a rocket — his escalator athletics clearly a well-honed skill — and I was scrambling behind him as best I good.

At one point, I was blocked by a badly placed, slowly moving, short bloke. Now, being London, it’s commonplace to just try and hop around someone who’s in your way. So that’s what I tried to do, but once I’d made a little progress around this guy, I realised he had a dog with him. How annoying. But then I saw that it was in fact a guide dog, so I gave the man some space. Then looking up, I realised the man I’d tried to nudge out the way was David Blunkett.

“Oh… sorry…” I muttered.
“Careful on the stairs girl,” he said to either his dog or me.

From that moment on I was peering everywhere in search of famous faces. I spotted a few — and I hope I didn’t look too gawpy.

After Westminster, Andrew and I hopped on a train to Hanger Lane. Andrew presents news programs for ‘Press TV‘, an Iran-based news network that broadcasts across the Middle-East to an audience of, I was told, about 2 million or so.

The show Andrew was doing tonight was called ‘Between the Headlines’ — a review of the day’s papers.

They showed me around the studio. Typical TV studio, really, but one thing that stood out was how diverse the journalists were. So many accents, I could hardly take it in. Clearly a talented group, though.

I’d later meet another member of his team, Yvonne Ridley, who was famously once kidnapped by the Taliban. If you’re a student at the University of Lincoln you’ll also remember Yvonne for being the one that stood up a room full of students on two occasions, cancelling her guest lectures at the last minute in both instances.

I was determined to get this point across, but didn’t want to appear confrontational.

“I believe you know one of my tutors,” I said.
“Oh really?”
“Yes… Professor Richard Keeble.”
“Oh… give him my regards,” she said, in a most sheepish fashion. For the first and last time this week, I felt an ounce of power.

Anyway. On the show, Andrew was to be joined by two guests. The first was Yossi Mekelberg, from Regents College and Chatham House, and the second was Hamant Verma, the editor of the English-written Pakistani publication, Eastern Eye.

Barely five minutes until the show went out live, and Yossi hadn’t arrived. When Andrew’s producer ran in to let him know, eyes suddenly seemed to shift onto me. I knew what was coming. And I agreed. I was to be the guest if Yossi didn’t turn up.

Then I started to panic. It was a show about the day’s papers, and despite being in newsroom for four hours that day, I hadn’t actually read a single paper, spare the odd bit from the Standard. So there’s problem number one. Problem number two was that this was a high-brow offering, and so the first three stories scripted in were the primaries in the US, Bush’s visit to Israel, and the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto’s killing.

At this point, I had a choice. I could say no, sorry, but I don’t think I’m up to it. Or, I could just try and blag my way through. I opted to blag it, spurred on by encouragement from Andrew along the lines of “You know how to prattle on… you’ll be fine!”.

We went into the studio, and I began to shake. This was pressure like I’d never known.

I had some make-up applied (how camp), and got rigged up with my microphone. Then, perhaps noticing my attack of the shakes, Andrew asked if I was OK. “Yeah,” I said, when really I was thinking: “No I’m not OK… I’m petrified!”

Yossi arrived. My heart sank. But then Andrew insisted on adding an extra chair. Three guests – lets go for it.

“Shall we have a quick rehearsal?” asked Andrew. No time. Oh well. We’re all experienced professionals here.

Opening credits rolled, and all of a sudden I found myself live on Arab TV.

I was still shaking. But I attempted to redistribute the shakes to other areas, which meant I developed a bit of a swing on my chair. But that was a good compromise. Andrew asked me a question about how the primaries affected the Republicans, and, shamefully, I tried to skew his question into one about ‘Celebrity’ politics — for this was something I felt I could talk about.

My mouth was dry. I had a sore throat. I had to swallow constantly for some reason. And m voice went rather deep — probably due to the fact I’d aged about 20 years in the space of five minutes. But I got my answer out. Somehow.

24 minutes flew by at the speed of light. Unbelievably fast. And before I knew it, my TV appearance was complete. And I was exhausted. I didn’t add anything great to the debate, and I came across as a bit of a stuttering, nervous idiot.

But I did it. And if you think I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth and call myself an on-screen media commentator on my CV, you’d be absolutely bloody right. Available for appearances and after-dinner speeches from Monday.

The best bit about all this? It’s all available online: Watch it all unfold here.

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