Well after two and a half months, Children In Need is finally behind me! I’ve spent the last ten weeks Producing this show, which saw us on air for about three hours over a period of five and a half hours.
I was pretty worried about this to be honest – it’s the first time I’ve produced a live studio show, never mind a big one like this which includes all the complexities of fundraising and charity work along with celeb booking, films, outside broadcasts, etc. etc.
However (and thankfully!) it all went really well on the night. The set looked great, the lights were amazing, and everything worked as it was meant to. My job on the night was basically to keep an eye over content and also to make sure all the timings fitted – i.e. that we weren’t running over or under on timings. What made that difficult is that we also had to ‘opt in’ and ‘opt out’ of the main show coming from London. We had rough times we knew we had to do this at, but obviously things slipped in London as well, so it was a constantly moving feast.
However, like I said, everything did go well thank goodness. It was a pretty good night, and everyone enjoyed themselves, including the guests and the presenters. I’m certainly glad it’s behind me though!
There was a massive team working on the night, and although I got thanked a lot, I think it’s important to remember how many people play a part in a night like this – from the sound, camera, vision and lighting crews, to the set designers, security men and PR people that look after the audience. They all did a great job, and made everything pretty easy for me. I also had a great director, David G Croft, who did gave the whole thing a good look.
Celeb wise, we were lucky enough to get Westlife and Katie Melua on the show, and we also had some celebrity duets, featuring people such as Lawrie Sanchez (the Northern Ireland football manager who’s really popular here) singing with Natasha Hamilton who used to be in Atomic Kitten.
Obviously after the show, we had to unwind, so there was a bit of a bash. In order of chaos – first of all Jill and I fell over on the dancefloor (big bruised knee), she lost her ‘phone, we danced to Don’t Stop Movin’ with Bradley from S Club 7 (I won’t forget that in a hurry seeing as he sings the song!), I got ‘friendly’ with two ladies (and was only reminded about that today) and I can’t remember getting home. A good night then!
One of the people that joined the BBC as a Production Trainee with me six years ago had Children In Need as her last gig. So it’s farewell to Ruth, who has a great sense of humour, and is just generally fun to be around. We did have a leaving do for her a couple of weeks ago – there’s some pictures of the drunken mess here. It ended up in a ‘phone box for some reason.
There are (very few) thank goodness pictures from the wrap party here. I don’t have a ‘photo of the set yet, so for now, you’ll have to put up with a picture of me (hammered), Jill and Bradley dancing to Don’t Stop Movin.