"Can't Park There Mate!"

Tuesday 21st April

At around 4:45 am I picked Elaine up from her hotel and drove to  the little street in Blackburn which was peacefully quiet as a bright sunny day was being born with hints of light and blue sky appearing out of the blackness of the night.

The satellite truck was there waiting for us to plug our equipment into it to transmit our pictures and sound into the GMTV programme. Ian, the sound recordist wired Elaine up with a microphone and talkback so she could hear the studio. The three of us stood outside Susan’s garden. A police van passed by. The Policemen inside gave us a quick look. A few moments later as we were about to go on air I turned to look in the direction of the Satellite van. The police van that had passed us was stopped in front of it and another police van that had approached from the opposite direction was park behind it. A posse of policemen were walking round the truck and one was in conversation with Paul the  satellite engineer.

We did the hit. The Police went away. Paul told us that the police had said there had been complaints about the noise of the generator. They asked if it could be shut off. When Paul told them no they asked when we would be finished and said that we should go as soon as possible.

Our last hit was at eleven minutes past eight. We were a few moments away from doing it when another police van came for a look. As soon as we came off air at around eight fifteen we quickly derigged and left not wishing to upset the locals any further our job was done. The material that I had shot yesterday ran lots of times and was the main story on the programme.

I drove Elaine to the airport to get her flight back to her base in Manchester. We were pleased with our couple of days work.