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TIMECODE NAME Dialogue MUSIC 00.00.01 NARRATOR This is the BBC academy podcast, essential listening for the production, journalism and technology broadcast communities. Your guide to everything from craft skills, to taking your next step in the industry. 00.00.15 CHARLES Welcome to the first of our new series of BBC Academy podcasts. I’m Charles Miller and this week I’m delighted to be in the studio of BBC Radio London, with its breakfast show presenter Vanessa Feltz and her producer Gemma Stevenson. Good morning both. 00.00.28 VANESSA Good morning. 00.00.30 CHARLES Well as a regular listener I’m looking forward to finding out how you put the show together, particularly the phone in element, but can we start with your schedule Vanessa. It’s still just 10 o’clock in the morning and you’ve finished a 3 hour show here but amazingly that was your second live show already today cos you already do one on Radio 2 every morning from 5 to 6.30. How do you manage that? 00.00.52 VANESSA I’ve no idea – I don’t know I do it. I don’t know – I’m fuelled very much by the love of the of the job – I mean it’s a great gig – it’s a fabulous thing to work on radio and the two shows I present are very very different. The first is early breakfast on Radio 2 which is mellow – there’s lots of music – there’s a review of the papers – there are lots of interactive activities for the listener – lovely listeners as I call him or her or all of my lovely listeners. 00.01.19 So that’s a very different mood and then I come charging across two roads and up various flights of stairs and I get here about 6.34 and we’re on air live at 7 o’clock, with topical news stories that pertain to London that day. 00.01.34 CHARLES So Gemma you’ve got a few valuable minutes between the end of Vanessa’s previous show and the start of your show with Vanessa. How do you use that time to prepare for the show? 00.01.44 GEMMA Well Vanessa and I will have been talking from just before 5 o’clock in the morning via various text messages, so we will know what stories we’re going to cover that morning. And so when she gets in, it’s just a case of getting all the scripts together. Vanessa writes her own introduction for the programme and the first scripts we’ll go through it – we’ll go through the guests we’ve got and I will very quickly give a really quick summary of everybody that we’ve got so she knows the important parts of the programme. 00.02.23 CHARLES So Vanessa I want to ask you about the phone in side of it in particular – what’s a good subject for a phone in? 00.02.20 VANESSA Well a great subject is a subject with a very clear yes or a no – a very clear you know you can feel very strongly in favour and you can feel equally strongly against AND people have had personal experience of it – it engages them – they respond. I mean today for example on the show we talked about school uniform because a headmaster in Margate had sent 50 pupils home on the first day of school – it was in fact his first day at the school himself as www.bbc.co.uk/academy 2

headmaster – he said he wanted perfect uniform for every child. 00.02.47 The parents were up in arms – the police arrived – there was a massive altercation and he responded on the second day of school by sending another 20 people home for imperfect uniform. So that’s a good subject cos most people can relate to it one way or another – people have strong views on it – some people think it’s character building to wear uniform – others think it smashes all individuality – it’s a terrible idea – I can be fairly personable about it because it’s not political and it doesn’t compromise the BBC in anyway if I am. 00.03.10 Gemma can be pretty personal as well and we can – you know we can all just kind of wade in with great kind of ferocity. So that’s a good kind of a subject for us really. 00.03.19 CHARLES Well I particularly enjoyed you being personal on the question of your own uniform and your old teachers. Let’s just have a quick listen to that bit of the show. 00.03.29 VANESSA (SHOW) It’s incredibly difficult to be a teenager and confined by school uniform and I particularly remember at the haberdashers out school for girls in Elstree – a teacher called Miss Sargenson who was so ancient then I can’t believe she’s still with us – if she is I wish her every good wish – but she used to have to measure our heels with what in those days used to be called a yard stick we were so pre- metric. And and you were allowed 2 ¼ inches and no higher – we were ever being sent to be measured. You know we could have been – we could have been doing something else – I don’t know what – probably sending notes to the boys across the road but we could have been gainfully employed – instead we were either in the chemistry lab having our nail varnish removed by Miss Gover with acetone or we were having Miss Sargenson measure our shoes. And at the time I thought it was utter bilge and I think even looking back I still think it was a load of absolute rubbish really. 00.04.15 CHARLES So that was absolutely fluent – was that completely made up on the spot or did you have notes about that or what? 00.04.20 VANESSA I don’t have any notes about that – that’s my own life I should be fluent. If I can’t be fluent about my own life and my own personal experience what can I be fluent about and also we require that from our listeners – we require them to ring in and be very fluent with their own memories and their own emotions. And actually they’re magnificent – I mean I call them lovely listeners because they really are – there is nothing that is either too high fluten too complicated too precise to exclude them –they’re absolutely magnificent. 00.04.45 And they regularly change what I thought was my mind pretty much on a daily basis. 00.04.51 CHARLES Gemma can you just talk me through what happens – if I phone in the show and I’ve got a point to make – what’s the sort of process between there and actually getting on air with Vanessa? 00.04.58 GEMMA I sit out out there with two people who will answer the phones and they will take the name, the number, the area they’re calling from and the story that they want to talk about. And they’ve very www.bbc.co.uk/academy 3

experienced at doing it so they can very quickly get to whether this is a a good caller for air – whether this is an amazing caller – you know they alert me immediately if they think this is – this is the best caller we’ve had so far because they’ve got this personal story. 00.05.23 And then I will go through them and we’ll decide which callers we want, it might be that we want any caller at some points in the show – it might be that we want callers from different sides – it might be that we want a different story. Or if we’re doing a couple of subjects we might want to mix the callers up as well. 00.05.39 CHARLES So Vanessa do you think that the ideal caller is somebody that the audience can identify with presenting their point of view or are you looking for something a bit more extreme – something with a lot of passion where people are just going to sort of stop in their tracks and say oh my god I can’t believe somebody’s saying that? 00.05.54 VANESSA Both – I mean I think we’re looking for callers who are funny and warm and have a charming story to tell. We’re looking for callers who are irascible and unpleasant and will alienate people so people will phone up. We’re looking for callers who are incredibly knowledgeable and informed and will take the discussion on because they are actually somebody who either is in the army or is a firefighter or has been in politics or you know has just had a miscarriage or whatever the thing we’re talking about is. So we’re looking for knowledge – we’re looking for warmth – oomph – humour and we’re also looking for you know an individual with whom I profoundly disagree or our listeners might disagree because obviously they take the story up a notch. 00.06.30 You know I I can’t think really of a caller that isn’t a good caller – if they can be bothered to phone in its not as if we’re offering them a cash inducement or a cuddly toy or a set of you know six candlesticks for phoning in – they just do it cos they want to and that’s the battle to get people to want to bother to phone in – they’ve all got lives – they’re busy and for them to make time for us I consider to be a great compliment and therefore I’m very pleased to hear from everybody. I’m not pretending to be pleased I’m really pleased. 00.06.57 I want people to care enough to bother to pick up the phone to engage with us and when they do we value the call. I can’t think of a call we don’t value – we value all the callers. 00.07.05 GEMMA No and I think it’s important that we have some callers who don’t understand that the topic that we’re talking about not because they’re too stupid to understand it but because sometimes it can be something political that is quite complicated and they can say hang on Vanessa I don’t understand this. And Vanessa will say “ ok good because then we get a chance - (TALKING OVER EACH OTHER) 00.07.23 VANESSA And sometimes I say and neither do I – when it was the one about proportional representation I really didn’t understand it – it was absolutely hilarious and I kept saying to Liz “I still don’t understand it”. So then they ring up and say look say Vanessa right like you’ve got a box of chocolates ok – oh right you’ve got the orange www.bbc.co.uk/academy 4

cream alright – right you’ve got the strawberry cream and I’m like I just don’t – hang on I’ve got another caller for Vanessa – ok we’ve got someone here – alright look you’ve got a fruit stall right – there are some bananas ok there’s some apples. 00.07.45 I mean it was really – it was good fun – I wasn’t pretending I never would – I never ever would pretend anything – I will only tell the truth otherwise it’s completely pointless. So I really didn’t understand it – by the end I’d say I had a better idea of it – I wouldn’t say I necessarily triumphed over my own ignorance but I tried. And there’s some entertainment and some kind of information in that too. 00.08.04 CHARLES Do you think that in this job you have to be prepared to share your private life with the public? 00.08.10 VANESSA I think you have to be very careful about how much you do and don’t share, because there’s a danger that you can swamp every single subject by appearing to own it and appearing to know about it or have had a deeper engagement in it or just be the expert on everything. So you don’t want to just dollop great chunks of your personal life all over everything – you really don’t because it would discourage people from phoning in – they would feel as if they couldn’t possibly compete or whatever it is. 00.08.34 And also you can’t be the expert on everything – I haven’t had everything happen to me. So I sometimes refer to my personal life but only when I really feel that it’s necessary or I think it will add something or bring something. I’d rather speak to the callers. 00.08.49 GEMMA But you are very honest about things that have happened in your life which I think is what’s important to the listener that if something has happened to Vanessa you know the family the divorce, the children anything like that then they know that they can bring it up with her. 00.09.04 CHARLES What about the regular callers, you’ve got people that you’ve spoken to over the years I suppose. They have a sort of almost a special privilege do they to getting through on the show? 00.09.15 VANESSA Well yes and no – I mean not really they don’t have a privilege getting through but obviously when they do get through I recognise their voices and I know something about their lives and so do the other listeners. And we had a lovely caller called Joan in Wallington and Joan had been phoning us – I don’t know how many times I’d spoken to her over the years- you know hundreds maybe – charming lady very informed lovely beautiful lilting voice – lovely enveloping personality and anyway she died and we were very, very sad to hear it. And lots of listeners phoned in to say so, and then her son phoned in and told us how much it had meant to her to feature on the programme and the way in which we’d always greeted her and treated her and all of that. 00.09.53 And , you know it was very moving – it was very real because obviously this is a real part of people’s lives it really – it truly is – people do feel connected to the radio and they do feel connected to the programme and I’m glad they do – I want them to. www.bbc.co.uk/academy 5

00.10.04 CHARLES When you’re dealing with some of those very personal subjects I sometimes am reminded of a sort of therapy session in that it’s in public but you’re very very intimate in the exchanges that you have with these people. Do you – are you sort of aware of that? 00.10.21 VANESSA Well I’m not a therapist – I’m not a trained therapist – I’ve never pretend to be so I’m not giving solutions although very occasionally I do say look forgive me I know you haven’t asked but this is what I think you should do, but only about once a year maybe –you know if that – I don’t normally boss people around or try and tell them what to do. But there’s something about confessing to something or or expressing something on a radio show – the person can’t be seen and yet they can be very intimately and clearly heard. 00.10.45 I mean once I had a caller who talked about having a backstreet abortion you know in the days when abortion was illegal and the caller said you know I’ve never talked about this before- I haven’t told my husband – I haven’t told anybody. And you know something like that is a, a hugely big deal. And certainly with all the programmes that we’ve done on you know being sexually abused as a child following the Jimmy Saville story and the Stuart Hall story and all these other stories – we’ve had some amazing calls, highly upsetting and disturbing calls. 00.11.14 And I do think people say they feel better for having made the call. 00.11.18 CHARLES Gemma do you feel, where does your responsibility sort of start in terms of well this is really getting too personal or too intimate? 00.11.25 GEMMA For the caller? 00.11.27 CHARLES Well either for the caller or for the listener I guess? 00.11.29 GEMMA I think if people are willing to share it and to talk about it then we are here to listen to them. I think Vanessa’s down played her part in this but people do only call up because it’s Vanessa. We are very careful that if somebody sounds like they need help that we follow that up with either some advice – some telephone numbers they can call – that we’ve called them back and check with them they’re ok with it. If they call in about something we are happy that they don’t have to use their real name if they don’t want to, or we tell them about not using the names of family members – that kind of thing if they’re talking about their children or something like that. 00.12.08 We did have a caller who came on it actually to talk about something completely different and burst into tears the minute he was on the programme about something completely different and poured his heart out to Vanessa. And I followed that up for a few days afterwards to check that he was ok and he’s still emailing and calling now. 00.12.27 CHARLES What happens if for example like happened earlier this week, a caller suddenly says er that a certain MPs been doing drugs or something and you’re potentially getting into a libellous situation – how do you sort of stop that?

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00.12.38 VANESSA I would say something like well I– you know we don’t have any confirmation of that, we certainly can’t confirm that – it’s not something that’s come to the attention of me or of the BBC and I do hope that, you know no offence has been caused by it. I mean what can you do – it’s entirely live – we don’t have any delay or anything like that so we can’t edit the programme – it’s absolutely live – what you hear is exactly what’s being said and you can’t please people in advance. 00.13.01 I mean you hope they’re not going to say something that’s untoward or libellous or slanderous or swear er or offend anybody but if they do they do and we just have to apologise that’s all you can really do. 00.13.09 CHARLES Just tell me about the communication between the two of you particularly during the show. I mean you’ve worked together I understand for a very long time – just tell me about the relationship between the two of you? 00.13.20 GEMMA Do you want me to go first or are you going to go first? 00.13.22 VANESSA You go first. 00.13.24 GEMMA Vanessa and I have obviously talked a lot especially since starting the breakfast show cos that’s been a brand new thing for us about the thing about what we want – about what we don’t want – about what we – you know what time are we going to go to the travel and things like that 00.13.37 CHARLES Because before you had a show it was 9 to 12 00.13.40 GEMMA 9 to 12 so we were very much in the in a different kind of 00.13.44 VANESSA Zone 00.13.45 GEMMA Zone at that time so now we’re doing the breakfast show we’ve had to have lots of chats about the programme and where it’s going and so I think occasionally a look from me will make Vanessa look up occasionally and go oh yeah. I do talk into her ear if she needs me , or if I need to tell her something she’s extremely good at taking that – obviously try not to as often as I can. But I think and during each break I come in here and we talk mostly about what’s happening on the programme. 00.14.18 VANESSA So every 15 minutes we talk face to face – the rest of the time she makes faces at me through the thing or occasionally shouts in my ear – she’s quite frightening so I have to do what she tells me to do. If she makes a face of disapproval I’m like oh my god what have I done – what have I said? 00.14.30 CHARLES Can there be disagreements between you on air? 00.14.30 GEMMA/VANESSA Yeah 00.14.33 CHARLES What like this person is no good let’s get rid of him or? 00.14.35 VANESSA No more like I d’ – which subject to do or what order to do it in that kind of thing 00.14.40 GEMMA Yeah 00.14.41 VANESSA But I always credit Gemma if she’s insisted I do something and I www.bbc.co.uk/academy 7

haven’t wanted to and it turns out really well – I always say this was not my idea – I wasn’t go to do this at all but Gemma forced me and it’s been really good. 00.14.49 GEMMA And sometimes there are subjects that will – that only will work because Vanessa chose it and Vanessa is going to do it and I know that she’s got to come here – especially when we’re doing the 9 o’clock hour which is all phone in – she has to come in here. She has to be the one to sell it – she has to be the one to talk about it for an hour and if it’s something that she is really passionate about then we know that’ll work because the listeners love it and they love talking to Vanessa. 00.15.15 VANESSA Thank you very much but of course it’s vital to say I’m a true professional even if I hate it – I will still do it and I’ll give it – and also I have to give it every possible ounce of push because I can’t possibly risk people not phoning in. So I don’t have to be in love with the subject and it doesn’t have to be one I’ve chosen – I cannot – I can’t just go arghh I don’t like it so I think I’ll just sit here and knit a jumper. 00.15.34 I can’t cos there’ll be nothing on the show – I never have a chan’ – I mean most jobs you have a chance not to do your best on certain days and to rest on your laurels and have a piece of cake and have a rest – you really can’t in this particular job – you just can’t cos it’s a phone in and if you don’t do well people won’t phone. So you know everybody can hear whether you’re doing a good show or not so you can’t risk it – you can never allowed to have an off day ever. So so you know I have to love the subject whatever it is really. 00.15.58 But no I think we get we get on great. 00.16.00 GEMMA Yeah we do mostly. 00.16.01 CHARLES Well I’m very grateful to both of you especially Vanessa for staying in the studio longer having already had a long shift – two long shifts so far this morning. So thank you very much to Vanessa Feltz and her producer Gemma Stevenson. 00.16.14 VANESSA Thank you 00.16.14 CHARLES We’ll be back with another podcast next week but in the meantime please follow us on Twitter at BBC Academy or take a look at the BBC Academy website and Facebook page. I’m Charles Miller so thank you very much for listening. 00.16.27 NARRATOR You’ve been listening to the BBC Academy podcast. If you want to find out more about this topic or to hear previous shows search online for the BBC Academy. MUSIC

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