Since my days as a presenter on student television at the University of Glasgow and the University of Cambridge, as well as a production assistant in the News Room at BBC Cambridgeshire, I had always hoped that the day would come for my own appearance on TV to talk about a subject I was passionate about. It took place on Wednesday 19th October 2016. The experience was delightful but different from what I had expected. See Nolan Live! where the debate starts at 41 minutes and 16 seconds.
On the good side the lead up to it was amazing: prepaid taxi from house to airport, flight to Belfast, taxi awaiting me with driver holding the board with my name on it to whisk me through the streets of Belfast to my comfortable hotel next door to the BBC studios. Having been escorted at the appointed time to my own dressing room at the BBC, I was offered various refreshments and sandwiches at the Green Room where the guest band, Smokie, were hanging out. This was followed by a trip to the make-up room where Maria prepared me for the limelight with hand painted lip gloss, powder and eye liner. I felt like a pampered movie star for brief moment. Later on I heard that such treatment is not available in all TV studios. BBC Belfast, unusually, retains some of its old traditions.
Despite asking several members of staff what the line of questioning would be, all that I was told was that it would be on whether parents or teachers should talk about internet porn to their kids. Also just an hour before going on I discovered that there would be another person in the debate, Carole Malone, a columnist for the Mirror newspaper and sometime commentator on shows like Loose Women. We didn’t meet till the moment before we went into the studio before a live audience. Has she been keeping her distance to be all the keener in the debate?
I thought the sight of 160 or so faces and TV cameras would have made me anxious, but in fact it didn’t. What I hadn’t been prepared for was the constant interruption by both Stephen Nolan, the main presenter, and by Carole Malone, his winger. Maybe that was to keep the show lively. But his constant focus on what I would teach to 10 year olds about sex or porn rather than porn harms meant my key points about the impact on older children would not make as much sense. In fact I did get some of that in later but it was tough. The show the previous week was not unlike a bear pit. I should have been warned. Nolan Live! is the most popular TV show in Northern Ireland so a bit haranguing keeps the ratings high.
No matter. The whole thing was an enjoyable experience. It was a valuable lesson about the utter necessity to have key messages in neat sound bites ready to spout forth in spite of any Punch and Judy antics going on around me. At least Nolan did produce some good statistics from the new study by the NSPCC about viewing habits of young teenagers and the vox pops of people in the street, text messages and studio audience gave credence to my claim for the need for education throughout the school years from P7 to S6. I hope I’ll get the opportunity to spread the message about the need for good brain–based education again sometime. That appears to be one of the most effective ways of helping those snared by excessive porn use to overcome it.
To leave us all on a happy note, the band Smokie played “Living next door to Alice” and we all joined in the chorus waving our hands in the air like teenagers. A great time was had by all. Thanks, Mr Nolan, for the opportunity to cut my teeth on BBC One.
