Last night, reacting to a slanderous accusation, I burst into Vic Galloway's studio and demanded answers. I got them and, not only that, I recorded the whole thing for the latest video blog.
Watch that now if you want an exclusive glimpse of a live radio show in action, a behind the scenes look at a new drama written by and...a cameo appearance by sports presenter Annie McGuire.
Oh yes.
I didn't realise it at the time, but one night, 25 years ago, in Glasgow's City Chambers, my life changed for the better. It was the night I met the Lord Provost Michael Kelly, he of Glasgow's Miles Better fame. It was also the night I told a group of strangers about my hapless attempts at kissing and cookery. It was a wild night, with the wind and rain lashing against the Venetian stained glass windows of that Victorian building. Demons were afoot.
I would love to tell you more, but that would be giving the game away. Instead I'll have to direct you to the site which is a project we're running in conjunction with the That's where you'll eventually find my story and dozens more. It's also where I hope you'll be persuaded to contribute your own story about a memorable day in your own life.
I had some difficulty deciding what to write. As regular readers of this diary will be all too aware, I've used up every decent and indecent memory for content here. I have yet to tell the story of my ingrown toe-nail but one day that barrel will be scraped dry and I may have to go there.
But not yet.
It was my stupid idea to send Fred MacAulay up to the roof. I thought this would be an ideal way of signalling that summer was on its way. Of course, I should have reckoned on the Scottish climate. A roof party with everyone wearing body-warmers and fleeces was not what I had in mind.
This all happened in June 2004 when we were still working out of the 91Èȱ¬ Scotland H.Q on Queen Margaret Drive. There's footage of that programme and the demolition progress on this week's video blog. There's also me wielding a golf club and actually making contact with a ball. Who needs the Ryder Cup when there's this kind of action available?
I wanted to throw my support behind the new Gaelic TV channel, 91Èȱ¬ Alba. I wanted to write enthusiastically about the opening night and the great line-up of programmes. I wanted to tell you about Monday night's new Gaelic news programme which will come from the studio in Inverness. (the control gallery is my old office, funnily enough). I wanted to do all these things, but I can't., because 91Èȱ¬ Alba has already made me grumpy.
Why? Well, tonight I tuned in via my Sky box and watched an entire SPL fotoball match.
Sadly it was Hearts against Inverness Caley and we got beaten one nil.
I don't pay my licence fee for this kind of torture.
I swung past in Glasgow last night to see what had become of the old 91Èȱ¬ building. What a shock to discover that the demolition work has begun. Somehow all those meetings, rows, internal politics and even the odd creative moment seemed meaningless. They're lost in the rubble and in the mists of time.
There'll will be some video footage of the building and some never-before-seen archive footage of a rooftop broadcast in the next JZ Diary videoblog. That's coming soon.
Here at the 91Èȱ¬ we spend our time drinking tea and having meetings about nothing. Well, that's what some people seem to think including, it has to be said, my wife. So I've been inspired by last week's multi-platform festival to augment this diary with an occasional video blog. This should correct any false impressions of sloth and beverage addiction
I start today with me sitting at my desk in Inverness drinking tea and leafing through the Radio Times. But there's also some action scenes as I actually get off my backside to show you a bit of the refurbished building.
Oh and there's something for art lovers too as I dwell on the drawing by Ella Britton which was gifted to the staff here as part of the informal opening of our new den.
As you'll see, Ella really knows what goes on behind the scenes...
We've been trading stories about how we this week. The best has come from one of our music producers who told me that her eight year old son got up an hour earlier yesterday morning. When she asked him why he was out of bed he said that if the world was going to end later that day then he wanted an extra hour to play on his PS3 before he went to school.
Life's a game, after all.
I am just so close to throttling someone with my bare hands. I only hope he doesn't make too much noise when I jump on him. You see, I'm on the long, snaking National Express train to Inverness. It's the one that sets out from London King's Cross and by the time I join it at Perth there are usually loads of empty seats. Not tonight, though. Tonight I had to trundle my luggage from one carriage to the next until I found a seat in Coach B. That's the quiet coach, the one where you're not supposed to use your mobile phone, chat to other passengers or operate a pneumatic drill. Very peaceful it is too.
At least it was until the man behind me opened a bag of crisps. Even that wouldn't have been so bad if he would just eat them like a normal person. But this guy! One crisp every five minutes and every bite sounds like someone crushing chicken bones with a rolling pin. I tell you, his mouth has better acoustics than the Albert Hall.
Oh no, now he's blowing his nose. It's like a trumpet solo at the 91Èȱ¬ Proms. Look, I'm sorry, but I'm no longer responsible for my actions. If you hear my name mentioned on Good Morning Scotland tomorrow you'll know what it's all about.
He likes cats, real ale and gadgets and he's a man with a vision for radio. Who is he? None other that James Cridland, the Head of Future Media and Technology for 91Èȱ¬ Audio & Music Interactive. (Yes, long job titles are back in fashion here at the Beeb).
I had the pleasure of introducing James at the multi platform festival that's been taking place at Pacific Quay this week. Initially I thought that I had to provide my own presentation, but a quick check with the organisers revealed that my job was simply to warm up the audience with "a few witty remarks". ( At the very last second I decided against making a joke about Gary Glitter and settled on some feeble comments about web jargon.)
James then presented a stunning array of video clips which showed exactly what's possible when you marry radio programmes with visuals. That's happening online, on red button telly and on new digital radios with little screens. The big opportunities, of course, are on mobile phones.
Then I got the chance to ask James one of those questions people ask me whenever I evangelise about the use of videos and slideshows to accompany our radio programmes.
"Surely the joy of radio is that you can listen to it while doing somehing else. If we add all these fancy visuals wont we just be competing with TV for the attention of the audience?"
James made a distrinction between the immersive experience of watching television and the kind of useful "glance-ability" that would be offered with some of the ideas he and his team are developing.
Anyway, if you want to know more about James and his various adventures then have a look at his personal blog by clicking .
Or if you want to learn more about the recent move of the 91Èȱ¬ Radio Player into the 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer then click on his official 91Èȱ¬ blog here
I have been told that and escaped zoo animals are two topics guaranteed to generate a lot of website traffic. This is just one of the nuggets of trivia that I've picked up at the multi-platform conference I've been attending at Pacific Quay this week. Someone else told me that mentioning George Bush on a blog means you are automatically tracked by the ...especially if you also mention the ...and especially if you to them.
I like to think I keep up to date with latest developments in this field, but how wrong I was!
Until today, for example, I had never heard of . This allows you to see, at a glance, which topics are popular on the web and which are getting a lot of news coverage.
Go on, give it a try.
And then there's the jargon. Anthony Lilley (pictured above), who runs productions, has coined the term 'infobesity' to describe the surplus of information that's available on the web.
I'm going to try to work that into various conversations over the next few days, just to see if anyone calls me on it. , for example.
There are people in London who now think I believe in the Loch Ness Monster. You see it's been quite a week for vistors here at the 91Èȱ¬'s revamped studios in Inverness and yesterday I was being interviewed by Sally Hillier. She a reporter with the 91Èȱ¬'s in-house newspaper Ariel and this was her first visit to the Highlands. She told me how her EasyJet pilot had flown over Loch Ness on his final approach. I made the obligatory joke about The Monster. That was a mistake. I can imagine her back at her desk in London telling colleagues that we still believe in Nessie up here. Yes, and we hunt haggis on the hills too.
The Ariel article has been prompted by the imminent launch of , the new TV channel. A new television studio has been built here in Inverness and, as I explained to Sally, this building really has become a microcosm of 91Èȱ¬ Scotland. At different times we're producing programmes for 91Èȱ¬ Radio Scotland, 91Èȱ¬ Radio Nan Gaidheal, Gaelic Television, 91Èȱ¬ News, 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4, plus podcasts and split-frequency coverage of sport.
The place looks quite small on the outisde, but it's a bit of a Tardis once you get through the door. There's now a reasonable space for outdoor performances which we hope to exploit with audience shows next summer.
Another new visitor was John Maxwell Hobbs. He's the Head of Technology at 91Èȱ¬ Scotland and declined my offer of a coffee by rummaging in his bag for his own special tea-bag and asking for a cup of hot water to dunk it in. Perhaps he thought we don't have teabags in Inverness. Just wild haggis. And monsters.
John is, I believe, a New Yorker, and so we had a good talk about internet radio and the convulsions happening in the U.S. market. New copyright charges on that side of the Pond are threatening to decimate the number of online stations...meanwhile the two big Satellite radio comapnies - XM and Sirius - have merged. And we thought we had it bad here trying to predict whethere DAB will be overtaken by Wifi Internet!
The great thing about giving the Head of Technology a tour of the building is that he's interested in all the stuff that other people find too dull. We must have spent a good five minutes talking about the cabling in the roof-space.
Oh yes, it's all glamour here. But no monsters.
Now I know what it feels like to be a stall-holder at the Barras. Today I had to stand up and tell the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press about all the exciting things we have planned for 91Èȱ¬ Radio Scotland in the next six months. Trouble was, I was competing with every other department head at 91Èȱ¬ Scotland and they were also trying to translate their spiel into column inches. They had video clips. I had yoghurt stains on my jacket. Luckily these were spotted by eagle-eyed producer Janie Murphy just minutes before I entered the Viewing Theatre at Pacific Quay.
I was given two minutes to talk about the 9,000 hours of programmes we broadcast every year. I had to be selective, so I told them about our plans to record every piece of work by Robert Burns, about our new Friday night rugby programme, the new drama written by Alexander McCall Smith, a new panel game hosted by Gail Porter and, as the market-stall fantasy began to overtake me, I thought about giving away a free set of tea-towels with every press release. But I didn't.
My main problem when talking to reporters is that I'm always more curious about them than they are about me. Kirtseen Paterson, for example, told me she was a reporter from The Metro and I immediately started quizzing her about the free newspaper market and heard how First Scotrail tend to be over-zealous with their clean-up policies so that train commuters don't get the chance to read the newspapers scattered around the carriages.
Another reporter was describing the perils of going freelance without "the cushion of a nice 91Èȱ¬ pension" and said he felt he only had ten years of a career left before his brain cells gave out. What could I say? I suggested he turn to a life of crime.
Anyway, we got good coverage for the Burns project in and the Metro, and Gail Porter's show got a mention in the Express. No one mentioned the yoghurt.
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