The latest postcard we've received is of two dead mice.
What the hell have we started?
We'll put it on this page soon. We're all a bit drunk now to handle the technology. Hence the newsletter appears double.
Send your postcard to:
PM, Pointless Blog Postcard Thing, Room G601, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News Centre, London W12 7RJ.
In a little while, I'll be interviewing a man who does blog about something written on blog. Obviously, I'll write about it on my blog. And maybe, just maybe, put something on the radio, too.
Eleanor Thomas, where are you? Perhaps we're mistaken but we haven't heard from you. You won our book! Don't you want it? Please email us: pm@bbc.co.uk.
I needed a bit of sticky tape (as they say on Blue Peter) this morning. Amanda now hot-desks so a normally reliable source has dried up. It turns out our colleagues on The World Tonight had some. Here's the curious thing. Their tape dispenser is called Lisa McBain. The name is on the side of the dispenser. Odd.
Oh and more postcards have come in. Stand by.
Here are the first of the picture postcards we've received.
The first is an aerial view of Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, sent in by Tony Wheeler.
Then we have James Wheen's Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight.
And Elizabeth sent us a card which says "The Prince of Wales is shown bored with Mrs Fitzherbert, and plays with a bandelure - a symbol of indulgence."
Keep them coming. We're most grateful to the unknown blogger who sent a blank piece of cardboard (first class) correctly addressed to PM, Pointless Blog Postcard Thing, Room G601, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News Centre, London W12 7RJ. Feel free to join in.
As promised, an unedited moment from yesterday's The World at One. Shaun is doing an interview here about bus deregulation. Or is he?
We need more ideas for the captions which appear each day at the top of the blog. Go on.
What a lot of interesting entries. We've spent some time - perhaps more than we should - trying to decide which one deserves the coveted prize.
In the end we've plumped for Eleanor Thomas who wrote: My favourite Pervez is Ivor. I'm his probation officer.
I liked it because it was just so unexpected. Eleanor - congratulations. Please email the programme (pm@bbc.co.uk) with your details and we'll send the book to you.
Stand by your blog by the way. Later today we will be posting some audio. And maybe some photos.
Did you catch the last item on The World at One today? They spent several minutes discussing busty regulation. The production team insists it was an altogether different item, about bus deregulation. We are looking into it and could well have a clip on the blog before long so you can decide for yourself.
Wishing you well, wherever I am, etc
For the first time, we're going to try a competition on the blog. As newsletter subscribers already know, a copy of Pervez Musharraf's memoir has arrived on my desk. If you'd like to win it, (the book, not the desk), simply tell us who your FAVOURITE Pervez is, and why. Post your entry on the blog, along with an indication of whether you'd like the book to be signed. It won't be signed by Mr Musharraf, but we could perhaps get Lissa to scribble on it, or I could do it myself.
Anyway, do your best. The future is yours etc.
Venturing into a previously unchartered corner of Television Centre on an important errand, I took a lift to the fifth floor. Actually I got in the lift on the ground floor and looked for the fifth floor button. There wasn't one. There was one for floors 1-4, and 6, and come to that G and B.
I asked another man in the lift whether there was a secret entrance to the fourth floor, and he chose to get out before the lift doors closed.
I went up to the sixth floor and found some stairs and, in time, the office I needed on the fifth. I asked people why there was no lift to the fifth floor. They variously looked away, pretended to make a phone call, or in one case, immediately threw themselves out of the window.
I think perhaps it's been axed as part of the Value for Money savings but it's a mystery to be sure.
if you're anything like me - and I hope for you're own sake you're not - you'll do most of your communicating by email, texts and mind reading these days. But it's still lovely to receive something through the mail, which is why last week I started asking listeners to send in picture postcards. We've already had several. We enjoy them but wider enjoyment is limited. It's pointless on a radio programme.
Never mind. What we'll do later this week is start putting the postcards here on the blog. So if you'd like to send us a postcard of your own, our address is: PM Pointless Blog Postcard Thing, Room G601, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News Centre, London W12 7RJ.
By the way, do you have access to ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Parliament? During the conference season, during the lunch breaks, they're running archive conference material. Yesterday it was Harold Wilson (black and white and someone behind Mr Wilson smoked like a chimney throughout the speech). Today it's an old Tony Blair. Or rather a young one. Being applauded by a young Clare Short. Robin Cook is there. It's an interesting watch. This afternoon's speech will be big on our programme tonight. Alastair Campbell will be among those commenting on it. Will he like it?
didn't say "Well, that's a lie" - what DID she say?
Cherie Blair has just walked away from a radio broadcasting this edition of PM, saying "it's all rubbish".
We've sent Christian Fraser to interview Muslims in Rome.
The delightful Kirsty Young takes over Desert Island Discs on Sunday. She gives an interview this morning to Media Guardian in which I'm not mentioned but pretty much implied throughout. We did work together briefly at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Scotland. It was around the time she was being offered a big television deal to lure her from the radio. She has of course been a huge success on the telly, and someone, years ago clearly identified that talent.
One morning in the studio Kirsty asked for my advice. I said not to touch the telly work, she'd do far better on the radio. Wise woman that she is, she did the opposite.
Yesterday people were going past my window in t shirts and dresses. But that's the men at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ for you. The point is the weather was warm. Lots of people were out and about. Sauntering to a lunch outside where it was at least 25 celsius. Suddenly it was summer again.
Today it's dark and raining. It looks like November. Or maybe February. Some people seem to have been prepared for that. Others less so.
I am going to monitor what people are wearing as they go past the window. As a public service.
1218: woman running in a flimsy top.
1219: woman with sensible coat and a brolly.
1220: man with big coat and brolly.
1221: man in a light coat but his face said: "I wish I'd brought a brolly". Quite brisk.
1222: no-one.
1223: no-one.
1224: woman in summery top, but with quite a big brolly.
Man in suit with brolly.
Man in very wet suit (not a wetsuit).
1225: woman in summer top, bustling, head down. Think that perm might be in
trouble.
1226: Man in shirt with stripes, running.
1227: car, windscreen wipers going.
And I suppose if any of this has a moral, it's that we should all pay more attention to the weather forecast.
get the name of the lawyer in Season Three of Arrested Development out of my head.
Surname: Loblaw.
First name: Bob.
I was most impressed with all the suggestions for a cue to Caroline's piece yesterday. They were all broadcastable - please don't be offended if yours wasn't chosen. As it happened, I was "grabbed" by the opening of Chris Carter's suggestion and went with that, making a few other changes later. The others really were fine too, but, as is the norm, I went with something which I thought sounded best in my "voice". Isn't it annoying all these "words" in inverted "commas"?
Sir Ming Campbell is making his conference speech right now. Perhaps it's my telly but the background colour is making my eyes bleed.
Of course you can.
There are many ways items get on air, but most often I write the introductions for them. Sometimes a correspondent will provide the "cue" and I will mess about with it. On other occasions a producer will provide the bones of the intro, and sometimes I do it all from scratch.
The reason I'm troubling you with this is I thought it might be fun for you to try your hand at tinkering with an intro.
Below, I'll paste the cue for a piece by the always marvellous Caroline Wyatt. It's perfectly fine as at is, but for fun - would you like to have a go at improving it? You should try to keep the important facts in, but use your initiative to find creative ways of drawing in the listener. Ideally (as it already takes about 40 seconds to read) it should be a bit shorter.
I may even use the best version on air tonight. And if that goes well I can get bloggers to write all my cues. Then come in to work a bit later in the day. And then get fired.
Here's the original intro. Do your best!
In France, a thousand families are demanding compensation from the French state railway network, the SNCF, for its role in transporting their relatives to interment camps, before they were taken on to Nazi death camps during World War 2. The families, from France, Israel, America, Belgium and Canada, are demanding compensation of several million euros, and some have started court action already. The families were encouraged by a court ruling in June in France, in which the French railways and the state were ordered to pay damages of more than forty thousand pounds to one family whose father and uncle were deported. From Paris Caroline Wyatt reports on one woman's quest to make the French railways pay for deporting her mother and father in the 1940s.
At lunchtime, I interviewed a very interesting guest who was part of the 1956 Hungarian uprising - about last night's events in Budapest. He was very good and the recording will feature in the programme tonight.
What you won't hear is this
I've just heard the start of a package you'll hear on the programme tonight, about the public tributes to Steve Irwin.
I think you'll like it.
Can you help with a small ethical problem?
As you may know, my colleague on The World at One, Nick Clarke (68), recently came back to work, having lost a leg to cancer. On my return to the studio last night I noticed that they've installed a push panel next to the studio door for people with disabilities. It automatically opens the (rather heavy) door with ease. There's a similar button on the other side for easy exit. Marvellous for Nick and any other people who might have the need of it.
My question is - is it OK for me to use it?
Just been told the current on air item from the Lib Dems will last for eight minutes. So I thought I'd write a word or two.
Do you read many blogs? Have you read this one but never contributed? And more importantly - what DO you think about Darfur and the international response to it?
Now I must prepare for Sean to shut up.
Shortly, I'll be talking to Geoff Hoon. He'll be on his mobile in a car.
I won't be in charge of the technicalities, which is just as well.
Got back from holiday this morning to find my TV monitor and "Rolec" (which allows me to hear audio from a variety of stations and from our correspondents around the world) was NOT WORKING. I of course blamed Carolyn, and fired off the following brief email to our office manager:
"Hello,
My TV screen is snowy and the Rolec display completely blank. Can you help?
Thanks
Eddie"
Moments later Gillian came over and switched it on.
I've just recorded an interview with a head teacher about school meals. He referred to his pupils as "customers".
Apologies for the two-week absence. Was on holiday the first week and on secondment for the second, working as speech-writer for the Pope.
So, it's my last blog - for now at least. It's been great doing business with you all as I've negotiated my way up the learning curve that is steep and wiggly. Ups and downs. Highs and lows.
Today I'm sorry about being a bit late with my contribution. Lissa has already been nagging me . Quality service will be restored when Dr Muir returns next Monday after his trip to ?????? He is an international man of mystery.
We've just been entertaining ourselves trying to think of words that rhyme with Hoon. Geoff Hoon is someone we'd like to have on the programme this afternoon but he is "coccooned" in meetings in Brussels , looking for a spoon that he lost in June and hoping he doesn't look like a goon , and now we've run out of words and I have to go and record an interview . Over to you.
There we were last week, complaining about the labour leadership story and the way it was dominating our running orders day after day. Yesterday and today, though, we have encountered the broadcasting equivalent of drought.
Amanda our Editor is trying to give off an air of breezy calm about the fact that she has no obvious lead story. I've noticed her knuckles are white though, which is a bit of a giveaway. Her second in command, Mark, is getting alarmed at all the stories this week about how to bring up your kids, since his wife is about to give birth anytime now. He, too, is trying the breezy calm approach - but we can see through it.
I'm off to the coffee shop for inspiration.
Sequin
We've just spent half an hour watching Tony Blair and the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao at a news conference in Number Ten. One of those news conferences where one Prime Minister speaks, then there's a translation, then the other Prime Minister speaks and there's a translation and then there are questions from journalists. You know the kind of thing. I was watching Tony Blair's face during the questions, then during the very long translations of his words into mandarin , during the long answers by Prime Minister Wen and the translations of them back into English. I don't know if Mr Blair has mastered much mandarin during his time in office , but he must have used up his entire range of facial expressions, guessing no what he should be reacting to. Is a smile appropriate here ? Or is Wen talking about death and destruction in Sudan? A frown here? But what if Wen at that point is talking about fantastic relations between Britain and China? Can Mr Blair allow his mind to wander a bit? Who knows, but it's fun speculating about what he mght be thinking about during these events....
Mister Ed has sent me a text to say he is extremely naffed off about the alleged goings-on in Jersey. Honestly, you think someone is giving you a mint out of the kindness of their heart and then your legs fall out from under you. When Nick Clarke offered me a polo earlier, I just had to say no.
My mind's been wandering onto horsy things. I was obviously deprived in my youth - I never did the pony club thing. I sought solace in the Yugoslavian snowy white horses on tv.
While my mind wanders further, here are my favourite horse jokes:
*Horse walks into a pub. Barman says "hello mate why the long face?"
* How do you cure water on a horse's brain? Turn it off at the mane.
* White horse goes into a pub, and says "I'll have a whisky please" Barman says " I've even got one with your name on ." And the horse says " What, Eric?"
Over to you.
Don't say we don't care about you. We know how much you like cycling stories. (you do, don't you??) So we've sent Chris Ledgard out on a bike to test support for the latest campaign to get all cycles fitted with bells. He's a runner, not a biker so he's having to borrow the Boss' much-loved super-duper lightweight dream machine.There may be trouble ahead. Chris wants to put a basket on the front so that he can carry his recording equipment in comfort.
Feel I need to warn you...Lissa is back this week - refreshed after a week of leave during which she claims she resisted the temptation to log in and see how we've been getting on. She promises she'll sort out the technical problems. Yeah right.
Sequin
Is that what Charles Clarke thought to himself as he woke up this morning? Did he have a bad night? Did the meaning of life and the value of friendship wash over him as he lay contemplating the day? Who knows. But whatever has provoked him, he has now laid into the man whom many considered to be his new best buddy, Gordon Brown.
I'm watching the Chancellor making a speech in Edinburgh at this very minute. What do you mean, my mind is wandering? Am just trying to decide how to describe the colour of shirt and tie he's wearing. Lilac? Purple? Yvonne opposite me suggests rose? Rose pink? Rupert chips in with "cerise".
This newsroom is on the ball.
Peter Rippon's hidden identity has been revealed. Yes, he says, he has kicked his legs high and he has worn a ballgown, but no it wasn't on the Morecambe and Wise Show.
What a week this is proving to be. Ed must be smiling to himself as he tops up his tan. He is due to make a statement shortly. He's expected to confirm that by the end of the day he will have left the poolside, but he will not go into any detail about precise timings or exactly when he is going to name his dinner location.
Incidentally, do you think doing a cycling proficiency test makes you a better cyclist? I'm one of those cyclists who actually stops at red lights. Does that mean I did a proficiency test in the dim and distant past? I can't remember.
cq
Did I buck the trend by sending out two blogs in one day yesterday.? Obviously I got carried away with enthusiasm - or was it the bottle of Martini and the olives in Ed's cocktail cabinet? Anyway, sorry if I confused you. Will behave today. Honest.
Got to keep myself under control anyway - the Boss , Peter Rippon, is in charge of PM today. He's drawn up a running order - and there's a rash of TB all over it. TB, described once by Gordon Brown, if my memory is correct , as one of the world's worst communicable diseases.
Off to interview Lord Archer now - speak soon..
CQ
Forgot to mention earlier .... in our meeting this morning when discussing possible interviewees about yesterday's Amman shootings Charlie Bell (one of our researchers) suggested talking to Princess Ann.
Or was it Prince Hassan?
Wonder if you've come across any similar name confusions?
CQ
Am flying solo today . Yesterday, as you know, our Editor ( he likes to call himself that ) Peter Rippon was showing me how to send out my first blog. As you also know, his name appeared at the top. So hopefully today it'll be mine, all mine. They've given me the key to the executive washroom AND the cocktail cabinet, as well as Eddie's special dressing up area .
Congratulations to those of you who spotted the deliberate time mistake yesterday. Ho ho ho - you are so clever. And thanks to for concern about my sleeping habits - honestly, being a peripatetic r4 presenter isn't all bad, even if it means that I have to work when others go on holiday.
Roger Sawyer is editing today - he's a cyclist - mad dead keen - but keeps, rather alarmingly, clutching his thigh, blaming cramp. Wish us well.
cquinn
Fresh from my holidays, Ed is off on his, and I'm in his chair for a fortnight. That means stepping with trepidation into his world, poking through all the things he keeps on his desk. You'll never guess....Anyway, I'm a blog virgin so treat me gently.
Returning from a fortnight away with no papers and no radio programmes, two characters are appearing in news that weren't there before. The postman suspended for advising his clients how to avoid junk mail and the CNN presenter who's trying to laugh off her bathroom break. I know which one I'd rather be.
Felt back in the groove when I heard my delightful Today colleague Jim Naughtie this morning saying it was "ten past nine" at ten past eight. The producers like to play about with the clocks, just to liven things up - backwards, forwards, stopping them completely sometimes, so we presenters just have to make the time up. It's not our fault. Honest.
On air in 5 hours' time. Must dash,
CQuinn.
As one or two bloggers have already observed - we had what Frank Spencer used to call a "little bit of bother" with our Satanic Charlotte clip. I'm sorry. We tried and have tried again - we think /radio4/news/pm/audio/satan.ram will work...
The truth is the only thing that's occupying our minds here in showbusiness is the imminent handover of the "Broadcasting House" torch this Sunday to Paddy O'Connell. Paddy was one of those who stepped into the breach when Fi Glover was fired, for stealing stationery. Now he's been rewarded with the programme as his own gig. Personally, I couldn't be more pleased. The whole thing's been going downhill since the days Alistair Cooke hosted. I was awful as his successor and Fi was an improvement, apart from the constant thieving.
I'm hoping that on Sunday there'll be a touching handover from Fi to P, as there was last night on the CBS Evening News. Recent host Bob Schieffer was joined on screen by the woman who'll take over next week, Katie Couric. There were kind words, some old clips, and then she made him cry! If there's no blubbing on Sunday there'll be trouble.
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