CHRISTINE TALBOT
Buzzing around Yorkshire, our columnist’s days are never the same….
I’ve found myself in many unusual and slightly surreal situations during my years as a TV presenter. There was the hairy half hour I presented live from the top of a dam in South Yorkshire, which was about to break its banks. I also once swam alone across a deep black lagoon in the Northern Territory of Australia for a TV item, only to discover just a week after that it was actually home to a large family of crocodiles.
Less alarmingly, I’ve tap danced with the legendary dancer Lionel Blair in our studio kitchen during the Yorkshire TV days, watched with the hairs on my neck standing on end as Motown diva Gloria Gaynor sang I Will Survive (the song I danced round my handbag to on many a sticky-floored disco) just yards away from me in the studio. I also once played Who Am I? (using forehead Post-it notes) with the Dingle family at 4am to entertain ourselves during an Emmerdale night shoot in which I was playing myself on one of the soap’s big disaster episodes.
But fast-forward to the present day, and to add to my list of memorable moments I recently found myself lolling about on a wet picnic rug in the pouring rain in the company of the wonderful presenter Matt Baker, star of Countryfile and The One Show amongst many other programmes. We were doing a photo shoot at the Great Yorkshire Showground to promote an event we are both involved in at the Great Holiday Home Show next month, and the weather obviously hadn’t got the memo.
The day started off promisingly enough, but I left home with my trusty red jacket thinking its hood may come in useful if there were any ‘spots of rain’. The plan was for me and Matt to pose by the lake happily enjoying a picnic for the benefit of photographers from various news publications.
Come 10.30am and the rain was torrential. Absolutely tipping it down. We gathered for coffee indoors hoping the downpour would break but by 11am we had to make the best of it – the photographers had busy schedules. They also wanted me to ditch the jacket – eek, my hair! – and SIT on the wet rug. To save us being completely drenched we were provided with very large umbrellas but they had to be whipped away as soon as the cameras got clicking so, for half an h
