Snow comes to Scarborough, or does it?

Wednesday 13th March

Scarborough

It was approaching six thirty pm last evening, the kitchen knife in my hand was slicing through a red pepper when the phone rang.

"Blocked Number"

Work!

There would be snow in or around the Leeds area during Daybreak's air time in the morning, or so the forecasters predicted.

I needed to get on the road to head in that direction. An exact location for the broadcasts and where I would get a few hours sleep would come as I drove down the road.

I quickly finished chopping up the peppers. Along with some chicken, onion and sauce I threw them into the wok, gave them a quick cook and served the resulting stir fry up to my wife and son, abandoning the idea of having any myself.

My dinner was a sandwich, crisps and juice from an M&S Simply Food eaten in the car, washed down with an extra hot latte from Costa Coffee.

I was clocking up the miles on the A1 as the night progressed and the calm weather stayed calm.

The news from the office was Bradford. I'd been booked into the Premier Inn at Leeds Bradford airport.

I checked into the basic but clean and spacious room at nearing midnight not looking forward to only getting four hours sleep. Outside, the clear calm night continued.

The news I got from the office when I called in before getting into bed was pleasing.

My alarm would not need to be set for 4 am. We would be on standby for the weather and only called if it got bad.

Judging from how it had been like all the way down I felt fairly confident we would get a full night's sleep.

At three am I was disabused of that notion.

The prediction was for some very heavy snow during our air time at various parts of the east coast which would inevitably cause travel disruption.

We needed to go across the country to Scarborough's railway station where we were to be ready to do a combination of weather shots and travel reports.

Leeds Bradford airport is on quite high ground at 208 meters. The weather had not changed there since I had gone to bed less than three hours ago.

So, when I got in my car and started to drive I could not help thinking that I was on another of those wild snow chases.

For most of the almost two hour drive there was no sign of a change in the weather let alone heavy snow.

Then all of a sudden about twenty miles from Scarborough close to the village of Rillington I was in a blizzard. For the next fifteen miles or so there were very heavy snow storms. 

The near white out on the road to Scarborough

For miles at a time the black of the road disappeared under a thick covering of snow.

To the east and north of the village of Ganton as I approached Scarborough the snow petered out. The weather was once again calm.

By the time we got to the town it was a little cold and wet.

There was certainly no point in doing any weather shots.

Katy Fawcett the correspondent there in case travel reports were required called the office to suggest that we went back along the road a little to where there was a reasonable amount of snow.

The reply was that we should stay put and be ready for the snow that was coming our way any time now. The station was wanted as the backdrop for the travel reports.

Scarborough railway station and a fairly clear blue sky

So, Martin set up the satellite dish, Bob got the sound kit rigged, I got the camera set up and Katy prepared to receive the deluge of information on the chaos about to happen.

We waited in the truck for the blizzard to come.

We stayed there until the end of the programme.

A few flakes of snow fluttered down melting away as they hit the pavement.

Katy's inbox stayed empty of notices of road and rail closures.

The satellite dish and a few falling flakes of snow

The camera set up on the corner opposite the railway station

Sound recordist Bob checking that the sound is working

At the end of the Daybreak programme without having had one shot on air we packed the kit away and headed off on our opposite directions either home or off to another job.

Another day. Another technical problem.

Friday 8^th March

Chapelhall

The satellite truck was parked out of the line of sight of the house we were heading to for this morning’s Thanks Mum surprise.

Satellite truck tucked away from mum, Anna's house

Like yesterday Christina the producer and I had done a little preview film with Harry, his brother Michael and dad Sean. Harry had written the e-mail to Daybreak nominating his mum, Anna.

We had done the little film at a community school not far away where the boys do wheelchair basketball. Harry has Spina bifida so has to use a wheelchair.

Dad Sean chatting to producer Christina

Christina helping to set up the Basketball hoop

The boys playing basketball

Michael and Harry

After the problems with the cable and sound that we had yesterday we were all determined that things would be beyond reproach today.

We got rigged and did the first of our little tasks. Keith had thought up a little gag for one of the teases that we were due to do involving him talking to himself on one of the monitors on the truck.

So we shot the little bit of tape that was needed.

When we were doing this Ray the rigger was getting the long run of cable we needed to get from the truck to the house all sorted.

Then Dave got all the sound and audio sources sorted that would mean the shot of Keith that he would talk to would be on the correct monitor, he would be able to hear what he was saying and there would be no feedback.

Keith looks on as Dave cues up the tape

Aldo Zilli the celebrity chef arrived keeping out of site in one of the vehicles. He was the surprise prize. Anna is interested in cooking and he would give her a bit of a cooking lesson on how to make a good pasta dish.

Aldo Zilli, not long to go

Producers Fred and Christina

Keith's view..

...as he does one of the live teases..

..and gets excited as we get close to the run and surprise 

After we had done all the short teases, live shots and tested, by a bit of vigorous running, that the cables were all tight and secure we sneaked up to a bush a bit nearer the house and got ready for the run.

We heard the Daybreak music in our ears as the programme came on air after a commercial break.

Keith rubbed his hands in anticipation of the bit of fun ahead.

The cue came from the studio and we were off.

As soon as we started our fast jog down the hill to the house in my gallery talkback ear I heard Simon the director saying that the sound was breaking up but he’d stick with it for a little.

“Not Again! Please!”, the very loud voice in my head screamed.

Frustratingly Simon told the presenters that he was coming back to them in the studio and cut off us.

There was a problem with the sound getting from Colin’s sound mixer to the camera.

We quickly changed a cable and got it working again.

The good news was that we had not been seen from the house and their telly was not tuned to STV. So, at least we had not lost the element of surprise.

There were a few rushed, stressed phone calls between us and London as the programme running order and timings were adjusted to get us slotted back in as quickly as possible.

This time when we went live the sound was OK for the short run up to the door and into the house.

As soon as we stormed into the house we were hit by the heat from the central heating. I knew what would happen next.

The lens started to mist up.

I had a cloth at the ready to give the lens a bit of a wipe if this happened.

The shot was not great but, the reaction was so good and there was so much going on with the dog leaping about, Keith exuding so much energy and Aldo being brought in that I just let it go feeling that the steaming up was not bad enough to warrant the cloth coming on to the lens to cause more of a distraction.

Feeling very pissed off we came off air.

Keith just had time to get a couple of photos done before he was whisked away in the taxi that was waiting with its engine running to get him to Edinburgh airport to catch the flight that would get him to Dancing on Ice in time for the rehearsals for Sunday’s final show.

We said our congratulations and goodbyes to Anna, Sean and the boys.

We were all at a real low because that had been two days in a row when we had dealt with four different technical problems that had caused major problems on air.

I spent the rest of the day on the phone, writing and answering e-mails discussing the whys and hows of what went wrong, and ways to prevent repeats.

Keith Chegwin's return to breakfast telly with "Thanks Mum"

Thursday 7^th March 2013

Aberdeen

It might have been raining but that did nothing to dampen Keith Chegwin’s spirits.

The sensible bosses at ITV had brought him back onto the breakfast TV screen after an absence of about three years.

He had been signed up to do what he does best on morning TV, run around frantically and surprise viewers. In this week’s series of “doorsteps” on the run up to Mother’s Day called, "Thanks Mum" he was surprising mum’s who had been nominated by their families for being special.

It was a pleasure to see him again.  The mood in the dingy damp Aberdeen weather was good as we prepared for this morning’s dash.

The previous three, south of the border had been very good, great reactions from the mum’s involved and technically spot on.

It was also fantastic to hear Simon the director's jolly voice over talkback. He had left Daybreak a year or so ago after many years as senior director and was back to cover for holidays.

Our satellite truck was discretely parked away from the location, a community centre in Powis, one of Aberdeen’s less salubrious areas.

The truck on the wet streets of Aberdeen

In and around the truck we broadcast a couple of funny little teases in Keith’s inimitable style giving clues as to where we were.

Daybreak bringing out the best of Keith

One of the more cryptic of those clues was Keith saying “I hope I’m not Walking on Broken Glass?”

It is the title of a hit by Annie Lennox who comes from Aberdeen.

Nikki, one of the daughter’s who had nominated this morning’s mum, Pauline for the programme had come up from her home in Kent to add to the surprise.

Sound recordist Colin gets his kit sorted out

crew gathered round the sat truck..

..including daughter Nikki..

..like us wrapped up against the rain

One of the gags involved a wheelie bin

I had been up here with producer Christina a week or so ago doing a little film with Pauline’s other daughter Emma and son Kiefer which would be shown once we sprang the surprise.

Daughter Emma being interviewed in the nursery

Keith and I were quite excited about the dash to the old grey building. It was about a hundred yards up a slight incline, then up a short flight of concrete steps, through the big solid main door, across a little hallway and then through another weighty door, finally arriving at the room of the nursery where, if the plan came together Pauline would be sitting with Emma.

We were on straight after one of the commercial breaks. As the PA counted out the break Simon the director gave us a standby. We got ready to go.

We heard the short introduction music and off we went. Keith said a few brief words directly to camera before turning and heading off up the wide lane to the imposing building in the distance.

Keith's little entourage ready to go

I ran behind him as he waxed lyrical about why Pauline had been nominated and what great things she had done for the community, like setting up, virtually from scratch, the children’s nursery that we were about to storm into.

Emma had organised a few lookouts to help us. So, when we got to the front door it was opened wide as was the next door.

There was a woman with her back to us sitting at a low table with Emma. Keith dashed over to her sprang the surprise.

Her reaction was great, total shock etched on her face.

At this point I could hear Simon talking about picture break up, but saying that they should stay with it.

Over the other talkback came the instruction for Keith to get to the VT.

Without missing a beat Keith did as requested and the VT rolled both on air and locally when producer Fred hit the play button on the iPad.

I reframed my shot to a close up of Pauline, which was then put on air in a little box in the corner of the screen as the emotional little film was played.

A few short seconds after the film was finished and we were back live again I heard Simon say that they would have to come off us because the picture break up was too bad.

It sounded like a cable fault.

I checked all the connections at the camera end. They all seemed fine. Everything was solidly connected where it should have been and similarly, slack where it should have been.

I scratched my head baffled as to what the problem was.

Dave, a bit breathless from his much faster run up the lane from the truck had solved the problem.

Somehow the cable at the truck end had become stretched and was pulling on a connection at the back.

At least it had been a solvable problem.

Now we had to find out if we were going to get the chance to get on again.

It was then that I heard that there had been another technical problem. On the run up to the nursery Keith had gone off mic a few times when he had his back to camera.

That was another momentarily baffling problem given that he had a personal mic clipped to his jumper.

Turned out that the safety mic, the one on the camera, was the one that had been faded up at that point rather than the personal mic Keith was wearing.

Those two simple faults somewhat took the shine off the morning for us.

The upside was that the cable had not caused the problem until after the initial unrepeatable reaction. At least we had heard some of what Keith had said and when Pauline saw her normally distant daughter her reaction was again all the we could have hoped for.

Keith turns his hand to a bit of graphics work

Quick photo call 

We said our goodbyes and thank-yous for the coffee and pancakes that the staff of the nursery had  made for us before heading back to the hotel for breakfast when we would field the inevitable phone calls from London wanting to know what went wrong, why it went wrong and what we needed to do to make sure it doesn’t happen tomorrow.

Welcoming warm fire back at the hotel..

..and a good breakfast

They probably won’t reoccur tomorrow or the next day but there are always a host if things that can and will go wrong when live TV is concerned. It is just a matter of time and luck.

Up until this morning's little extravaganza things had been a bit quieter than usual with just a few trips to Glasgow to do live broadcasts from STV with Daybreak's Scotland Correspondent Debi Edward and a bit further south to Burnley for a down the line interview about the closures of A&E departments amongst other things.

Set up in Helen's home in Burnley for down the line interview

Debi in the fog at the STV camera position

The early morning view from the balcony minus fog

The daylight view

Dunkeld Snow

Tuesday 22nd January

Dunkeld

Over the last few days it has been the southern part of the UK that has had great heaps of snow dumped on it.

Now it was Scotland's turn. I was dispatched to Dunkeld in Perthshire for live broadcasts with Debi Edward in the morning. She had already done Monday's ITV Evening News and News at Ten. The snow had been falling very hard during those broadcasts causing much amusement to Mary Nightingale as she introduced Debi who was almost obscured by a blizzard.

The weather in the late evening on the M9 heading north was as the forecast had predicted.

..glad I knew where I was going..

..especially on the lesser, yet still A roads..

..snow not the only hazard, the odd deer or two on the road

Destination Dunkeld..

..and its snowy bridge.

In the early morning hours the satellite truck needed a little assistance from the hotel's tractor to clear a way up the drive to allow access to the still snow covered main road. Debi and I required no such help on our Land Rover Discoverys.

The location we chose for the live broadcasts was the southern end of the main road through the town, Atholl Street just before the bridge over the river Tay.

Atholl Street, Dunkeld's main street

Dave did not have a great deal of time to get the truck set up and running because to took a little while to get up the long hotel drive.

He did get it ready with enough time before our first broadcast to allow us to get the shots of the snowy town I had shot sent to London.

My shrouded camera at the back of the satellite truck

It was not the busiest of mornings but, we did have all the news bulletins, one programme broadcast and a multitude of weather shots to get done.

Covered camera looking down the main road

Debi poised to broadcast..

.. in the truck between broadcasts

The roads were pretty slippy and a lot of non-four wheel drive were having difficulty and at least one bus could not continue on its route. It just came to a slithering halt when the driver tried to get it up a slight incline on to the main road.

Dave helping to get one of he local's cars on its way

I was not cold with all my bed weather gear on. However, the wet was starting to penetrate. So, it was with no reluctance that we accepted a cup of coffee from the lady that had come to open the chemist shop that the truck was parked beside.

The driver of the stuck bus, Dave and the lady from the chemist shop with the welcome cups of coffee

The traffic builds, as does the daylight

The camera on the bridge..

..The River Tay beneath it

This was not the only offer we got. A while later the chap from the hotel opposite came and made the same offer. A perfect example of good old proper Scottish hospitality.

The 4x4 having done its job

Roads a little clearer heading south