London Underground Blog on BBC Radio Five

My err dulcet tones

Well, did the interview on BBC Radio Five Live on the shooting Jean Charles de Menezes and people's reaction to arming police on the Tube and you can listen to it later. My thoughts on how it went.....? Well, it's tricky when you have no idea what people are going to ask you, so no matter how much preparation you can do for a live interview, you still end up saying "errr" and "well, er" quite a bit.

You'll note that I say "In my opinion" and "I think" and "I would say" quite a lot, mainly because my mind kept going blank and I could hardly remember your many comments on the subject. The one comment I could remember, I sort of ballsed up (sorry).

In the main I think it went OK, although when listening back to it, the main presenter Rhod Sharpe (lovely guy who was smiling and nodding encouragingly at me while I was speaking), didn't do too well giving out the web address of the blog. But hey ho, I think Google and Yahoo do a good enough job indexing the blog, so if people put in "london hyphen underground blog" in some shape or form they'll find it (in fact a fair few people did find it that way at around the time of the broadcast - people listening at 2.15am onwards - Ah, bless them).

When you listen to the recording there's a bit of a gap at the end and Rhod returns momentarily to talking about his upcoming Jury service, then the recording returns to Chris Vallance (who arranged the interview with me) talking about the blog and how many comments/posts it gets etc etc.

Anyway to listen you have two choices - one is straightforward and takes you straight to the interview and download a fairly ropey quality mp3 recording (9.3KB) or for much better quality you can go to BBCFiveLive's site, visit the Listen Again section - select Tuesday and use the "forward" buttons - forward till you get to 1 hour and 6 minutes into the bulletin (see image) and then you'll hear me around there after the jury service bit. (Phew) Enjoy and comments more than welcome!

Is the Stockwell Shooting story overlooking the victims of the attack?

Something which Rhod mentioned when introducing me and that we've already touched upon in the comments here, is whether all of the news about Jean Charles de Menezes is overshadowing or taking away from the tragedy of the 52 victims killed in the July 7th attacks. But it's interesting that the media are now picking up on this.

The Daily Express are saying it's disrespectful to the families of the 52 victims. Dania Gorodi the sister of Michelle Otto who dies in the the Russell Square bombing said: "Fifty two people who died in the bombing have been totally forgotten and everybody is just totally hysterical about finding someone to pay for that poor young man who died". The Daily Telegraph also cover this story online. You can see my opinion in the original comment I've linked to, and this highlights my observations of how people's comments, thoughts and opinions are changing every day as more facts are coming out.

I didn't get a chance to plug Tuberelief on the interview (sorry Geoff). Although I'm not personally taking part I've been involved in the promotion of this challenge from the start and the aim is to raise 20,000 pounds for the victims and the families of the victims of the attack. I think Geoff will agree that the charitable aspect of this has been very much at the forefront of my involvement. So personally I would be delighted if the emphasis of the current news swung back to the victims. Please consider making a donation to any of the people doing the challenge later this week or a donation to this blog's fundraiser for the victims.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Tuesday, August 23, 2005 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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