I spent ten years in television news. My last producer shift was fifteen years ago, for the BBC’s Six O’clock bulletin. For years afterwards, I’d wake up and experience a surge of relief that, no matter how tough the day ahead promised to be, I didn’t have to endure the unvarying ritual of preparing for a day on News.
Now, I’m an owl: if allowed, I’d happily stay up till four in the morning and crawl out of bed at 11. On the Six, you had to be in by 7.45 am and brimming with ideas for the morning meeting at 8.15 (it was a long time ago and my timings may be slightly out). Unfortunately, all I was brimming with by that time of the morning were caffeine, nicotine and exhaustion. And a strong sense that my life had taken a wrong turn somewhere.
A 7.45 start meant a 6.45 wake-up. Having bathed the previous evening, I’d drag on my unvaryingly dull news uniform and head downstairs for the worst 30 minutes of the day: two cups of strong coffee, as many cigarettes as I could get through without actually smoking more than one at a time, skimming the newspapers for story ideas to act as a fig-leaf for the morning meeting (yes, TV news really was that parasitic back in the days when newspapers could afford huge foreign bureaus and teams of investigative journalists) while listening to whichever ghastly lefty presenter on the Today Programme was demanding that a government minister squander more of my taxes on a “problem” that was either insoluble or non-existent.
Then the usual panic over where I’d left the car keys, then nudging through the automotive lava oozing into West London before putting my foot down once I’d got inside the BBC’s multi-storey car park on Wood Lane (tricky, this, as all the ramps were designed for Morris Minors and Minis rather than modern four-door saloons, and there was always some terrified-looking newbie who’d mistaken the six-inch raised edge of the ramp for a walkway – the BBC employs very clever people, but they’re not always wildly practical).
A cigarette on the walk up to the main TV Centre building (the big circular one they always use to represent the BBC if they’re not using Broadcasting House), pick up another coffee in the sixth floor tea bar plus something very sweet and unhealthy, then grab any seat you can and any newspapers you can and hunt for a story – any bloody story – or a new angle on an existing story, to try to ensure you don’t get stuck with some piece of idiotic dross for the day (“Pay Nurses Same as Consultants Demands Royal College of Nursing”, “Who Will Win the Battle of the Bands?” or even “Tory MP Caught With His Pants Around His Ankles and His Hands In The Till”) or end up ensconced in an editing suite with some drama queen of a correspondent.
Then the morning meeting and general agreement that it’s a terrible news day, followed by lots of phone calls to check out stories (“Not at all - we just want to give you a chance to tell your side of it”) and negotiations with Intake for reporters and news crews - “Look, I’ve got five crews. One’s in Nuneaton covering the rape, one’s in Manchester for the launch of the John Major fightback, one’s…” etc, etc, ad nauseam.
Another coffee, another couple of cigarettes… and back to your desk, hoping against hope you weren’t going to be seconded to the One O’Clock News for some mad-arsed last-minute run-around that would leave you gasping for air and really wishing you hadn’t got out of bed that morning.
I’d start feeling okay around 10 o’clock, and after that it was usually fairly jolly and, on many occasions, genuinely exciting.
When I became my own boss again, I decided that I wouldn’t start work before 10am unless I was being offered an obscene amount of money. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll happily continue till any time – including the occasional all-nighter – but I had ten years of starting my day in a befuddled panic at 6.45, and I have no intention of going back to it.
What a bloody awful way to start the day: and millions of people have it even worse.
Respect! Genuinely.
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