I had the very uncomfortable experience of watching PR carnage today at the BT Tower. Normally you’re not allowed inside. Someone planted a bomb above a roof tile on the 31st floor back in the 1970s. It exploded at 4.30 in the morning and took two years to put right the damage, so naturally they’re a bit sniffy about who they let in. There are big unfriendly signs outside in a selection of languages, and I had to take my driving licence to prove who I was.

Once past the door police, there was a bag search and metal detector thing that positively screamed when it found a paper clip inside one of my pockets. It did the same with the shiny paper on my pack of Polos. Without doubt, it was one of the most closely guarded press events I’ve been to.

It all started innocently enough. We were shown into a smart little auditorium where big speakers were pumping out relaxing little sounds of birds chirping and water trickling. I sat with PC Pro Jim and we chatted about the merits or otherwise of the Harry Potter film until the lights dimmed and the birds were frightened away by thumping music and a computerish film on the double screens in front of us.

Now I’ve been to enough of these presentations to know that it’s virtually impossible to follow this kind of thing. No matter how powerful and commanding your voice, it always sounds weak and feeble after loud music and graphics on a big screen, but the drama that was about to unfold really was a jarring contrast.

The speaker stood up from the front row and his radio mic jumped out of his pocket as he climbed the steps to the podium. Then, as he was recoiling its tail he discovered that his Powerpoint slides would not load onto the screens as the computer at the back of the auditorium had spontaneously rebooted itself. He stood there for a couple of uncomfortable minutes thanking us for our patience while Windows played with itself, all the while the silence getting louder and wider.

Once the computer had been revived, things seemed to be going well for a while, until we got to the ‘what next’ slides looking ahead into the future. It was then that something stuck, and the poor guy was left filling time while he flipped back and forth between the same two stalled screens again and again. A couple of button taps later the slides once again behaved and we were onto the home strait.

Then the birds came back, quite loud, and they brought the water with them. Our speaker pretended he’d not heard them, and soldiered on through his last few lines as though nothing had happened.

We all applauded him warmly, then filed slowly out of the auditorium, making sideways remarks about how sorry we felt for him.

Most of the other journalists went back to playing the games we’d been taken there to see, but Jim and I wanted to go up to the top of the tower, so we hung around by the cups of tea until a PR person came over and asked us if we were OK. As soon as we said we wanted to go up, she got onto her walkie talkie and sorted out someone to take us to the very smart, rather space-age lift.

To get excited about a lift is probably quite worrying, but this was the best lift I have ever been in. Instead of having a boring floor counter you have a big status panel sunk into the wall. It has a pointer showing how much you all weigh. We crammed it full, but it was still only about half way up to its maximum. To the left of this is a speedometer that shows you how fast you are going. This is one of the fastest lifts in Europe, apparently, and as we shot up to the top we could all feel our ears popping. You could feel it decelerate as you got up to the top, too, and you felt like you were coming off the floor a little. It goes from the bottom to the top of the tower (which is just 38 metres wide to stop it swaying too much in the wind) in 30 seconds.

The doors opened to a fantastic view across London of Centre Point, the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. I have never see a view like it. Everyone said “wow” and walked over to the windows and just stood and stared. I got my camera out and took a load of photos (see here).

We turned on our phones to see if they would work in there. We had cooked up this conspiracy theory that only Cellnet would work in the BT Tower, but my Virgin Mobile and Jim’s Orange phone both worked without a hitch. We took a picture of them looking out across London, deep inside enemy territory.

When we’d taken all the pictures we could, we sat down with drinks and nibbles and looked out across the capital as the skies got darker and the lights came on. We were a bit disappointed that the floor we were on wasn’t rotating. Someone, I can’t remember who, had told me it wouldn’t turn any more, but someone else said they probably had to turn it now and then so it wouldn’t seize up.

To find out once and for all, Jim went and asked the girl behind the bar if they could switch it on. She asked a BT guy and he said he’d sort it.

Nothing happened for a bit, and I thought he’d said it just to keep us quiet, but then there was a sudden jolt and we jumped to the left a bit. Another jolt, and it started to spin around clockwise. It was an extraordinary feeling to know that the whole of the top of the building you are in is moving around. The central core doesn’t move, or it would tangle up the lift cables, so we stood with one foot on the central bit and one on the rest of the floor and watched as they separated. Very childish, but something that had to be done.

I was surprised how fast it went. I’d already read that it took 22 minutes to do a complete turn, but when you looked at the carpet that moved and compared it to the carpet that didn’t it looked like it would take much less than that.

They could make a fantastic ride out of it if they could spin it as fast as those centiruge things at the fair where you stick to the walls and they take away the floor.

I wonder how much it costs to make it turn around like that.

We had to leave before we completed our revolution (or the floor disappeared) which was a shame, but they gave us certificates downstairs (on which they had spelt my name wrong) and bars of chocolate with pictures of the Tower pressed into them. I can’t help feeling they missed an opportunity to make BT Tower pepper mills where you turn the 34th floor and pepper comes out of the foundations.

Brilliant day, though. Once in a lifetime, probably.

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