Silent Screams

Evening people, long time no update.

Events over the last few weeks have included visiting Campbeltown, hereafter known either as ‘that place’ or ’sack of shite’. I offered to make them up a new sign today that says ‘Welcome to Campbeltown, third class producers of cheese, first class producer of douchebags.’ No takers on that though, which was dissapointing.

What else? Campbeltown, Christmas, hogmany which included a trip to Edinburgh castle, being on BBC One and gallons of free drink, although to my chargrin and humiliation I only had one glass of champagne which was revolting and made me really pissed off at some kids there. It says quite clearly on the ticket ‘NO under 15s allowed’ yet this stupid, pish-poor excuse for a mother decided to drag her 10/11 year olds to Edinburgh castle and put them next to me.

Then there was my sister, Wendy. My sister, in her infinitly huge wisdom, decided to wear heels to the hogmany special. What’s wrong with that I hear you cry?? Well, heels never have and likely never will agree with my sister. It took her nearly 15 minutes to put the bastard things on and even then I did most of the actual leg (or foot) work there. Then we got out the car and set off to the castle…we wern’t even at the end of the road before I heard the first cries of ‘god my feet hurt.’ And it didn’t get any better then that. Knowning she could barely walk straight to begin with my sister then decided to visit the pub and have 8 Baileys. Imagine the hilarity of trying to get a tipsy girl up Edinburgh high street at half 9 at night to get to the castle.

There was one point when I actually had to drag her up the road, she wanted to go back to the pub. She also said ‘fucking Jackie Bird, I’m gonna smack that ginger c**t’ which I’ve no idea why. I mean it wasn’t like Jackie made her wear the stupid, idiotic shoes now was it? So eventually after about 4 hours walking through the town and about 2 in the pub (I shit you not) we finally made it to Edinburgh castle, where I discovered to both my eternal amusment and horror that she had blisters. But there wasn’t time to worry about that as we were taken into the castle.

Which, in case you haven’t been to Edinburgh castle is paved with cobbles and has a lot of stairs. Cobbles, stairs and blisters don’t mix. You can’t quite imagine the humiliation of semi-piggy backing someone across Edinburgh castle forcourt surrounded by rich old people.

Then, ever the congeial hosts the BBC ushered us in for what was advertised as a ‘champagne buffet’ but translated into ‘lets shove all 160+ guests into a room, cover them in free booze and leave them for about two hours to sit and stew’. Well done BBC. There is a story as to what happened with some guy who had too much to drink, that’ll come later. So by now we’re in the poorly-named ‘champagne buffet’ and we’re surrounded by Edinburgh’s elite socialites.

Serious money in the room and my sister, given her genius, takes this moment to take her shoes off and in a loud and proud voice state ‘god my blisters are massive’ and proceeded to sit and poke then for 15 minutes. If I was a drinkin’ man I’d of gotten balooted, fortunatly the bar was over the other side of the room and I’m a lazy little shit and by this time you couldn’t swing a hamster in the room. Small room + 160 people = iddy bitty living space.

*****

Well we were sitting in this room for just over an hour, with me getting more and more pissed off. I’d sensibly decided to lay off of the drink or I might of shoved all the old people and those two children out the window and Edinburgh castle is a pretty high way up.

Meanwhile we were all introduced to our ‘chaperone’ Nicola. For those who don’t follow allow me to explain; in television the audience is split up into groups, depending on the size of the show depends on the size of the group. Apparently each group were supposed to be about 25 with chaperones for each group however in these things, especially with the BBC I’ve noticed, things don’t always turn out that way. Nicola was lovely though. I dunno if it’s because she was supposed to be the authority figure there or what but I really fancied her.

So Nicola was in charge of us but like all the chaperones there these highly trained, proffesional members of the production crew for the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, they ended up being waiters to all the rich arsepieces who couldn’t be bothered to get their own drinks.

If that was me I’d of said ‘look love you’ve got enough money so get off your own lazy worthless ass and get your own goddamned red wine’ then stomped on their foot and walked away. Now remember as I said in last update the room was packed to bursting so these poor people had the stresses of producing a show, making sure everything goes out on time, looking after drunken tits and playing waiter to them.

As if they didn’t have enough to worry about without fetching Mrs. Austair another drink. So after about an hour and a half in this room, everyone througly enjoying themselves except my sister whos feet are sore with blisters and me whos’ being made to poke said blisters we were then introduced to the warm-up act, a man named Kevin.

Now Kevin, it has to be said, is a man, just like any other. He was just doing the job the BBC paid him for. However, I doubt they picked his costume which begs the question; as it’s a hogmany party, why the fuck would anyone dress up as Santa Claus!?!?!?

But in he marched and procedded to entertain us by reading from the BBC Book of Do’s & Don’ts which included ‘do clap and smile or we will shoot you live on air’ ‘don’t harrass Jackie or else we will shoot you live on air’ and just a general glimps into the BBC’s obsession with shooting people on live TV. Ok maybe I exxagerated a bit, there really wasn’t any mention of any guns or shooting but it seemed like it.

So once Kevin had pissed off it was on with the show! We were assigned to our specific groups and under the watchful eyes of Nicola (although to be fair I kept my eyes on her a lot more then she did on me, dissapointingly) we were off to the great Hogmany Hall! Well…..almost.

My sister’s feet once again chose this moment to act up again. She was clinging onto me for dear life before the left the reception hall, then there were more cobbles, which if you’ve read part one you will know is a frightning experience. So we arrived, more or less, at the main part of the castle, ready to go into the hall. All of a sudden, after many, well, hours of waiting, there we were! And there I was, mere feet from miss Reporting Scotland herself, Jackie Bird. Who had turkey neck like I’ve never seen before o another living human being.

However there wasn’t time to stand and mak fun of Jackie as there was a live link going out in 2 minutes, not just to the whole of the United Kingdom but also to every television network that carried BBC television. I’m ushered over to my table and all of a sudden there’s Jackie directly in front of me. And a camera. And an autocue! Good God, Jackie was doing the link live in front of me! And before I knew it those infamous words in TV ‘live to the world in three, two…’ and we were live, just like that! As I was standing directly behind Jackie I was also going out live to the nation!

‘Join us live in thirty minutes on BBC One Scotland for…’ I couldn’t believe it, I was standing behind Jackie as she was doing a live link that was airing all over the world and all over Scotland there were cries of ‘there’s Peter behind Jackie Bird.’ Well it wasn’t so much cried out more then it was sorta mumbled. Once. In Paisley. Hey that’s still more recognition then Danial Craig got when he became the new James Bond!

So the link finished, Jackie, the camera, the autocue and Nicola who had reapeared all vanished, which is a shame coz I was wanting to use the fact I’d just been broadcast all over the UK to hit on her. Then we had to wait for Chewin’ The Fat to finish on BBC One Scotland and them to stop babbling over on BBC from London, then our live show was going out! So what they did is plied us all with drink then busied themselves with their show, bringing back Kevin who was no funnier this time then he was that time.

He instructed us of the do’s and do-not’s of live TV. For example, do look like your having a good time, don’t get too close to the cameras, do clap and sing and dance along, do not look at or talk to Jackie. Wait hang on a sec what was that last one I hear you cry? Do not look at or talk to or even make eye contact with Jackie. Yes we were told that. We were told Jackie was the star, she was here to do a show and we were all extras so to avoid Jackie in all instances. However we had the last laugh when my sister, who you may remember in part one, refered to Jackie as ‘that ginger headed c**t’ spilt water over Jackie during a live broadcast.

Teach Jackie to try to play friendly with an audience who were warned off. That isn’t really it, truth is at the bells we all had to lift a glass and play nicey nicey for the cameras, Jackie was doing a link from beside my sister who accdentally tipped a glass of water over Jackie. Good times were had by all. Except me towards the end when I ended up face-to-face with the biggest piper I’ve ever seen.

Towards the end of the live show, the finale was Nicola Benadetti, Phil & Ally and the somewhere & somewhere pipe band ending the show. So I see the pipers coming in but I don’t pay any attention and continue chatting to my sister.

I turn around and I’m face to face, literally, with this huge fuck off piper. So I go to move out the way but discover I can’t coz while I was chatting there’s been a camera plonked directly over my right shoulder so I can’t go anywhere and even as I’m mumbling ‘help’ to my sister I can hear a producer saying ‘and three two one now’ and I’m now stuck face to face with this piper who looks like he’s going to eat me. So the upshot of the story is I’m stuck directly in front of this piper the whole performance. I can’t move, I’m stuck, I’ve got a crowd on my left hand side, a camera on my right, a piper in front of me and a table behind me.

So with these fun and games going on thats it from BBC Scotland. The pipe band plays us into the credits and it’s called a cut. Now this is where everyone gets shocked. See because it’s Hogmany and we’ve got exclusive BBC passes, there’s plenty of booze and space everyone expected the party to continue into the wee hours of the morning. Those people are in for the shock of their lives because we wern’t even called ‘cut’ and the crews were already dismantling the equipment and getting the audience out. It turns out that the BBC only rent out the castle for the night, at 6am next morning the castle has to reopen. So that means ‘everyone out and leave the floor behind’ even before we’re cut.

So thats my brave and heroic story. Wish I could of mentioned more as to what happened but I figure this is long enough already. I’d like to thank you brave people for reading and my regular updates will continue soon.

Posted on August 24th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Blog