Day Four

Thursday 31st October 1991.

Yes, indeed, escalating shit. On air non-stop all morning, no breakfast, an extra fifteen minutes in bed seemed more important. Shot and coming down. All hot with the sweats, missed the crucial shower this morning.

Got into the early evening with a heavily deteriorating brain, dying on the vine when all Hell breaks loose and some big, fuck off Israeli delegate shows up and does this exclusive press thing. As all the allowed reporters and crews burst in Geoff's camera (set up in the best position possible) drops off its tripod and goes down. He shakes it and it rattles - that can't be good. I have never seen an expression on anybodys face quite like that. Instead of crying, Geoff just says to me 'Why didn't you catch it?'
Still, the money him and Lee are making off flogging MBC sweatshirts should see him through the bad times.

Things slow down again and we get to drink in between bulletins until it all stops and then we're back at the hotel bar drinking more Four Roses, getting depressed about the accelerating shit tomorrow and talking about the cool things we had done that had gotten us through the day.

Two of the cool things being:
A/ Graham fixing London's vision mixing desk over talk-back, which is a bit like telling a stewardess how to land a 747 over the phone.
B/ The coolest thing I've ever done. There's five microphones on the news set, all hard-wired to a particular chair. Four of these are in use during a live broadcast, only as I got the four people on so quick I've put the wrong mikes on them. So the mike for the fifth chair is all the way over by chair one. If you see what I mean.
Whilst the live interview drags on , Marney tells me a fifth guy is turning up and needs to be slipped on while they're all still on air. And, as I said, the mike is all the way around the other side of the fucking set.
So I've crouched down, tugging at all the wires, which are like an unkempt rain forest, until I see the far away mike moving. Just out of shot, I pulled that fucking mike all the way around the back of the set, in and out of chair legs, up and over the branch of a fucking palm tree that's there to make the flat beige backdrop look interesting. It didn't catch on anything. Lee's watching me with this 'What the fuck are you doing?' look, and, when I've finally got the thing in my hand, Marney comes up and tells me the guest is a no-show.
Miserable fucker. I hope his country gets a good bombing off someone.

Drank solidly in the bar until it closed, punctuating the Four Roses with an occasional toastie, thinking about the 6am start tomorrow. That doesn't sound good.