Wednesday October 31st 2018

I received my letter today. No not from the Queen. Not even from my mum and dad. But from the BBC. For tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of a speckly youth arriving at the front door at the BBC in Bristol,  in a suit (no one wears suits in the BBC, not even in 1993). How was I to know? I came from the north.

I remember the night of October 31st 1993. I'd come down from the North East a few days before, and not knowing anyone in a 200 mile radius, I'd booked myself into a B&B in Portbury, a village just outside Bristol. I ended up living at that B&B for the next 18 months, but I digress.  Not knowing anyone, or where I was (I had to look Bristol up on a map for my interview), I lay on my bed rigid with a heady mix of both fear and excitement, thinking of all the great things I'd be asked to do at the mighty Natural History Unit. I'd meet David Attenborough, travel the world, wear khaki shorts, wrestle vultures. In reality I arrived on a wet November day. They knew I was coming but had nowhere for me to sit. A tour of the building followed, meeting people like James Honeyborne, then a recent arrival researcher who went on to make Blue Planet 2. James recognised my Newcastle Agriculture Society tie, as he was of that alumni. But by 2pm Alan Baker my then boss had run out of things for me to do so I ended up leaving, my first day over and to be honest I thought, this isn't for me. But the next day was better, I was moved into a cupboard full of dusty files and no window, a TV perched on a couple of cardboard boxes and so began my life as a Wildcat Programme Classifier. WildCat being the library system for indexing footage for reuse. And my first TV show to be paid to watch? Life in the Freezer, made by a absolutely brilliant Alastair Fothergill, who drove the NHU to it's greatest achievements. On the day Alastair stepped down as Head, staff wept in corridors. 

Nothing has changed really. Nearly everyone I knew in the 'good old days' at the NHU has now left and I have become a fossil in a world of digital media evolution. I still sit in an office mostly on my own, many hours a day at a computer, and spend a long part of the day in a kit cupboard. That cupboard does have a window, but also smells of mice. I only came here for a year, and now it's 25 years. I did meet and work with David Attenborough eventually...but I have to say getting Michael Palin to record Tweet of the Day, can never be matched. It's been downhill ever since.