91Èȱ¬

It's not often the 91Èȱ¬ has to pull out of a live broadcast. However last night there really was no choice.

As you'll see from my last posting on the blog I was all ready to meet an audience of eager Radio 4 listeners in the impressive surroundings of the in County Durham.

I was to do the warm up for Any Questions. Even before I set off from the Pink Palace in Newcastle I had got wind that an incident on the at Sandy was causing delays.

"Hmm" I thought that might make the guests arrival a little close to the wire, but then they are supposed to be at the venue two hours before the actual broadcast. It would be fine.

When I arrived however a producer, who was exceptionally calm in the circumstances, was taking a call from three of the panel all stuck on the same train. They'd got past the earlier problem, but were now stranded at Grantham where signal failure had brought the line to another halt.

Being movers and shakers - among them a government minister - they had unilaterally decided to abandon the train and commandeer a taxi.

Their spirit was admirable, though their chances of making it in time were slim. .

It might have helped plan B: Abandon the Friday transmission but record the show late and play it out in its repeat slot on Saturday lunchtime. That way the follow-up programme Any Answers could also go ahead.

Sadly Friday rush hour and motorway roadworks all conspired to scupper even that.

Host who ironically had managed to jet in to Shildon from of all places had to inform a disappointed audience that their chance to grill the panel would have to wait until another day.

Radio 4 listeners were treated to a rather fascinating substitute programme comparing 'Any Questions' with its US counterpart 'Town Meeting' in the 1950's - it's on the iPlayer if you fancy catching it.

Surrounded by glorious one could only raise an ironic smile, that despite all the advances in public transport and technology, there will always be delays and cancellations.

The one panellist who made it took it all in good heart. I'm not sure about the other three who never made it to Shildon in the end. I think the Minister for Employment might be ringing the Minister for Transport on Monday morning.

I must have been alright on the night when I was kindly asked if I'd be the warm up man for Radio 4's Any Questions programme last Summer.

I've been asked back - and so, as I write, I am about to dust down my suit and polish my shoes before heading off to County Durham.

is the venue for this evening's lively topical radio discussion programme which airs at 20:00 BST on Friday 15 March 2011.

The panel is made up of:

• Employment Minister,


• 20th Century history professor


• Former diplomat and labour peer,


• Brand guru

I'm guessing it's odds on there'll be questions about the , AV voting, Libya, . Incidentally that's a subject being tackled by Richard Moss on Sunday's Politics Show.

The panellists do not get to see the questions the audience have put forward until they're asked on air.

It's live, and about half an hour before the red light comes on and welcomes the nation to the show, I will be putting the audience through its paces. Unless those gathered to hear the panel's answers cheer, laugh, snort, tutt or hiss how will those tuned in at home know what the audience makes of those responses?

Needless to say it won't be a comedy routine, but as temporary ringmaster I will be asking a couple of sure fire questions to get everyone in the mood. Well they worked last time so fingers crossed.

You know you'll get a loud cheer when you ask "Do you think we have a better quality of life in the North compared to the South"? There's nothing like knowing your home crowd.

It will probably be as near unanimous as a .

As once notably remarked in the movies:

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If I've done my job half right, you might hear the airbags go off as well!

Finally this week news that a discredited waste recycling method is being abandoned.

Back in 2008 Inside Out exposed how Premier Waste had been dumping potentially harmful waste close to people's homes.

It was recycling household rubbish into what it called compost-like output. for use as a top layer for restoring refuse tips and even growing plants.

But our exposed how the digestors were failing to sanitise the waste properly.

The waste was giving off a powerful stench and we had it analysed after complaints from worried residents.

Not only did it contain potentially toxic material, even to the naked eye, it was obviously full of plastics etc.

We tried growing plants in it and they ended up stunted and gnarled, compared with a control sample.

After our programme the company was taken back under full council management and the digestors were taken out of service until such time they could satisfy the authorities it could recycle waste safely.

For two years attempts were made to rectify the problems and in .

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Next month I will have been working at the Beeb for 25 years. Hard as it is to believe I'm afraid there is hard evidence to prove it.

It all came as a bit of a shock when someone unearthed what must be my first ever TV appearance. It's a back to the 80's retro nightmare.

It was when I was working at 91Èȱ¬ Radio Newcastle. Look And Read - a Schools TV programme - came to film in our newsroom.

. The programme was called .

As well as a dramatic storyline in which a young actor appeared, there was "Wordy", a bizarre character who helped you to spell, and a "reality" sequence centred around the radio station.

We've had great fun identifying all the old radio hands. There's me as a youthful reporter with an unbelievable amount of hair alongside . He also went on to join Look North later in his career. We must have loved our first experience in front of the camera!

As for the others caught on film, the fuzzy quality of the video makes it a little difficult to identify them. Of the few staff old enough to have been around, all deny it's them. Mainly I think because of the dreadful 80's clothing we all wore.

Seeing an old photograph is bad enough. Somehow the moving image just compounds the pain.

The only lesson to draw from this is no matter how on trend you think you are in the fashion stakes. Give it a couple of decades and what you wore will be laughable.