Northern Ireland OB

I was phoned at home on Tuesday afternoon to ask if I fancied going to Northern Ireland; as it was somewhere I'd always wanted to go, I jumped at the chance. There were rumours that Tony Blair was going to apologise for Bloody Sunday on Thursday, and Newsgathering wanted Bernadette Kehoe and Adam Brimelow reporting on reaction on the streets of Londonderry... I mean Derry... I mean that place on the banks of the River Foyle... (As luck would have it I was able to avoid having to refer to the city by name until Friday). There was a strong likelihood that the trip would be cancelled, but if it did go ahead I would have to leave at very short notice.

The Guinivere Marconi Inmarsat was on its way back from Katie's trip to Cuba, so I popped into Bush to check it had survived the flight. Bruce Baron and I took it up onto the roof at about 2100 and tested it with both Atlantic Ocean Region East and West satellites, and it worked fine.

On Wednesday morning I had a bit of a lie in - I had been told that Adam Brimelow was flying out in the evening with producer (former club singer and Newsnight court jester) Jonny Dymond, so I assumed that if I was going at all I'd be going with them.

Kate rang at me at home at 10.30am, as I was thinking about breakfast, to say that I was getting the 3pm flight to Belfast, and I'd be coming back on Thursday. I asked if someone could start packing some basic OB gear for me, and ran around the house like a mad thing for 30 minutes getting ready.

Challenge Anneka

When I arrived at Bush no equipment had been sorted out, but luckily Peter Wright and Ben Martin were on hand to help me unpack the Cuba gear and repack it for my trip. We only had one hour to do it in, so there was a "Challenge Anneka" feel to the operation. It now transpired that I would be coming back on Friday...

I got to Heathrow in plenty of time, only to find that my ticket hadn't been paid for. I baulked at the prospect of putting a £264 open return on my credit card (along with the hotel - a snip at £75 per night B&B). Luckily Kate was able to sort it all out, and I met up with Adam and Jonny in the queue for the metal detector.

It was a long, strange drive from Belfast International airport to Derry; it was foggy when we landed and it seemed to take forever to go properly dark. The landscape became hilly and gloomier, not exactly improved by the occasional army checkpoint.

I feel like Alan Partridge

We stayed at the Everglades Hotel, a short drive from the centre of town. It's a nice hotel, even if about ten minutes after you check in you begin to feel like Alan Partridge. About seventeen minutes after you check in, you start to notice the piped pan-pipe music that pervades the entire ground floor of the hotel. It's part of the same chain as the Europa in Belfast; I'm advised that when you check in at the Europa they ask you how you heard of the hotel. Apparently sniggering and saying "Ooh, the last time you were bombed, I think" doesn't go down very well, although a black sense of humour seems to be common among journalists in Northern Ireland.

Foolishly ignoring the excellent Satchmo's restaurant in the hotel, we met up with Bernadette at Da Vincis nearer town. Just as we were leaving we got a phone message that PA News were running a story that Blair would announce a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday on Thursday. The story had broken a good 12 hours before we'd hoped, and Intake wanted Adam and Bernadette to file ASAP. We went straight to Radio Foyle, and set up camp in their Newsroom. Filing radio pieces was simple, using their NCA studio, and it was an education to be on the other end of an NCA circuit having sent guests to NCA studios all over Britain when I was in NPR. Foyle's technical co-ordinator Jim Urquart was extremely helpful in sorting out access to studios.

World TV wanted to two-way Adam, and Jonny had to negotiate time with Newsnight (who had a guest coming in) while I spoke nicely to the crew from Breakfast News who were editing a piece in the same room as the TV studio. They agreed to be quiet while Adam was on. Newsnight went on air - poor Gordon Brewer was told during his opening link to go with the breaking Northern Ireland story and BBC-2 viewers were treated to the sight of his entire body shaking with panic, his script bobbing up and down at an alarming frequency.

Adam needed a shirt and tie for his World TV apperance, and all we could come up with was a security guard's tie and Jonny's bright green number - hardly suitable, so I was sent on a mad dash back to the hotel to collect something in a less-politically sensitive hue. The taxi failed to appear, so a Radio Foyle typist drove me via a whirlwind tour of the city.

Adam duly got changed and did his two-way, only to lose cue near the end; it transpired Newsnight were supposed to have had the circuit for a guest in Belfast, and SCAR had given it to us (and World) in error. A Newsnight person had screamed at SCAR who yanked Adam off the air in mid-flow...

We left Radio Foyle at about 0030 and got some sleep; Jonny and Bernadette had to be on the city walls at 6am on Thursday for a two-way with World TV, while Adam and I had a gentler start to the day.

You are now entering Free Derry...

In what was to become a theme of the trip, News 24 hogged the TV circuit and Bernadette's two-way lasted 50 seconds. Well worth that 0445 alarm call!

The plan was to set up the Inmarsat in the Bogside for Adam to do a live 2-way into World Update at about 1030. We were unable to get hold of the BH OB crews for advice on where to set up, so Jonny called the RUC to check we weren't being foolhardy. With less than an hour to go, Adam was still in his room on his mobile phone and I began to pray that Guinivere would work first time.

We parked in the Bogside, near the memorial to the dead of Bloody Sunday, taking the presence of a Sky News sat-van as an indication that we would be safe. Overlooked by the gable-end murals and the "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY" wall, I set up the Inmarsat which worked perfectly. As we had very little time, I just used the basic set-up of 1 microphone and domestic headphones plugged straight into the CODEC for Adam's contribution to World Update.

Adam being 2-wayed by World Update

Bernadette wandered around the Bogside collecting vox-pops on cassette while Adam interviewed Michael Bradley who was shot on Bloody Sunday. Having connected up the Minx mixer, I fed the vox-pops to the NIA for Britain Today, and Adam's interview to Traffic via NOC for all news outlets.

I had local monitoring problems with the Minx - I couldn't get anything to peak above about 2 on its PPM, and everything sounded distorted (though tests to the NIA suggested my output was infact fine) - so for Bernadette's first live two-way into Britain Today I reverted to the basic set-up. It all went fine, apart from a 10 second gap when presenter Carl Josephs failed to pick up - he later said he was so wrapped up in what Bernadette was saying he thought he was listening to the radio at home!

We had a quick lunch in a pub by the city walls; Sky News was on all the TVs in the pub, and every time an item appeared about Bloody Sunday the bar staff cut the muzak and put the Sky News sound on very loud. They used a brief shot of Adam walking with Michael Bradley, considerably increasing Adam's TV exposure for the day.

In the afternoon we dashed back to the Bogside and re-rigged for another live two-way into Britain Today. As Carl had said that our previous effort was "too studio quality" we decided to leave the car doors open for this one. Then we headed off to the Guildhall for a press conference given by the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday. The world and its sat-vans were parked outside. Just as the relatives began speaking, Bernadette told me she had to do a two-way with World TV, she didn't have her smart jacket with her, and could I possibly pop back to her hotel...

"We're filing from Foyle"

On my way back from the hotel Jonny called to divert me to Radio Foyle. Anyone with even a remote connection to the BBC (and quite a few people without) had invaded Radio Foyle whose staff remained incredibly helpful and cheerful. The NCA studio was solidly in use by others, but we managed to use the GNS "studio" (more like a pokey office) for Bernadette to file a despatch, and to play down Adam's package for the 2115 Britain Today.

Adam's minidisc machine broke, so I retrieved the Newslink one from the car, and I thanked my lucky stars that I'd packed a domestic mini-jack to XLR lead to connect it to the Glensound ISDN unit in the GNS studio. It soon became apparent that Adam's package was rather complicated, but given the lack of time and the fact that it only existed in his head and on a minidisc, we didn't really have any option other than to play it down and hope it got mixed in time. Nathan Chamberlain was in the NIA and rose magnificently to the challenge, making sense of it all.

Jonny quips 'put that bloody camera away and stop behaving like a tourist'

It was an extremely enjoyable trip, even if I spent more time running around and helping to fix interviews than doing traditional SMing.

Some things I couldn't have done without:

• The mains inverter, for powering the sat-phone from a car battery.
• The Newslink mobile phone (Bernadette didn't have one and Jonny's battery kept going flat)
• My Psion database of ISDN and other handy numbers.
• A mini-jack to XLR lead
• A spare minidisc machine

Some things I could have done with:

• More stripy tape, or a better way of taping off the area around the front of the Inmarsat dish (BH people had mic stands and chains).
• More time to talk to people about their experiences using the Inmarsat to file from the field.

Some things I could have done without:

• All the long XLR leads I packed.
• The taxi driver taking me into Bush for my H-shift on Saturday asking me 'are you a Catholic?' (It transpired he wanted to tell me a joke about the Pope and Bill Clinton...)