By Myles Palmer
The car came at noon to take me to the BBC to talk about The Professor,my paperback.
I don’t know where Radio 5 Live is based, so I ask the driver which building we are going to.
He says we are going to Stage Door at TV Centre.
We arrive at Reception, which is now called…Stage Door. Don’t ask me why.
The entrance area looks much the same as always, except for a Driver’s Desk with a small coloured display monitor which gives your name, arrival time, and estimated departure time. It says whether your driver has arrived, or will be ten minutes late.
I’ve been at TVC many times, sometimes working, sometimes for lunch, sometimes for fun.
But never to go on air myself.
As I’m waiting at 12.40 to be called for the 1pm start of the Simo Mayo Show I start to feel a bit nervous.
Then I start feeling sleepy, so I get up and go for a walk outside.
Within the circular courtyard, which has tall curved buildings round 80% of a circle, there are wooden tables and chairs where staff and guests can sit in the sunshine and drink coffee and eat snacks.
Then a lad, Patrick, comes to take me up and it’s the usual, a room with a circular table and six seats facing six microphones.The studio has a door which opens and closes very quietly.
Simon asks me about The Professor and I say that the book took six years to write, that Arsene Wenger is a teacher, that English culture is backward and needs teachers, and stuff like that.
Reporter Pat Murphy joins us on a link from the Oval, where he is reporting the Test Match. Pat’s a very good sports reporter of my generation and I wish he was here with us.
Pat says Wenger does nothing to develop young England players but I defend AW by saying that he always encouraged Adams,Seaman, and Keown to play for England as long as they could and never obstructed their selection.
Talk radio is very, very topical, very concerned with the issues of the day. I say that if Jeffers thinks Aliadiere is ahead of him in the pecking order he might leave Arsenal in January.
(But I really DON’T want to see that happen.)
Uncannily, for me, we then go over to join a Sven press
conference, which is exactly what we did a year ago when I was on the Richard Kaufman afternoon show on TalkSport.
As we were walking up to the studio Patrick had said, jokingly,”Don’t mention TalkSport around here.”
So I don’t mention it.
But I think : that match in September 2001 was a long, long,long,long time ago. Before September 11, before Ulrika, before Ronaldinho.
The world was different then.Everyone rated Sven. He was new, confident, credible, unsoiled,unfailed, untainted, carrying all our hopes and dreams.
The sound quality on the feed from Sutton Coldfield is poor, and what Sven is saying is pretty boring, and for a split-second I think Simon is gonna fade Sven out. But we stay with it.
Gordon, the sports news reporter, says (off-air) that TV sound is rubbish compared to radio sound. He says that an important press conference like Sven’s needs a radio car and two engineers to mike it up properly.
I talk off-air with Ade, a young black guy sitting next to me,who is in a wheelchair.
He is a Paralympic basketball player for Great Britain and his team got to the final of last year’s World Championships, after losing three semi-finals previously.
Ade has been on the programme before and is a better chatter
than I am. Let’s face it, everyone on this show is a better
broadcaster than I am, especially the girls and boys who come in to read the latest news, weather and sports results.
On the desk, between us, Ade has a sheet of paper with, at the top, a short email from a listener, which he has read out earlier.
On his paper I slowly write down, name by name, in block capitals, what I think tomorrow’s England team should be.
I write as follows : ROBINSON-MILLS RIO WOODY COLE -BOWYER GERRARD BUTT DUNN-SMITH OWEN.
Simon apologises to listeners for the sound quality from Sven and I signal to him, facially, that I would like to say something about England v Portugal.
So I say,”I’ve given up on Sven now, but I’m looking forward to seeing Portugal. I watched them train at Wembley before theirlast two games against England and Rui Costa wasn’t there for either of those games, so I hope he will be playing this time.”
What I should have said was,”Sven should be good at sussing out the mentalities of three countries: Sweden, Italy andPortugal. He drew with Sweden, so that theory did not work first time out. He’s due a success at Villa Park because he should be able to guess exactly what Portugal will do.”
In the corridor, after Ade, Gordon and I have left the studio, I give Gordon a copy of What’s the Story? Boring Glory, the book I co-wrote with Mark Jacob three years ago.
I ask him togive this to Simon, who is a Spurs fan.
It’s a warm late summer afternoon as I wait outside for my driver.
A people-carrier arrives and a young brunette gets out,and a woman with an attache case, and a small, grey-haired man in a black blazer: Norman Wisdom. He is also on the Simon Mayo show today.
A young woman in a pink jumper is waiting for her driver. She tells me she works for the BBC in Bristol, but lives in Stroud.
I tell her that I haven’t been here since seeing a Jools Holland Later programme. She says that Jools did a good gig at her art college years some years ago.
I tell her that a band I used to co-manage supported Squeeze at the Lyceum, and my partner Danny and I agreed that if we were managing Squeeze we wouldn’t let Jools talk, let alone sing.
But he became a successful TV presenter, proving me wrong.
I recall coming round here one night, I think after a midweek match at QPR, to see Sarah McLachlan do one ballad on the piano, on Later, the day before I interviewed her at a hotel in Regents Park.
The woman’s car comes, we part amid fond farewells, then my
car comes.
A different driver wheels me back, says he often takes Jeremy Paxman home after Newsnight.
He tells me where Jeremy lives.It’s not in London.
I arrive at an empty house and make tea and put the cricket on TV and watch while listening to a Mary Black double CD which came this morning. I’ve said I will interview Mary if I like the album.And I like the album.
At the exact moment that England lose their last wicket, all out for 515, I hear the front door open and Caroline comes back from a shopping trip, delighted with her new school rucksack, a spiffing red one, and white trainers.
She heard part of the Simon Mayo Show before she went out.
She says, “Well done, Dad!”
She reckons I did OK.
6th September 2002