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Did a rather mediocre trail for the show in the breakfast programme then caught a slow train in to London. Got to my desk and started the day with a long call to a reader who had just reinstalled Outlook Express and was having trouble combatting spam. He went on for a looooong time. Quarter or an hour at least. So long, in fact, that Mark sent me an instant message to say I was being too nice by still being on the phone to him.

Chatted to Gordon on the messenger just before lunch and he asked if I’d pop into the media shop around the corner to get him a DVD-RW disc. I agreed. Big mistake.

Now, normally this is a very good shop. It’s in the middle of meedjya Soho, so they are pretty clued up on tape formats, discs and other broadcast-type stuff. How the woman who served me managed to sneak onto the staff, then, I don’t know.

I asked her for a DVD-RW disc.

“Mini DV?”

“No. DVD-RW.”

“Yes. I know. For the little cameras.”

“No. Mini DV is a tape. I want a disc.”

She looked confused for a minute then started to stab at her keyboard. When it didn’t bring up any helpful information she asked me what it was going to be used in. I had no idea and suggested I called Gordon while she went off to find the minidiscs I also wanted.

Quite reasonably Gordon couldn’t believe there could possibly be a problem. Especially not here, so I handed the phone to the woman across the counter (she used her non-bandaged arm) and she spoke to him as though she’d never used a phone before. After several “hellos” and “pardons” and repeated requests for the name of the drive in which he was going to use it, she thrust back the phone and said “I’ve lost patience. Come back later when you’ve got what you want.”

I should have walked out there and then, but she’d already swiped my debit card for the minidiscs (many times, apparently - she said she couldn’t get it to work), so I signed the slip and slinked out back to the office.

Gordon and I had a mini-conference over the messenger and he typed out the precise product code he wanted. He said he’s just been on the phone to the shop for half an hour explaining what he wanted and eventually, after he’d been explaining and explaining and explaining they eventually agreed they had some. Reluctantly I agreed to go back and try again. I pointed out this was me being nice - I never intend to go in there again after this.

I took the product code in on the way to ITN and stood for ten minutes while the guy I gave it to discussed it with the guy beside him and together they took it off to some mythical oracle in the back room. They came back with the wrong thing.

Twice.

I left, shaking the dust from my shoes.

The show went well. We had a lot of fun, and loads and loads of phone calls and emails from people with questions. One of them sounded strangely familiar. The name on the screen - Tony from Wokingham - meant nothing, but the problem, reinstalling Outlook Express and having trouble combatting spam, rang some very loud bells. I asked him if he’d called someone at PCW this morning. It turned out he had…

One of the emails stood out, too. It was a follow-up from someone we’d helped on the show the week before thanking us for our efforts.

“Anyway…” he wrote. “I did listen back to your show last week on cassette… driving down to my other work in Portsmouth… just got home and taping this week’s show to listen back to this weekend!! You may think that is so weird…!!! I’m a journalist at [big competitor station]… and at the weekends have my own music based music shows at [big competitor station] down there… (ooh, don’t say that on air)”

Unfortunately I’d not read that bit before I commented on the familiar name and the station I thought I knew it from. Oops.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2001 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.