The Accidental Ambulance Chaser
Bizarrely, I am on the books for reporters for BBC News. It’s nothing to get excited about though. John Simpson’s job is safe and the country is protected from the widespread distribution of the type of ill-informed devil-may-care hyperbole so evident in the pages of the Misssives.
It seems that I am destined to benefit from the Beeb only where death is concerned. In fact, they may have even filed my name under “Use Only in Tragic Situations”.
They have only used me twice in 12 years. To explain; to them, I am a mere stringer . A stringer is used for interviews and gathering some cover footage which some BBC reporter will incorporate into and voice over the report you see on yer actual telly.
The two incidents I was used for were the death of Princess Diana and the death of the Queen Mum.
As I’m sure everyone will recall, the media hysteria over Diana’s death was getting a tad ridiculous in the week between death and funeral.
The news programmes were running out of stuff to say and show, yet they still seemed to have the remit of cramming their half hour shows100% full of Diana related material, lest anyone thought they were being disrespectful by covering anything else.
So, somebody somewhere had the bright idea of making a montage of mourners’ views from in key places from Diana’s life all across the country.
The key place I was nearest to was possibly Diana’s most hated place other than the seat beside Camilla Parker Bowles at a polo match. It was Balmoral in Royal Deeside.
This man has property all over the world and he takes her here on her honeymoon???
An early sign of a marriage in trouble, I’d say.
Now, Scotland ain’t the most royal-loving country, but in the Royal Deeside area they are all about the royal buttkissing. This is down to two reasons:
1. They know which side their bread is buttered.
2. Most of them are in some way related to Prince Philip as apparently the place is rife with his illegitimate children.
So, off I went to point mics at people who claimed they felt a personal connection with the Queen of Hearts and I am sure the Beeb were spoilt for choice when editing the resulting, shirt-rending vox pops together. Those folk from Deeside put the traditional Scottish reserve aside and were wailing and eulogising like Gwyneth Paltrow with a statuette in her hand. It was weird, frankly.
The second job the Beeb asked me to do was to interview a lifeboatman who had been personally invited to the Queen Mother’s funeral. I was to meet the guy at Aberdeen Airport on his way to the shindig and squeeze as much info out of him as to the kind of lady the Queen Mum was. This wasn’t that easy as the bloke really couldn’t fathom out why he’d been invited in the first place, having only met the woman once. Still, I got him to say some nice things about her to keep my name in the “Use only in Tragic Circumstances” file for future jobs.
The ambulance chasing continues with this blog.
A couple of weeks ago I get my highest ever stats by a long way and creep up to the number two slot in the Scottish websites site for one reason. Sadly, it was not because I wrote an amazing post capturing the Scottish zeitgeist*, which the whole of Scotland read and congratulated me on.
No….last year I posted a piece called “Jeremy Beadle, j’ accuse!” which has a rather unsavoury joke referring to the late Mr Beadle’s withered hand at the start but otherwise, isn’t really about Jeremy at all.
A couple of weeks ago, I notice that I’ve had over 450 hits in an hour. I investigate. They are all for Beadle. I suss out something must have happened to the prankster before I even hear of his death on the radio.
At one point, in the days following the TV star’s death, I am the top Google search return for “jokes about Jeremy Beadle”. I feel utterly ashamed to be at the forefront of the inevitable office sport of quickly coming up with the sickest joke following the death of a well known person. I can only hope that Beadle’s grieving family don’t find out.
Thankfully this joke took over mine as the top Google Beadle related sick joke
Still, once again I am to benefit in a very small way from somebody’s death.
I am the Accidental Ambulance Chaser.
*what the blazes would that be? Answers in the comment box please.
