Final countdown to the Proms launch ...

There are still some truths left in the world.

Top of the list for me today is that you are never more than ten months away from a BBC Proms festival! Today I am not more than 24 hours away from the launch of the 2010 BBC Proms. I am constantly in awe of the Proms team. I am so lucky to have them as colleagues - their creativity, professionalism and attention to detail is extraordinary.

The usual round of last minute preparations is kicking in - but there is always something new to which we have to respond. This year we are finding out who might be unlucky enough to be stuck somewhere outside the UK and not able to join us at the launch. Our Radio 3 schedule has already been affected (a replacement artist at Wigmore Hall lunchtime on Monday and conductors not able to get to work with some of the BBC orchestras, etc).

Luckily (for us) Nicola Benedetti, who'll be making her Proms debut in the Royal Albert Hall, is able to join us at the launch as she was unable to cross the Atlantic and therefore is not stuck on the other side of the ocean.

I have already done some interviews with the press who have advance deadlines. Then the day of the launch is taken up with press briefings and more interviews. I start at 9 in the morning at the Royal Academy of Music (home of the Henry Wood bust that we display on stage during the season). I start by meeting the arts correspondents, then it's off to the hall for the photo shoot (let's hope that the sun shines on the south steps!), interviews for the website and for BBC News, Radio 3's In Tune and Radio 4's Front Row and anything else that gets set up on the day. (To wear a tie or not is still a decision to be taken - usually it starts on and soon gets taken off!)

Later in the afternoon I brief and take questions from all the classical music press - I do that one from memory just to keep me on my toes and see how much of the season I can remember (always hard at this stage of our planning cycle when I have so much of the 2011 and 2012 season at the front of my mind!). Finally it is time for the launch event back at the Royal Academy. It is one of the largest gatherings in the arts calendar and I look forward to it enormously - although there is always the pressure of the speech! Not least because of he decisions of what I have to leave out of it. It is however a hugely enjoyable event and above all a real sense of release and relief to be able to talk about the season at last.

How I have longed to respond to the questions and to post on the message boards when ideas so wide of the mark (or close to it!) appear there - now the truth is out and I look forward to my Q & A sessions online and in person at the venues as I meet the audiences.

The Proms website and Radio 3 are the home of the Proms throughout the season and you will be able to see and hear all the up-to-date information there.

Now I can't wait for the festival itself to start. 

• The Proms 2010 website goes live to the public at 1830 on Thursday 22 April 
• The lower picture shows Donald Gilbert's 1936 bust of Sir Henry Wood, garlanded with its traditional chaplet by Prommers at the Last Night