91Èȱ¬

My instructions were to warm up the Any Questions audience ready for the live broadcast from .

The Radio 4 team send in a local 91Èȱ¬ 'turn' to chat with the audience and break the ice before the real programme begins. This was my first time and as my previous blog reveals I was a little nervy. As it turns out I needn't have worried. The 300 strong crowd were already up for some lively debate.

Above all there should be no inhibition from those on the floor in expressing their disdain or agreement with what the panel have to say.

I shamelessly went for the easy option when asking the crowd to practice rapturous applause.

"Let's hear your reaction to the following statement. We have a much better quality of life up North."

I think the audience were ready for the live debate even before I did my turn because when was introduced there was a chorus of booing. He hadn't even said a word or taken his place on the panel. .

As the panel answered the questions, which they really don't get to see beforehand, the Newcastle audience certainly played their part. You can hear for yourself on the 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer.

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It's certainly been a varied seven days.

Last Friday I was the guest of the military at . The base is home to the famous .

Perhaps less well known is the role it plays in our air defences. Deep underground is a bunker. Peering at screens are airmen and women watching not only over our aerial borders, but skies as far afield as Iceland and Scandinavia.

Originally it was built to spot and react to Russian incursions or attacks during the Cold War. Since the observers keep an ever closer eye on aircraft movements within the UK.

This year we celebrate the .

The crews stationed at their high-tech screens beneath the Northumberland countryside are a 21st Century echo of the servicewomen pushing model aircraft around on 1940's maps while moustached officer types scramble to intercept.

The role is the same, only now you'll find women are barking the orders as well as the men.

Seven days later I'm out of the bunker and about to witness four individuals being put squarely in the firing line.

Radio 4's Any Questions is being broadcast from Newcastle's Assembly Rooms on Friday 27 August 2010.

I've been asked to do the warm-up. Not so much a comedy routine to break the ice, it's more of a practice session where the audience can fire questions at me.

I hope to offer a robust defence of the 91Èȱ¬ should the need arise, but I will be wearing Kevlar underwear just in case. Although I've not been told this by the show's producers, I fear my job is to leave the audience scenting blood so they are hungry for the main course.

The assembled crowd will be feeding on a choice panel.

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• , Gordon Brown's former personal pollster and author .

You can hear the results on Radio 4 at 8pm or the repeat followed by Any Answers on Saturday 28 August 2010. Depending on how I did in the warm-up, I may be listening from a hospital bed.

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Over the Summer I've been spending any spare time on rainy weekends researching my family tree. I've discovered a rather disturbing parallel with the 91Èȱ¬ costume drama 'Lark Rise to Candleford'.

In this case Lark Rise is a hamlet called Grassenfield and Candleford is in Northumberland. The real communities are about the same distance apart as the fictional ones - but it's much weirder than that.

created characters who are the spit of my real 19th Century Northumberland forbears, the Davidsons.

My great-great-great-great-uncle William was a stonemason in the tiny community of Grassenfield. His daughter Jane left to live in nearby Otterburn where she became the postmistress.

She never married but was joined in the town by her two spinster sisters who were both dressmakers.

Anyone who watched the popular series can readily spot the similarities. It means I can't now see my ancestors as anything other than those fictional characters.

Elizabeth and Isabella Davidson are easily substituted for Ruby and Pearl Pratt - the gossipy local drapers with no husbands to call their own.

The 1871 places Jane Davidson, as mistress of the Post & Telegraphic Office, squarely in the fictional shoes of Dorcas Lane.

As I have no pictures to go by I can only visualise her as Julia Sawalha swishing down Otterburn High Street.

I'm relieved to say I can't find any flesh and blood to match up to the quirky bible-bashing Thomas Brown.

I suspect real life was a lot tougher than the author's vision of Victorian country society. The Davidsons were eventually drawn to Tyneside and into the employ of the railways.

Strangely the other branch of my family from whom I get my surname also worked as drapers and postmasters. You could argue those trades really are in my blood but funnily enough, just like the novels, I ended up on TV.

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