91Èȱ¬

The powers-that-be have scheduled Inside Out for a return in October of this year.

It can be difficult to straddle our off-air periods if the break is more than a few months.

If we start filming something when, say, springtime blooms are clearly in the background it doesn't look right on screen in autumn when it's blowing a hoolie outside and all the leaves are off the trees. We are a current affairs series after all.

So how, I hear you ask, do you fill your downtime? Well, the upside of a longish break is that we can get some serious investigations off the ground.

Ferreting around to unearth the truth can often be a long laborious process.

Colleagues can spend ages ploughing through financial accounts, convincing reluctant key witnesses to confide in us, working out how best to get a complicated story onto the screens.

It all takes time, but original journalism isn't a quick and easy job.

For obvious reasons I can't divulge what we're working on at the moment - but unlike the frenzy of when we are putting out a programme each week, there is an air of calm.

Working in current affairs is like doing a with a sprint finish. No-one sees you for most of the race. They assume you've only been running since just before you rounded the last bend.

Like any other hacks we work best to a tight deadline and with the finishing line nowhere near in sight we allow ourselves a slower pace.

The boss, ever mindful of the impending next series and how we are going to get enough stories in the can, gives us gentle prods to get moving. The closer to autumn we get, the firmer the prods will become.

We share an office with the Politics Show team whose workload shadows the timetable of parliament. Downstairs our radio colleagues at 91Èȱ¬ Newcastle have a never-ending stream of hourly deadlines - so we all have a different journalistic rhythm.

I still feel like a teacher justifying the long summer hols. Perhaps I need the same answer...it's all about preparation for next term. We better do our homework now or else we'll all be in trouble come exam time!

Not often that a story breaks right on the doorstep. This lunchtime (19 May 2011) a huge pall of thick black smoke rose over Newcastle.

As reporters were despatched to the scene in Byker I grabbed a camera and started taking some footage for the Look North headlines at 13:30 BST, 91Èȱ¬1.

With less than an hour to go before they go on-air it's going to be a race to get it all turned round in time.

All the excitement of chasing a developing story for the nightly news is coming back to me. As you'll see from the previous post - with 25 years of doing the job, the thrill of going after a story never leaves you.

If the buzz on twitter (look for #ouseburn or #byker) and facebook is anything to go by it seems everyone is a journo at heart.

This may be a major event, or turn out to be just an unfortunate accident that's easily dealt with and no one hurt. Either way the pics certainly make it look dramatic.

No-one quite prepares you for the sudden realisation that you've been around a bit.

When I hit 30 I still felt like a teenager at heart, and so it followed that at 40 I was mentally entering my twenties.

If you're doing the maths and working out how old I am now, put it this way, my head is due a 30th birthday card in September. (Answer at the end of this blog)

The same is true of your work life.

At 08:30 GMT on Thursday 19 May 2011 I will have notched up 25 years service at the 91Èȱ¬.

I joined the week before Radio Newcastle moved into the .

You may notice from the pictures that pink was a dominant theme! With a brand spanking new building and equipment it was all very exciting.

Back then I was the thrusting young reporter who was lucky enough to go on to present a weekday radio news show.

Of the line up in the picture all but one are still working for the 91Èȱ¬ in some guise or other.

I look around now and the building is still standing, but in need of constant attention. Incredibly much of the broadcast equipment is still the very same.

In fact this flyer from circa shows my good self in the same studio with the mixing desk that is still in use today.

The old screens and vinyl on the turntable are a giveaway. Much like the tardis it's had a few new bells and whistles added, but it's basically the same old gear.

What has changed is all the faces. With a few notable exceptions (Yes, that is Colin Briggs in the background) I am now the oldest guy in town.

Some things have disappeared, , tape, razor blades to edit it with, lunch breaks!

I hope I've not become too much of an old hack who bores everyone with tales of the good old days. are rarely in focus.

Now we can get news out in an instant and from the most remote locations. The technical quality of sound and pictures is so much better.

The internet, email and mobile phones have made a journalist's life infinitely more productive.

So I look forward to 25 years from now. I won't be sunning myself on a tropical isle unless the lottery or pools comes in.

No, with any luck I'll be wheeled in to some 91Èȱ¬ reunion in my bathchair. There I hope to overhear today's thrusting young things remembering with fondness how mp3 players, wifi, blu-ray and HDTV are just so passé.

(answer: I hit the big 5-0 this autumn)

If someone trots out the phrase...

"That's just health and safety gone mad"

I usually think well maybe it looks a bit overprotective, but there's probably a good reason behind it.

Weird stuff happens from the most innocuous implements. !

Common sense however is something we seem to have abandoned.

I am going to a wedding soon and wanted to buy a tie pin.

A well known high street store advised me:

"I am sorry Sir, we no longer sell tie pins on the grounds of health and safety."

What! Am I seriously in danger of fatally stabbing myself with it? Has ever used one as a murder weapon?

Sadly other stores were equally unhelpful. I ended up having to get one online. I felt like I was secretly ordering weapons of mass destruction from a dodgy arms dealer, rather than trying to get a cheap bit of bling.

I once got a nasty paper cut so on that basis let's ban all stationery.

I'm sure you'll have your own stories of over-the-top reactions to safety - feel free to add them to the comments section of the blog.

The madness of course continues this coming weekend with the . As sure as eggs is eggs (non salmonella variety of course) Greece will vote for Cyprus as their favourite and someone will have a costume gimmick as part of their routine.

I admit it's a guilty pleasure watching a couple of hours of Eurononk, but amongst this I have been alerted to some semblance of sanity - from, of all places, Belgium.

Well, strike a light (safety matches only please), if their entry is not only musical - it is made up of pure vocals. What appears to be a backing track of instruments is in entirely human sounds as you can witness here:

Belgium have to get through the 2nd semi-final before they are in with a chance of winning.

However if the contest really is about the music then on the big night they'll surely be up there at the top of the leader board (with safety harness on, naturellement).

I remember my amazement the first time I was given an office mobile phone for a foreign trip. It was so big a modern budget airline would have refused it as hand baggage. It weighed a ton.

However there I was on a Swiss mountainside when it rang and the office were asking how my filming was going.

How on earth had it tracked me down to the middle of nowhere and a foreign nowhere at that? Tell kids today and they'll laugh.

I fear we are about to enter a similar brave new world in TV technology. We are going .

There is something very reassuring about ejecting a tape and placing it on your dedicated office shelf. You can glance at it knowing a hard day's slog has been captured and it will be there when you come to edit the film.

This week we visited the production office of .

Former Inside Out colleagues from Yorkshire had split off to produce the popular series from a hanger at .

They follow the daily lives of the air ambulance.

Video journalists use the lightest possible cameras, but everything they shoot ends up on tiny little disks hardly bigger than a builder's thumb nail.

It's the next generation of TV technology and it's heading our way. I'm in a bit of denial as all I see is 101 ways to lose your material.

Here are just a few:

• Accidentally dropped into a cup of boiling tea


• Left in a "safe" place and forgotten


• Placed in a jeans pocket and put through the washing machine

My cutting edge colleagues assure me if you are disciplined all will be well. But once you download it onto a computer we all know the perils that await.

Who hasn't pressed delete and regretted it? ....tried to open a file and found it has corrupted in some way? .... had a computer crash and take all contents with it?

I'm no , but with everything being miniaturised and digitised we all sign up to a blind trust in technology that we as individuals have no way of controlling.

When an old car broke down, I could open the bonnet and have a fair chance of making it go again. These days it's all electronics and a garage is the only solution.

I welcome the higher quality and lower cost that newer technology brings. I just wish it was more tactile and failsafe.

In my loft I have vinyl records, reel to reel tape and the odd VHS cassette, but nothing to play any of them on. Old habits die hard in a world of constant change.