Archives for June 2011

The strikers making up the biggest public sector walkout in a generation came to London with a smile.

Read the rest of this entry

On the hill above Greenock town centre, the view towards the horizon is stunning. Blue sky, a cool breeze and the mountains on the other side of the Clyde.

But in front of me is a terrace of boarded up houses. Graffiti is daubed on the walls. There are eight shattered windows on the third floor of the towerblock behind me.

Read the rest of this entry

Today we've launched a new experimental service that lets you adjust the sound levels for Wimbledon commentary. In other words, if you want Jonathan Overend's analysis turned up, or Maria Sharapova's grunting turned down, you can now do it.

Read the rest of this entry

When it comes to drama, most people think of TV. Granted, radio does have a long tradition, but that's mainly on other BBC networks.



So introducing the genre to 5 live would always be tricky. It had to connect with the audience, be topical and accessible. We thought football should be the subject.

But then - who and what? Football fans often hate each other, so doing something about a particular club could alienate swathes of the audience. We needed a unity figure. We needed Sir Bobby Robson.

Read the rest of this entry

It's that time of year again - two weeks of praying for no rain, battling through the crowds to get to the summit of Henman Hill (Murray Mount?) and of course, getting our hopes up, yet again, that Andy Murray will finally get his hands on that trophy.

5 live and 5 live sports extra will be delivering all the ball-by-ball action from across the courts.

Read the rest of this entry

I'm definitely not your average internet fanatic. I am a product of the good old days, when the best journalism left ink on your fingers and news was delivered by trusted voices and familiar faces.

On my first assignment as a broadcast journalist, I was handed a mobile phone the size of a large brick. I felt ridiculously high-tech. In my years as a foreign correspondent and a television presenter, I have little more than a grudging understanding of the technology of news.

Read the rest of this entry

We've come a long way.

I make Outriders for Radio 5 live. It's part of Up All Night, and everyone is welcome.

When Outriders was launched more than five years ago, it was called Pods and Blogs. That's an indicator of the environment we were working in. Somewhat ironically, we had neither a podcast or a blog to start with.

Read the rest of this entry

5 live and the BBC Philharmonic orchestra got together on air on June 10th and produced a special edition of the Mayo and Kermode Film Review featuring some great pieces of orchestral film music.

There was a later concert the same day on Radio 3 with longer pieces by the orchestra. You can still hear those shows via the BBC iPlayer and download the podcast. We also put together the highlights in a television programme which you can find under the red button until Sunday 19th June.

Here's the background to how it happened...

Read the rest of this entry

It was during trips to the Celtic ground to cover the turmoil of the season just gone that I started to notice things happening in the east end of Glasgow. Big steel and glass structures being thrown up just across the road from Parkhead. At the time I was too busy reporting on Celtic's battles with the Scottish FA and the extraordinary threats against Neil Lennon and other people linked with the club to pay much attention.

I did know it was something to do with the Commonwealth Games being held in Glasgow in 2014. After all, I'd been following the story on and off since Glasgow won the games back in 2007. And I knew that I wanted to take a look at these impressive buildings appearing in a landscape more familiar with urban decay and neglect.

Read the rest of this entry

In the last seven months, I've been involved in two 5 live programmes on depression in sport - they've been probably the most revealing and moving pieces of broadcasting I've had the privilege to be part of.

Read the rest of this entry

It would have been called the Pauline complex if Napoleon hadn't got there first. Persuading an army of Frenchmen to march on Moscow looks like child's play after sweet-talking the great and the good of the British and Irish film industry into starting a film festival in a place that doesn't have a cinema.

Read the rest of this entry

BIU might stand for many things but at 5 live, it's the Breakfast Investigation Unit. We're still not sure about the title but none of us can think of anything better.

The point of the BIU is to give journalists like me longer stints away from the normal rota to source and investigate original stories and to gain publicity for the Breakfast show in the process. We've had some real success stories - the last time I did a stint in the BIU, I worked on a story about young football hooligans that got coverage throughout the BBC, plus articles in papers including the Mirror and Telegraph.



The word 'unit' gives the impression there's a big team of us holed away in a bunker somewhere sending coded messages to the outside world. In reality there are two of us and we're usually commandeering a couple of computers we really shouldn't be using or don't actually work.

Read the rest of this entry