Thursday, July 31, 2014

Arts Extra

Mary Louise Muir host of Arts Extra
Me on BBC Radio's Arts Extra programme:

 

I'm on near the end. Its live radio and you have no idea what questions they are going to ask so I'm not quite sure how this happened but at one point I start quoting Goethe, in German...
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The Beeb being the Beeb this programme will only be available to listen to for about another week and then it will be gone forever...
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2 funny things happened in and around the interview. The band who came on after me hadnt said how long their song was going to be and as they were playing they were getting closer and closer to the live news break at the top of the hour. The producers were in a bit of a panic because they wanted to tell the band to end the song before the news. They told Marie-Louise (the host) to hold up a note for the lead singer, but it didnt do any good because he was singing with his eyes closed. Everyone was in a real tizzy and I was sitting next to him in the studio and I was wondering whether I should poke him or something when purely by luck he opened his eyes with 30 seconds to go, saw the time and ended the really rather lovely song much to everyone's relief. The other funny thing was coming out of the interview & seeing my daughter who was in the Green Room outside. She was so excited and happy and I immediately thought that hey maybe the interview had gone particularly well or something. "What's up?" I said waiting for the compliments to pour in... "Daddy, guess what? They have free wi-fi here and I got to watch the new video from One Direction on my ipad!"