Harris has a bad leg and is threatening to go home. The Oz has gone to get tea. Faye has fallen out with her midwife. Phil is wandering around muttering about having lost his wellies. Ken is whistling a curious mixture of "I'm forever blowing bubbles" and "Spinning Around".
All of the above and more are relevant to our programme tonight, I just wanted you to know the pressures under which I work.
First Harris and the leg: I am concerned about the leg but more concerned that he is threatening to go home. If it is that serious he should go to hospital, a doctor or a physio. Going home is dealing with the symptoms not the real problem. His report tonight may have influenced this error of analysis. In the last 24 hours, there have been at least three shootings and two stabbings which remain, so far, unsolved. And 10 of Enfield's finest have been collared for allegedly handling stolen goods. Meanwhile, the very men and women, charged not with these crimes but with the management of their solution, are meeting at the Met Police Authority examining their navels as they muse over the now seriously whiskery question of whether or not the Met is institutionally racist.
I abhor racism but I also abhor people banging on with redundant verbiage in a vacuous fashion about what has become an abstract concept whilst real bad stuff is going down on their beat... Maybe that's why Harris really wants to go home: deep frustration rather than dodgy tib' and fib'.
Tune in at 6 and see if we managed to keep him off the bus and on the job. I think we'll win and I think you'll be well served by this master of inquisitive but never cynical journalism.
The Oz and the tea run: if, on her brief journey to the tea-shop, (it's called Butty Boys for some quite incomprehensible reason), she were to chance upon a person who had passed out, dropping a bag to their side which proved to be full of beer-vouchers, I have not the slightest doubt that she would attend to the person's needs and make sure the bag of dosh was secure, pending his or her full recovery. I think you'd do the same. Indeed, I think most people would. Sad, then, that when a little old lady in Enfield, going about her business which may or may not have involved a tea-run, chanced upon all of the above, she apparently lifted the bag of dosh and did a runner. Sad that. Sadder for her, it was all captured on CCTV - so clearly, dear reader, so very clearly! Jon is in a race against time - will the cops get to her before we get to air at 6? Tune in to find out who wins. You'll either have the full, grubby details or a lawyerised version in which we'll try to say "alleged" more times than the Oz says "gu-day" of a day.
Faye and the midwife - a case of "the computer says No" I am afraid. Faye, (jeans, blue pin-striped shirt and shoes the Oz was sure were Chanel but Faye says no, a £35 special from Office) was due an appointment and an IT glitch screwed it up. Officialdom in the form of lots of starch, billowing blue cotton and a passing resemblance to Hattie Jacques, argued with her attempt to re-book: "Her" being the patient, tax payer and excited mother to be. Officialdom: can't live with it but CAN live without it. Officialdom told a lovely couple their precious baby, who needed a heart transplant at 28 days, couldn't have one because no little soul, short of two months of age, can legally become an organ donor. Ergo, no new heart for little Sara. But her parents and her doctor were made of sterner stuff - enjoy the delicious outcome with Liz and consider a campaign to ease the challenge Sara's parents, and others, face.
Phil and the wellies - it's all about draining the lake in St. James' Park. I claimed Henry VIII had established it - Faye thought later and I think it is a score draw but with her winning on penalties. HVIII bought the land, his flame-haired daughter Lizzie, The Virgin Queen, tarted it up, but weird and wonderful James I(England) VI(Scotland) drained the park and created a lake. He, being the exotic dear that he was (if you are over 18, read the history in private) put some of the oddest things imaginable there. This may have attracted a pelican from Southend who is now also resident. Apparently they found a lot of wedding rings last time which prompted the Oz and I both to say "that old trick, again". Phil, if he finds the wellies, will see what else they find this time.
Finally, Ken (West Ham -"I acknowledge no equal") and the songs: he wants the entire Upton Park squad to enter our Search For Stars competition to prove his point that there is SOME talent in his team... that's up to The Big Boss, to be frank, Ken. Ken is not alone, however, in enjoying the musical merits of Miss K. Minogue who is hosting the Brits tonight. Lucy, in a decision devoid of logic from Ken's and my point of view, got the gig.
Chrissie has the weather, we have the papers and I have run out of space.
Join us, if you will, at 6. "Nice tea, Oz: thanks".
Alastair and Miss Darjeeling.
