Icelandic Volcanic Ash - A You and Yours special programme.

It's not every Saturday evening that the 'You & Yours' editor, Andrew Smith, gives me a call. But when he did so last weekend he told me he was considering doing a special programme concentrating on the effects of the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland, and wanted to know how I felt about the idea. I said I was keen and we spoke again later on; he timed his second phone call expertly...just after Spurs had completed their home win over Chelsea. I think it's fair to say my mind had been elsewhere during the previous hour and three quarters.

It's the first time since I've been presenting You & Yours that a programme running order has been entirely discarded in favour of something more pressing. Our dilemma was that the story would clearly be extensively covered by other news-based programmes on Radio 4, so what could we add? We concluded that there were so many angles for a consumer-based programme that we were right to pursue them and that to do so comprehensively would take up the entire fifty-two and a half minutes. It meant a lot of extra work on Sunday and there was a bit of extra adrenalin in evidence during the Monday morning programme meeting - we went to a different room and the controller popped along briefly too - and it meant the revised running order was decidedly fluid until moments before we went on the air.

Did it work? I think and hope so, but you may disagree! Have a listen! We tried to balance the individual stories of frustration and derring-do with wider information about compensation and insurance...and we threw in some science and some engineering too. And we've continued exploring those angles in subsequent programmes.

Of course one thing on Monday was left unsaid...the name of the offending volcano. I have unashamedly wimped out of that one so far. When I was broadcasting on the World Service last weekend a colleague displayed his flair for Icelandic pronunciation by naming it with great ease and confidence. I tended to side with an Australian journalist who was a guest on the programme at the time; she said she'd climbed the volcano in question but had never dared pronounce it. When advised by a fellow Icelander she said she was told that the secret was to say the name quickly and as if slightly drunk!

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

• You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.
• Other Links. Elisabeth Mahoney at The Guardian

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