Welcome to London Tonight Tonight.

This is the official website of London Tonight, on ITV1 in London and the South East every weeknight at 6pm.


28.7.09

LONDON TONIGHT TONIGHT

Hello and Good Afternoon to you...

Well, we're hoping for a change of fortune tonight after the programme had more than its fair share of technical glitches yesterday. You'll often hear people talking of a 'gremlin in the works'. Well, yesterday it felt like a whole family of them had set up home in our works. However, one of the good things about our job is that each day presents a clean sheet (sort of) so it's 'onwards and upwards' (and keep your eyes peeled for gremlins).

I'm sitting next to Ms Cotter today - she's presenting the programme all week - and she's just come back from a chat with Bill Nighy. A terrific actor, most of us would agree and Lucy says he was a lovely bloke to boot. Makes you sick really. Talented and nice. Anyway, Bill's got a movie out about all-action guinea pigs. (I wish I could say I was joking.) You get to decide whether Nighy's nice or not. And whether you care - providing he cuts the mustard in the fight against rodents.

Now, one imagines Mr Nighy would care quite a lot about another of our stories: DVD piracy. A family has been caught red-handed running a piracy empire here in London. Apparently, they were knocking out so many, shall we say 'adult' films, they were putting legitimate 'adult film shops' out of business. Makes you proud, doesn't it? Anyway, the father and two sons now have plenty of time to reflect on how proud they are of their work... in prison.

What else? What else?

We'll show you the latest bit of kit that's been wheeled out by the London Fire Brigade. When the going gets really tough, it's now a robot that may get going. When it's just too dangerous to send in a fire-fighter (and London's fire-fighters are among the bravest and best in the world) they'll now be able to send in a robot. You may have seen the sort of thing at work, defusing bombs. Well, the LFB is the first brigade in this country to use them in their line of work - we'll show you what they can do with them this evening.

We'll also show some rather unusual job interviews that were held today. No smart suits for these applicants. No neatly styled hair. Got spots? Lovely. Weeping sores would be good too. That is, if you want to play a zombie. The London Bridge Experience has been on the hunt for zombies. And we've been looking at the best - and worst - of them. Seriously. Some of them are really bad. Which may be a good thing.

Damien Steward's just wandered past - he's come over all nautical today. Apparently, people who know about such things have found remnants of what are believed to have been huge 19th Century warships - rotting in the Thames mud down by the Thames barrier. Mr S has been for a closer look and he'd rather proud of a 'nautical coat' (his words) that he's donned for the occasion. I'm not sure if he has a dressing-up box at home, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Our top story tonight is the story we want you to share your opinions on... It's 'kettling' where the police pen in protesters to stop them causing havoc everywhere. The problem is that sometimes 'non-protesters' get caught up in it all and feel unhappy about it too. There's also a fairly large quota of people who believe that we should be able to demonstrate peacefully without being corralled by the cops. All very well, but then not everyone does it peacefully, do they? Some people smash windows and worse. Lots to think about and a Parliamentary Committee have just reported on what they think about the Met's methodology. It's not good.

So - a fairly busy programme then.

See you at six,

Ben & Lucy
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