I’m feeling annoyed with myself after my GMTV slot this morning. Having done energy capping yesterday in a way I was really proud of, there was so much interest they wanted me on again. I had three minutes, as many people were confused, and sadly I think I probably hindered rather than helped.
Part of the problem was there were, understandably, lots of emails from viewers who were confused over a complex subject. Yet some were so confused that in a way, trying to untangle them made it more confusing for others. The other part was just me being pants – in three minutes, when it goes wrong, it’s very difficult to rescue.
I’d been shown one question before where a person said capping had increased their bill from £60 to £120 a month. Now this simply isn’t possible; there’s no cap out there that’d come close to doubling your costs. This is almost certainly a case of an increase in Direct Debit costs, not the cost of the energy itself. As such it opens up a bag full of issues which aren’t relevant to trying to get the ‘last chance to cap, you have to do it this morning’ message out there – which I’m really passionate about at the moment.
So the producer agreed to switch to a different question that helped explain things better. Yet I got in the studio and, as can happen on live TV, no one had managed to tell Ben, who then asked it me. Inside my heart dropped as to try and explain it was a nightmare, and even more frustrating due to the time constraints on a complex subject. From then on, it was on my mind, and having had only four hours sleep last night due to trying to get it all sorted, and a bit of insomnia, it was like swimming upstream. The last thing I said to Ben and Kate as I left, was I was worried I’d come across as aggressive.
The frustrating thing is you’re always only as good as your last spot on air, so even now, a few hours later, I’m mulling it over. I know some of the message came across, but still it’s left a nasty taste in my mouth… and I’m not back on GMTV until next week.
