If ever you find yourself with ten minutes to spare, and you’re a BBC employee, and you’re in Television Centre, and you’ve got the right access, and you know the right people, sit down at a spare desk in the BBC Radio 5 live production office.

I was lucky enough to be able to do this this afternoon, waiting for a meeting to start, sitting at a desk tapping away at my little netbook. I’m plodding around the interactive teams of all the networks, letting them know what I’m doing, showing them stuff we’re working on.

On the desk in front of me, a natty little video tuning thing which enabled me to look at all kinds of feeds coming in from across the world. I figured out how to switch on the telly it was attached to, to be rewarded with a quad screen of the two BBC News channels (BBC News Channel for the UK; the commercial BBC World News for the rest of the world), and two other news channels. I flicked the channel-up button a few times. “Coming next: Pope/Mass”, said a screen, branded with a news agency logo. “Free to all”, it added, hopefully. Next up was a camera locked off at the London Stock Exchange. Further up was a feed from the BBC News Channel studio: presenters looking at the scripts, rehearsing their next bit, waiting for the package to end. Further still, a set of colourbars from the BBC Southampton outside broadcast unit.

And then I stopped watching the telly and started listening to the hubbub around me. Phones, constantly ringing. The burble of a calm-sounding woman on talkback from one of the studios, and someone in the office chatting back to her. Someone on the phone wanting a comment about one of the big news stories. A screen showing what items are being cued up next for Radio 5 live, and someone juggling the order around. More phones. Talkback letting us know that an important politician was doing a live piece later, probably about the expenses story. Someone else asking the disembodied voice to check exactly what the live press announcement would really be about. Someone else, editing a script while snatching a late sandwich. All the while, the calm voice of Sony Radio Academy Award-winner Simon Mayo, originally coming from the studio just a few paces away, and now carried on some invisible speaker somewhere in the ceiling.

I sat, listened, and absorbed.

This was the coal-face. This was where the work was being done. No discussions about ecosystems and budgetary constraints; the only politics here were the politics of the country, not the politics of the company; the only deadlines weren’t arbitrary launch dates of new features but minute-by-minute decisions that were shaping a live broadcast.

Brett Spencer, interactive editor of the 5 live interactive team, leant over. “It’s always like this,” he said. This is the environment he works in every day. But for me, it was a fascinating, enthralling, half-hour.

Easily my highlight of the year so far.

Photo: Robin Hamman. Used under licence. Thanks!

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