Behind the scenes

Apparently the show referenced below is entitled 1707-In The Footsteps of Defoe, and the first episode, focussing on Prestonpans and points East, will be broadcast on Monday 2nd April at 3.45pm on BBC Radio 4.  See here for more info.

Radio 4 is available to listen to online.

A couple of weeks ago I waited in a freezing cold Prestongrange Museum (it’s been closed for the season since October), waiting for a reporter and a producer from BBC Radio 4.  They were in the area making a documentary about Daniel Defoe and his role in the events surrounding the Act Of Union between Scotland and England, 300 years ago.  Quite what part the town of Prestonpans played in all this is unfamiliar to me, but the radio people were keen to get a flavour of the area and the relationship between its present-day cultural activities and its illustrious past.

It was an interesting insight into the BBC’s working methods.  Despite the fact that the interview was to be recorded and edited for later broadcast, I was far from relaxed.  Instead, it felt rather like a job interview, and I was very self-conscious, trying to seem slightly more authoritative than I am.  The thing was, they were asking questions about the museum’s role and its relationship to the past.  These are interesting topics, and I’m sure I could explain them at length in an extended conversation.  However, they’re also subjects that rarely cross the mind when  faced with the day-to-day realities of my job, i.e. creating worksheets, going on classroom visits, going cap-in-hand for funding, devising activities etc.  We rarely have the luxury of stepping back and assessing our place in the local community or justifying it.  These things certainly aren’t at the front of my mind, ready to encapsulate in a ten-second soundbite. At times I was aware that I was waffling, rather as you do when faced with a difficult question at an exam viva, for example.  I could have asked for a minute to compose my thoughts (we weren’t live after all), but having a big furry microphone placed near your face does tend to lend an artificial urgency to proceedings. 

So I have renewed sympathy for politicians of all stripes who appear on programmes like Today and Newsnight, and (usually) manage to sound half-way coherent when faced with a barrage of probing questions.  My interviewer was not at all Paxman-like, but still I managed to fluff my lines on more than one occasion.  I did, I think, manage to make some points about the museum’s relationships with other local amenities and attractions, and how we hope to build on these to establish a new industry in Prestonpans (i.e. leisure and cultural tourism) to replace the old ones (i.e.  mining, pottery etc.).  The programme goes out in the first week of April, apparently, so we’ll se whether they’ve managed to edit me to make me seem fluent, or whether my thoughts will end up on the cutting-room floor.