A day in the life
As part of my contract as Radio Times film editor, I help oversee The Radio Times Guide To Films, a new edition of which is published each year, with around 500 new entries. I don't edit it. That would be a near-full-time job. But I act as a contributing editor and King Solomon figure in star-rating debates. Also, I am expected to act as its mouthpiece and ambassador and promote it. Hence, I got picked up by a car at 6.15am this morning and whisked to White City, where I was installed in a basement store cupboard with an ISDN connection and supplied with fruit, salad, water and decaffienated coffee for the best part of eight solid hours while I talked to every local radio station with five, ten or fifteen minutes to fill about The Radio Times Guide To Films 2007, and in particular, the 100 Landmark Films, a confection we cooked up to help sell the book to, well, local radio stations. (As I did not tire of saying, it's not the 100 Greatest Films of All Time, it's a chronological map of movies that changed the face of cinema, from 1902 to 2005, Le Voyage dans la Lune to Brokeback Mountain, via The Jazz Singer, Snow White, Bicycle Thieves, Singin' In The Rain, A Hard Day's Night, Deep Throat, Tron and Blair Witch.) Here is my itinerary:

0708 Radio Lancashire (with Tony Livesey, the bloke off of the Daily Sport and clips shows)
0715 Radio Hereford
0722 Radio Wales
0730 Radio Manchester (with Terry Christian, ey, no, alright, ey, ey)
0738 Radio Leeds
0752 Radio Kent
0808 Radio Sheffield
0815 Radio York
0822 Radio Scotland (presented by Gary Robertson, I think, along with a seemingly very bitter film critic called Eddie Harrison, I think, from the Glasgow Metro who decided to lay into me personally over what did and didn't make the Top 100, based chiefly on films that he really likes - always a strong criteria for a list in a published film guide - that weren't in it: "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - not in the list; Requiem For A Dream - not in the list; Y Tu Mama Tambien - not in the list; Hidden - not in the list etc." I didn't have time to deal with each case individually, it was a very short piece, but I did get to express my astonishment that I was being so aggressively attacked at 8.30 in the morning! Maybe he was once turned down for work at Radio Times, or maybe they'd asked him to present "the opposite view" in the name of balance - after all, a list in a book is not something that should go unchallenged)
0830 Radio Suffolk
0838 Radio Stoke
0852 Radio Jersey
0900 Radio Oxford
0908 Radio Peterborough
0915 Radio Berkshire (with Henry Kelly! I suggested that Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid portrayed a "tender" relationship between two men years before Brokeback Mountain and he said, "Yes, but they weren't gay, were they?")
0922 Radio Coventry & Warwickshire (with my 6 Music mucker Liz Kershaw in her day job - that was nice)
0930 Break
0945 Radio Hereford & Worcester (presenter was held up in traffic and the slot had to be moved back)
0950 Break (during which I wrote my Film of the Week copy for ... Radio Times!)
1100 Radio Cleveland
1115 British Forces Radio (a nice woman called Hermina Graham, who correctly identified the lack of World War II films in our list, and suggested two excellent additions, which I can't argue with: In Which We Serve and Airplane- I liked the cut of her jib)
1130 Radio Cumbria
1150 Radio Hereford & Worcester (presenter, Tony Fisher, found a spare studio - this was a pre-record for later in the day, in common with one or two others, which tended to be longer slots)
1200 Radio Solent
1215 Lunch
1300 Radio York (presenter Adam Tomlinson running late; didn't get to me until 1310, at which we reorganised for 1330)
1315 Radio Norfolk (camp bloke, didn't catch his name, nice fella)
1330 Radio York
1345 BBC Asian Network (really nice, off-the-cuff woman called Nikki Bedi, who didn't take me to task for the lack of Bollywood films in the Landmarks list, instead sounding impressed that I'd even heard of Devdas, which is at least reviewed in the book!)
1400 Radio Northampton (with Pete Cooper - like coming home, naturally - off-air, he told me that he'd just been the launch of the Deco Theatre panto, Snow White, at which star Gillian Taylforth didn't turn up!)
1415 Radio Jersey (again? I was all over Radio Jersey today)
1430 Radio Merseyside (Linda McDermott, with whom I've chatted on many an occasion)
1450 Radio Southern Counties (with Tommy Boyd - a terrific way to end the day, on my second wind)

And that's it! 28 separate radio interviews, covering largely the same ground (how did we choose the 100?, what's Deep Throat doing in there?, what would be my personal choice as the most landmark film? etc.), spread evenly around this great nation of ours in a world-class piece of military planning by RT's press officer Neelam, all in the cause of telling people that The Radio Times Guide To Films is in the shops and also available by sending off via the magazine and saving two pounds fifty-one pence off the RRP of twenty two pounds fifty - much cheaper on Amazon, of course, but it's not my job to promote them.

Cab home at 1500. Home by 1555, totally mentally drained. I love BBC local radio. Hats off to Nikki Bedi for bringing up Not Going Out too.