Shooting Live: £10.5 billion pothole repair bill!

Thursday 14th March
York

After the earlier than usual start, driving through snow from Bradford to Scarborough, sitting around for a few hours in the satellite truck yesterday morning waiting to do something and ending up doing nothing Katy was dispatched up the road to Ripon to do a report on the cost of repairing the potholes in the country's roads and the damage that they do.

It would take many years and cost £10.5 billion to repair them all.

I was assigned this morning's live broadcasts.

It wasn't snowing outside Barker's Garage at 5 am but, it was certainly cold as waited to get in to set up for the broadcasts.

The plan was to do one programme broadcast at 6:20 am and two broadcasts into the news bulletins at 7 am and 8 am.

Keiren, one of the mechanics had been volunteered to show the areas under a car that are most vulnerable to damage from going over potholes.

There was a car up on one of the ramps that we would use these areas and components.

I rigged up the lights and put some diffuser on the bright torch Keiren would use to show us the springs, anti-roll bars, shock absorbers and track rods.

Barker's Garage York

The plan for the programme broadcast was that Katy would start outside the garage where, rather conveniently there were a few small potholes. She would go into the garage, introduce Keiren who would take us under the ramp giving us the tour of the underneath of the car and then come out the other end where we could see some actual damage done to a wheel and coil spring by a pothole.

Apart from the minor challenge of the lighting my main concern was getting low enough with the camera on my shoulder to get under the ramp to look under the car without it looking jerky or awkward.

We had enough time to do a few rehearsals. Keiren was great, concise and to the point. I tweaked the lighting and had no problem getting under and then out of the ramp.

Of course when we did come to do the live, rather annoyingly the camera did get very slightly snagged on the ramp as I went under. Keiren however, was as perfect on the real thing as he dad been on the rehearsals.