How Not To Impress The Press
Now I know what it feels like to be a stall-holder at the Barras. Today I had to stand up and tell the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press about all the exciting things we have planned for Â鶹Éç Radio Scotland in the next six months. Trouble was, I was competing with every other department head at Â鶹Éç Scotland and they were also trying to translate their spiel into column inches. They had video clips. I had yoghurt stains on my jacket. Luckily these were spotted by eagle-eyed producer Janie Murphy just minutes before I entered the Viewing Theatre at Pacific Quay.
I was given two minutes to talk about the 9,000 hours of programmes we broadcast every year. I had to be selective, so I told them about our plans to record every piece of work by Robert Burns, about our new Friday night rugby programme, the new drama written by Alexander McCall Smith, a new panel game hosted by Gail Porter and, as the market-stall fantasy began to overtake me, I thought about giving away a free set of tea-towels with every press release. But I didn't.
My main problem when talking to reporters is that I'm always more curious about them than they are about me. Kirtseen Paterson, for example, told me she was a reporter from The Metro and I immediately started quizzing her about the free newspaper market and heard how First Scotrail tend to be over-zealous with their clean-up policies so that train commuters don't get the chance to read the newspapers scattered around the carriages.
Another reporter was describing the perils of going freelance without "the cushion of a nice Â鶹Éç pension" and said he felt he only had ten years of a career left before his brain cells gave out. What could I say? I suggested he turn to a life of crime.
Anyway, we got good coverage for the Burns project in and the Metro, and Gail Porter's show got a mention in the Express. No one mentioned the yoghurt.
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