Weds 13th – To the BBC to be filmed for a programme about blogging. Though I wince whenever typing that word, preferring to describe my online diary as just that: an online diary. As I’m forever boring people, I started the diary in 1997 just before the word ‘weblog’ was coined, and some time before this was in turn abbreviated to ‘blog’. There’s no changing the fact it’s a thoroughly ugly word. And I don’t usually log what’s going on on the web: I record what’s going on in my life, and in my head. But although I regard this as trying be helpful and accurate, it’s hard not to seem pedantic. This is a programme about blogging, and why everyone is doing it. Even newspaper columnists who were sneering at the Internet ten years ago, calling it a kind of text version of CB radio for geeks and amateurs only, are now seeing their columns converted into blogs. Whether it’ll hang around or not will be interesting to see, but I certainly don’t think the printed word will ever be replaced. There has to come a point where you feel the need to read something that doesn’t depend on batteries or needs servicing. And you’re less likely to be mugged for a book or a newspaper.
For the filming, I’m asked to provide a separate suit and bring my laptop, and am given the choice of taking a BBC cab or going to White City on the tube. Given the extra baggage, I plump for the cab, only to find the driver takes about half an hour trying to work out how to get out of Highgate. We sit in traffic on West Hill for what seems like forever, very near John Betjeman’s old house, in fact. I read too much into the metaphor: stuck in Highgate for what seems like forever, with no apparent hope of ever getting out, then suddenly I’m in a TV studio.
The people in charge are called Satiyesh and Zoe, and are young and cheery. Though her colleagues are in typical casual wear, Ms Z wears a beautiful bottle green full-length dress, even though she’s not on camera. I keep thinking she’s very Verity Lambert. Proper, classic BBC, the way it should be. Frankly, I’m appalled that many BBC studio staff no longer wear ties, but then I would say that. The t-shirted cameraman confesses to me that he only owns two ties. He gives this information unsolicited, and I’m pleased this is the effect I have on some people.
I’m ushered from the Stage Door straight to a room that was once part of the Top Of The Pops set: there’s some half-scratched-away TOTP logos on the pillars. Mr Yentob is nowhere to be seen, though I presume he’s presenting the finished programme, as it’s part of his ‘Imagine’ strand of arts documentaries. I’m just one of the featured bloggers.
I’m asked to read from my diary, and decide on an entry nominated by various readers: the one about looking upon the rest of mankind as your unpaid stunt doubles. Ms Z also likes my recent opening line: “Where to start? Where to stop? Just write it down, that’s all that matters.”
Later, I muse that this is such a good opening line for anything, that I Google it in case I’ve stolen it from somewhere unconsciously. I haven’t, it seems. It’s simple, even impossibly obvious, yet disarmingly inspirational. Telling yourself to write it down IS all that matters. To me and to anyone umming and erring about writing anything at all. Writing calls down more writing.
In addition to the reading, Ms Z interviews me on camera about why I keep the diary. Surrounded in a strange dark room by studio lights and cameras and microphones and all too aware that it’s before 10 a.m., I find it hard to be spontaneously fluent. Thankfully she’s brought notes from a pre-production interview carried out with me a few weeks ago, in the more conducive Maison Bertaux cafe. I was terribly relaxed and full of ideas then, thanks to years of interviewee experience for music publications, webzines, fanzines and so on. What I’m far less experienced at is being interviewed while filmed. So Ms Z kindly reminds me what I said at our earlier, unfilmed meeting, and I do my best to repeat my own answers on camera. Even live television is rehearsed when possible, after all.
This is standard, talking heads TV stuff, like all those ‘100 Best Elbows In Comedy’ and ‘I Love 1981 (But Am Too Young To Remember It) ‘ style programmes. Though at no point does she ask me to sing the theme tune from The Incredible Hulk.
Finally, I am filmed typing away at this laptop… while the chair I’m on revolves. And at some speed. I am a blogger-go-round.
They also film me standing still, holding my laptop, and then not holding it. So mixing these shots together, it will magically appear in my arms. I am then required to write the address of my diary on a wallpaper background in black marker.
These are all rather surreal if not downright odd things to be doing at all, especially on a Wednesday morning without a few drinks first, but I find them far more natural activities than anything non-surreal and non-odd. It’s the normal and the real that I’ve always found unconvincing.
Observation: the BBC has a Costa Coffee shop these days. Like they now have in NHS hospitals.
Fingers crossed my footage is of use to them. Regardless, I enjoyed the happy oddness of it all and the happy company of the directors. Anything for a happily odd life.
