BBC | Autumn Watch

Does your holiday begin at the airport?

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:20:23 +0000

On the day that Heathrow Terminal 5 opened, I landed at Heathrow Terminal 4. I was on a flight from Bangkok, and remember how quiet the terminal seemed and how smooth it was to get from plane to baggage hall to main concourse. It was only when I got into a taxi that my attention was drawn to events nearby. "Terminal Four seems very quiet today," I remarked to the driver. "Yes," he said, "but you should see the chaos that's going on just around the corner".

No-one currently working at Terminal 5 denies that the first few weeks were shambolic. But on a visit there this week to record material for our Easter Monday programme it was hard to find anyone with a bad word to say for the place. Even when I interrupted passengers in the middle of their meals they remained good-humoured. Two Australian women liked it, so did a family heading off to the United States, and so did a regular British business traveller.

Of course we were there on one of those days when everything was running smoothly. The airport was busy, but not too busy. Flights were landing and taking off on time. The queues at security were manageable. Lessons have been learned, I was told, after last year's Icelandic ash cloud debacle so that airports are better prepared for the bad days as well as the good ones.

But how typical is Terminal 5? Part of the reason for going there was to assess whether people can regard the holiday as starting at check-in or when the plane lands at its final destination. As travel writer, Alison Rice, says during the programme...Terminal 5 is one thing, Gatwick on a busy Saturday afternoon is quite another. You can hear an interview with Emma Gilthorpe, director of regulation at Heathrow, on Easter Monday's programme.

We'll also run a series of what we're calling 'hidden gems'...places in the UK, picked by celebrities, that are way off the usual tourist trail. What makes these places special as far as our guests are concerned? And by all means tell us about some 'hidden gems' of your own. Add them to this blog, and see how they compare with the choices of our celebrity guests.

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

You & Yours Anniversary Programmes

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:16:18 +0000

A friend of mine accused me of sounding 'wide-eyed' (if it's possible to sound wide-eyed) during one of the trailers for the You & Yours anniversary programmes. He was referring to my comments about the telephone, and how our use of it has been utterly transformed over the last forty years. Hopefully now that you've heard the programme in question you'll agree we've been through a period of dramatic change in telecommunications.

I was seven in 1970, and can remember the one telephone in the hall and the excitement that accompanied the arrival of the second slimline one in my parents' bedroom. When phones first went cordless I can remember the frustration I felt at the promise of freedom this new gadget would offer, only to discover that the reality was rather different. Walk more than six feet away from the main machine and the voice at the other end would at best crackle, and at worst disappear altogether. And I'm sure I'm still nursing the shoulder pains from lifting my first 'mobile'.

There's always a risk with anniversary programmes. Archive material is often intoxicating, and once we start listening to it the danger is that we overuse it, delighting in telling you too much about the past and too little about the future. I hope you'll agree that the archive material we used in the 'telephone' anniversary programme set the tone very nicely. The excerpt from Any Questions?, as panellists debated the merits of writing a letter as opposed to making a phonecall, was a lovely snapshot of the time, and then there were presenter Joan Yorke's instructions to listeners who wanted to get in touch. Suffice to say the system wasn't as spontaneous in the early 1970s as it is today.

So we looked ahead in the 'telephone' programme as well as indulging in a little bit of nostalgia. When I rather naively asked our contributor from the BBC's 'Click' programme if there was realistically anything else he wanted our mobile phones to do, it was someone else's turn to sound 'wide-eyed'. His enthusiasm for what may lie ahead was undoubted. You won't necessarily like everything he looked forward to - I confess I wasn't convinced - but it did suggest that when celebrating You & Yours' 80th anniversary we'll have plenty to talk about.

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

It's NOT cricket, or is it? - Today's Close Call

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:38:09 +0000

We came close to asking you what the topic should be for today's 'Call You & Yours'. We found ourselves on the horns of a dilemma because of the events of the last forty-eight hours in the world of cricket. Should we put 'on hold' our plan to debate the apparent shortcomings that exist in this country when it comes to learning foreign languages, and discuss fair play in sport instead?

After all, Radio 4 LW is the home of 'Test Match Special' so it's fair to assume a significant proportion of our listeners are cricket enthusiasts and it was also possible to take the debate beyond cricket by citing the recent 'bloodgate' affair in rugby union. But we didn't, and here's why.

In our minds a successful 'Call You & Yours' is as much about experience on the part of the callers as it is about opinion. We can all think of phone-in programmes where the listening experience is made up of a series of incredulous glances towards the radio and cries of "yes, but how do you know?". I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those programmes, but we're after a little more light and a little less heat.

So against that backdrop our fear was that a cricket-related phone-in would provoke frustration and outrage, certainly, but not quite so much insight. And if people did come on the air volunteering an experience of being encouraged to cheat at sport, we were clearly venturing into difficult legal territory if any names were mentioned. "I remember Mr Jones at our sports club promising us a fiver if we conceded a last minute equaliser" would be an interesting addition to the debate, but I don't suppose it would go down very well with Mr Jones. Especially if he didn't do it. In which case it wouldn't go down very well with the BBC lawyers either.

So we stuck with our original plan, a plan which was generating a lot of correspondence the moment Peter mentioned it on last Friday's programme. By all means tell us if you think we made the right decision. And who knows...maybe we'll put it to the vote in the future.

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

Radio Studio Web Cams

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:48:01 +0000

I was presenting the programme from Manchester today; I do my Monday and Tuesday from here once a month, and Winifred does the same on her Wednesday and Thursday.

During a quiet moment in today's programme - and there weren't many of those - I found myself glancing up at the studio camera. It's small and unobtrusive enough to go almost unnoticed, but when I looked at it today it reminded me of two things: firstly the internal debate several years ago about the introduction of the webcam in radio studios, and secondly arguably the worst moment of Gordon Brown's recent election campaign.

The latter is a reference to the former Prime Minister's encounter with Gillian Duffy on the streets of Rochdale. After he made his unguarded remarks about Mrs Duffy in his car, they were - you'll recall - played back to him when he appeared live on Jeremy Vine's Radio 2 programme. The studio in which he briefly leant forwards, resting his brow on his hand, was the selfsame one that I was sitting in today. It resonated with me at the time because I happened to be presenting on the BBC's TV news channel that lunchtime, and watched Mr Brown's reaction knowing exactly where he was and who was likely to be watching him from the adjoining cubicle. I don't suppose he had time to consider the décor around him, but the dark plum walls didn't improve from appearing on the small screen.

The webcam debate is a more interesting one. As someone who presents on both radio and television I've always had misgivings about the blurring of the former medium to make it more like the latter. One of radio's many charms is - surely - the pictures it allows the listeners to build in their minds. Pictures of their choosing, not ours.

I remember when webcams were first introduced and I was presenting on Radio Five Live at the time. One of my fellow presenters - who will remain nameless - took such exception to their arrival that he covered the one in his studio with a paper bag. Of course in the end he could only take his rebellion so far, but I remember having a lot of sympathy with him at the time, and still do. After all, as a committed 'Archers' fan I don't want to know what the actor who plays Jolene looks like in real life; Jolene exists in my head, and that's where she should stay.

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.

Play Me, I'm Yours

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:46:41 +0000

It brought together a German woman with her two children, tourists from Seoul and Montreal, a group of four City workers nursing pints outside the nearby pub, and several very gifted amateur musicians. I'm talking about an upright piano, left apparently at random in the wide pedestrianised thoroughfare between St. Paul's Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge in central London, which absolutely anyone could play if they wished to. It was part of the cultural initiative called "Play me, I'm Yours", and it featured on today's edition of You & Yours.

I went to see it last Thursday with colleague and producer, Catherine Carr. Our brief was to record some of the piano playing, talk to some of those brave enough to have a go, and gauge the reaction of those listening. It was a genuinely uplifting experience.

Firstly, the talent of those playing was often breathtaking. One student, who claimed that he only took up the piano two years previously, gave us a medley of - among others - Rachmaninov, Chopin and Mozart. Initially tentative, he soon became absorbed in his playing, so much so that he seemed entirely oblivious of what was going on around him...including Catherine's and my potential intrusion involving a microphone and recording equipment. When he finished, a young lad from Belgium who'd also been very modest about his musical achievements, maintained the high performance standard.

Secondly, it brought out the best in passers-by. Complete strangers who wouldn't usually dream of starting up a conversation seemed entirely at ease when chatting to a neighbour about the music they were both listening to. There were smiles, throwaway observations, and a genuine appreciation of what was going on, even among those who were the first to admit they knew very little about the music being played.

Of course the other reason I was sent out to cover this was because I play the piano myself. I began learning when I was five, and reached a reasonable standard as a teenager. These days, though, standards have noticeably slipped, although I still enjoy it as a source of relaxation when there's a need to escape the rigours of the BBC. So I knew - and Catherine was egging me on - that at some point during this recording I was going to have to play this particular piano myself. In front of all these passers-by. Immediately after a brilliant student.

Thankfully I was able to remember the start of the second movement of one of my favourite Beethoven sonatas, the Pathetique. The fingers landed largely in the right places, we recorded as much as we needed, and I decided to quit while I was ahead. The onlookers clapped more generously than I deserved - egged on by Catherine once again - and I was able to return to the office with my reputation just about intact. If you were there and you applauded, thank you very much!

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.

Abolishing a Law

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:37:19 +0000

The quality of any phone-in programme relies heavily on the strength of the callers but next week we'll be relying on the ingenuity of listeners even more than usual. On Tuesday's Call You and Yours we're taking the lead of deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and asking you which law you'd most like to see abolished.

We can claim to have given early voice to this notion - in the run-up to the 2005 General Election we used Call You and Yours to compile a Listeners' Manifesto. One of the top five suggestions was that no new law should be introduced without another being abolished.

A quick straw poll in the office revealed an end to road speed restrictions would be popular. There was one vote for speed cameras, one for speed limits on motorways - that from the tiny, male contingent on the team. By contrast Winifred lives a life of such unparalleled perfection she couldn't think of a single law she'd like to do without.

On the Today Programme, the Taxpayers Alliance suggested the ID Cards Act and the Digital Economy Act should be ditched. And the TUC wants to scrap the VAT exemption on private school fees.

Anyway we want your contributions to this Government-inspired debate. I'll be presenting Call You and Yours on Tuesday July 6th from 12-1. The number to call on the day is 03700 100 444. Lines are open from 10-1.
Or you can email youandyours@bbc.co.uk at any time.

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.

New Territory

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:00:58 +0000

It struck me last week - when I was presenting last Tuesday's outside broadcast during the Budget speech from Gateshead - and again yesterday during 'Call You & Yours' that we're in one of those rare periods when people are both more engaged with the political discourse and more prepared to think the unthinkable. And then express the unthinkable.

In Gateshead, on a beautiful morning overlooking the banks of the River Tyne, I and my colleague, Sally, ventured out with a tape-recorder to - as we say in the trade - 'do a vox-pop'. In other words stop people in the street, interrupt them when they'd rather be left alone, and elicit their views on the burning issue of the day.

Usually I avoid doing these if at all possible. I don't enjoy butting in on people's days any more than they enjoy being on the receiving end of my pleading, but on this occasion it was a strangely enjoyable experience. Yes, it was a warm, sunny morning, which makes people naturally more accommodating when a strange man approaches them with a microphone, but people also wanted to talk. Even when I mentioned the Budget. This was a political event that people were interested in, and although they knew bad news was coming their way, they still wanted to discuss it. I can't think of a Budget that's had that effect on the British public for many a year.

As for expressing the unthinkable, that's what seems to be happening now that the Budget measures have been announced. A government is in place that is causing us to ask 'do we really need this organisation or that body or that amount of spending?' The answer may be yes or no, but there's something quite refreshing about the fact that the debate is happening at all. Only yesterday on 'Call You & Yours, as we examined the future of the housing market, a caller argued the case in favour of reducing the housing benefit budget. This wasn't an argument I'd heard for a good while, and because he held a strong view in one direction he quickly provoked equally strong views the other way.

Our job on You & Yours is to make sure that we properly scrutinise the effects all these changes in taxes and benefits are going to have on people currently dependent on them. If we don't, I'm sure you'll let us know.

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.

Climbing the walls?

Mon, 24 May 2010 13:51:36 +0000

Not to be outdone by Winifred's garden furniture/wasp troubles, I spent last Thursday morning in my garden in the interests of You & Yours. This was to discuss ivy, a plant that proliferates in my tiny corner of west London, and which was the subject of discussion on today's programme.

According to a study carried out by researchers at Oxford University ivy doesn't necessarily destroy buildings after all. A three-year project, analysing the effects of ivy growing on buildings in five different parts of England, discovered that the plant plays a protective role. A canopy of ivy can act like a thermal shield, it absorbs some of the harmful pollutants in the atmosphere...and problems only tend to arise when it's pulled out too vigorously and parts of the wall come with it.

To examine this further a colleague and I welcomed David Hurrian, from Gardeners' World magazine, to my garden in Chiswick. Recordings like this ought to be quite straightforward, involving a working machine, a microphone and a talkative guest. But they aren't without their problems. While I like to portray my garden as a little oasis six miles from Trafalgar Square traffic noise is audible, planes rumble overhead, and there are the neighbours to bear in mind too. And this can lead to all manner of editing problems.

It's one thing to edit portions of speech, it's quite another to do it in such a way that the background noise doesn't suddenly do something unexpected. I remember being taught at radio journalism college about the perils of recording an interview with a clock ticking the background. If the interview is carelessly edited, the clock can go from being gentle and unintrusive to wildly erratic and consequently very distracting. Listeners don't pay an attention to the interview because they're too busy wondering if the clock in the background is going to be repaired in the near future!

Anyway, I digress. Today's piece about ivy provoked a lot of correspondence, so by all means add to it via other sections of our website, or you can just admire the photograph of me and gardener, David Hurrian.

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

Icelandic Volcanic Ash - A You and Yours special programme.

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:29:29 +0000

It's not every Saturday evening that the 'You & Yours' editor, Andrew Smith, gives me a call. But when he did so last weekend he told me he was considering doing a special programme concentrating on the effects of the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland, and wanted to know how I felt about the idea. I said I was keen and we spoke again later on; he timed his second phone call expertly...just after Spurs had completed their home win over Chelsea. I think it's fair to say my mind had been elsewhere during the previous hour and three quarters.

It's the first time since I've been presenting You & Yours that a programme running order has been entirely discarded in favour of something more pressing. Our dilemma was that the story would clearly be extensively covered by other news-based programmes on Radio 4, so what could we add? We concluded that there were so many angles for a consumer-based programme that we were right to pursue them and that to do so comprehensively would take up the entire fifty-two and a half minutes. It meant a lot of extra work on Sunday and there was a bit of extra adrenalin in evidence during the Monday morning programme meeting - we went to a different room and the controller popped along briefly too - and it meant the revised running order was decidedly fluid until moments before we went on the air.

Did it work? I think and hope so, but you may disagree! Have a listen! We tried to balance the individual stories of frustration and derring-do with wider information about compensation and insurance...and we threw in some science and some engineering too. And we've continued exploring those angles in subsequent programmes.

Of course one thing on Monday was left unsaid...the name of the offending volcano. I have unashamedly wimped out of that one so far. When I was broadcasting on the World Service last weekend a colleague displayed his flair for Icelandic pronunciation by naming it with great ease and confidence. I tended to side with an Australian journalist who was a guest on the programme at the time; she said she'd climbed the volcano in question but had never dared pronounce it. When advised by a fellow Icelander she said she was told that the secret was to say the name quickly and as if slightly drunk!

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.
Other Links. Elisabeth Mahoney at The Guardian

Resting 'Call You & Yours'

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:28:21 +0000

A word about tomorrow (Tuesday). Usually I'd be presenting Call You & Yours rather than the more familiar programme format, but during the election campaign it's been decided that our weekly phone-in will be rested. This is simply to make way for the election calls which are being incorporated into extended editions of The World at One.

A weekly phone-in is a hard programme to get right. If its subject matter is dependent only on the news of the day then it risks duplicating phone-ins on other stations, most notably Radio 5 Live. But if we opt for a topic which is significantly divorced from the news agenda then people aren't talking about it and are less likely to call in.

One of the other dilemmas we face, of course, is how we decide who to put on the air. On a busy Tuesday we may get several hundred calls, but realistically only between fifteen and twenty of them will make it onto the radio. There are several rules of thumb; a good caller will have personal experiences which add to the subject matter being discussed and/or a view that they can back up with some evidence and expertise. In other words we're aiming to shed more light than heat on our chosen subject matter via you, the callers. And if we can move to a constructive conclusion at around five to one, that rounds things off very nicely too.

As for my role...I think it's best described as a juggling act. If you come on the air I must show you the courtesy of allowing you to express your point of view. But I also have to bear in mind that at some point either someone else wants to have their say, or the vast majority of you who are just listening would like me to move things on. Or express a bit of healthy scepticism on your behalf. Then there are the guests to bring in and the e-mails to make space for. The fifty-two and a half minutes tend to go very very quickly.

I'm not sure what we'd have talked about tomorrow had 'Call...' been in place as usual. But I do know that if we'd opened the phonelines today on either dazzling headlights or native daffodils, we'd have been debating both topics well into the afternoon.

Julian Worricker is a presenter on You & Yours

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.
Telephone picture by Dan Brady. Used under licence.

Welcome to the You & Yours Blog

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:10:40 +0000

Welcome to the new You & Yours blog...a chance for us to keep more in touch with you about the programmes we're making, and for Winifred, Peter and me to show off our literary skills. The former we can pretty much guarantee; the latter we'll leave for you to judge.

Those of us who broadcast live can see e-mails coming in as we speak. I've always taken the view that it's a bit of a double-edged sword; of course it's useful to gauge immediate reaction to a particular item, but there's a danger that we place too much store on the views of a tiny minority...and those of us of a sensitive disposition occasionally read things we'd rather avoid. I emphasise 'occasionally', and of course sometimes we deserve it anyway!

We receive about a thousand e-mails from you each week, plus a trickle of letters and dozens of phone calls...and they're always welcome. Often our best stories are generated by you; those when the world has dealt you an injustice, and we've been able to follow it up and hold someone to account. What this blog will do is extend that level of communication; the aim is for it to become a conversation between us and you.

So over the coming months you'll read contributions from me, Winifred and Peter. We'll give you insights into how the programme is put together, how our roles fit into those of the rest of the production team, and we'll be pretty candid about the moments when things don't go entirely according to plan. As, no doubt, will you!

You'll also hear from the programme's editor, Andrew Smith, whose literary skills the rest of us will naturally defer to at all times, and from some of the reporters working on specific stories. Andrew will be dealing with some of the thornier issues that arise - the complaints and questions about the complex agenda of You & Yours. I dare say he'll also reflect from time to time on some of the other programmes he edits - Face the Facts, In Touch and soon The Media Show.

And if you are relatively new to the world of blogging...then have a look at the main Radio 4 blog which gives you a bit more of an idea of what you'll get from us. I can't guarantee that the Radio 4 controller, Mark Damazer, will contribute as regularly as he does to that one, but I'm sure we can twist his arm to offer his two-penneth once in a while.

In the meantime I hope your appetite is whetted for what lies ahead, and I'll return to what for me is a day away from the live programme. So I can sit here writing and researching for interviews that lie ahead, while Winifred does all the truly hard work at the other end of the room.