Fame at Last

I love an audience. Rosemary thinks it's a special skill that I'm happy to stand up in front of a group of people to present. Hmmm...teachers do it everyday though and I just think others who don't like doing it are simply woosebags!

Today I was feeling like a woosebag as I sat on the train frantically going through Tour de France statistics. This week's viewing was the ITU triathlon in Hamburg rather than cycling. (wow....I love the team relay! Well done GB on becoming world champions again). Why? I was being interviewed by Wesley Stephenson for the BBC world service on le Tour.

I arrived at Media City in plenty of time and even had a cheeky wee espresso. "What if he asks me about doping?" I thought worriedly as I sipped my slightly over-roasted treacley libation. "Ahhhh....got a line for that". "Hope he doesn't ask me about who I thought the best climber in recent history was and why" as I was a big Pantani fan.

The BBC receptionist took me into a little sound booth, a dark room with two big mic's, a sound control thingy which she told me not to touch and a display panel. I set out my papers, got WI-Fi connected on my iPad, settled and put the headphones on. A voice came through spot on 10am. "You there Andy?" and we were off. The record button wouldn't work at the London end so Wesley got a sound engineer in to fix it.

"So what's it been like since Sir Dave left?" he asked, assuring me he wasn't recording yet. I was tempted to say my life had been hectic filling such great boots of another famous bald man but that would have been a lie. Rather, I said he had left a wonderful infrastructure in place and Shane Sutton could still pick up the phone to him anytime. Much as I'm a big fan of the Dennis Skinner School of Media, I do actually like much of the party line at work, so the small talk was comfortable and safe.

Eventually the record button became functional after the engineer re-installed the sound card. Wesley was a consummate professional, highly informed on cycling and a great questioner. I was impressed and glad I wasn't a politician. He could have pulled me to pieces had he wished. Towards the end of the interview there was a knock on the door. I ignored it. A few minutes later it became very frantic so I had no choice but to open it. There was a glamourously panicking Eastern European receptionist at the door "you av to geet out nooow" she said.

Because of the earlier technical issue, my interview had overrun and a live Radio 4 interview should have started 3 minutes previously. I said bye to Wesley, gathered up my paraphernalia and rushed out into the bright atrium. A small bearded man, looking like Robin Cook but with better skin, scuttled in and my moment of international fame was over.

I was still excited as I was meeting old friend and Scottish Cycling legend Sandy for lunch. He was in Manchester mechanicing for the Commonwealth Games squad as the Glasgow velodrome is currently being prepared for the event. Although I'm not fiercely nationalistic, it was strangely comforting to be surrounded by familiar faces and accents from home. Slightly more surreal was seeing Jan the GB sprint coach from Germany in Welsh kit. Sandy ribbed me for eating a scone.....but countenanced that as I was not born with the genetics of a great athlete, eating a scone was hardly a major performance limiter. Anyway....big Kev Stewart the Scottish sprint coach was having toad in the hole with chips n gravy!

I had to rush back to my desk and then my world returned to normality for the rest of the day.