Not the best day yesterday. I was scheduled to film a class on Mortgage Fee Reclaiming for an ITV1 Tonight “Reclaim, Reclaim, Reclaim” show in a couple of weeks. Seven people came along so I could show them how to do it. The problem? I’ve been ill all week – run-down, tired and nauseous. Unfortunately in my job you can’t really call in sick: there’s a crew booked, venue, people coming from all over the country, and if I’m not there it doesn’t happen. When you’re on-air on telly, there’s no fill-in possible.
So I dragged myself out of bed, went along, took a Motilium (thing from the chemist that makes the nausea go away a little) put my head down and did it. Unfortunately, we were using heavy lights, which meant it was about 1,200 degrees in there – not exactly what was needed. I managed to keep up the ‘show must go on’ attitude for a couple of hours and thankfully all went well. Then right at the end, the producer wanted me to do a piece to camera coming out of a lift. My problem was I’d mentally switched, and found myself sitting on the floor by the wall trying to keep composed and stop myself needing to run in to gaze down at the porcelain chamber.
Having mustered myself to do it, I got in the lift to ride down a floor then come back up so I could do the piece as the doors opened. Yet one floor below a couple of Chinese tourists got in, and I had to travel 12 floors down with them first… AAAARGGGHHHH!
Still hopefully the programme will be good, and the joys of make-up mean you won’t see my green gills.