No Stress, just Happy Birthday.

Thursday 12th March 2009

No disturbances in the hotel last night so I actually got a good nights sleep. 

Our location for this morning’s live broadcast was in the Gym hall of Bishop Biscop school in Bedlington near Newcastle Upon Tyne. Andy the satellite engineer was already in position with the dish all rigged waiting for us. It was a different truck to the one we had yesterday because yesterday’s had blown up, or at least part of the electronics that control things had blown up. 

When Sharon the Floor Manager and I went in to the hall we both looked at each other with a mischievous grin. The hall was not empty. Two trampolines set up to be used in our live broadcasts were just too tempting to resist. Before anyone else got in we clambered up on to one each and had a great five minutes or so of leaping around like idiots.

The live broadcasts were pretty straight forward. We had loads of kids and teachers joining in with Mr Motivator and having fun. Doctor Hilary also had a bit of advice for keeping healthy. 

Our next location was a couple of hours drive down the A1 to Castleford near Leeds. We rendezvoused at a large new Asda store for yet another surprise. This time it was a lady on the staff there that runs a healthy eating club.

On some pretext or other she and a number of the members of the club had been assembled by the manager of the store in a meeting room. The noise and excitement when Mr Motivator burst into the room was amazing. The reaction was just what we wanted.

We did a little bit more filming before going to the hotel to had a rare thing this week, a couple of hours to ourselves.

We all decided to eat in the Premier Inn we were staying at for the night because we were pretty much too knackered to be bothered to go out. The quality of the food came as a welcome surprise. It was excellent. The chef came out to say hello to Mr M. He was very excited at having such a special guest at the hotel!

It will be Yiljan’s birthday tomorrow. Since this would be our last meal together on this shoot, Stuart, David and Fah had organised a cake for her. We all sang happy birthday in the usual manner.