Election City Hero
[Dream target date 1997]

The fledgeling Channel 5 beamed live shots of big ben through hazy blue sunshine. Six in the morning and a cold shower to wake me up. Goosebumps, blueface and blueshirt. With less than 100 yards between our house and the polling station it was a simple matter for me to cast my vote before setting off to London.

I was hoping for an uneventful trip. Recent Motorway excursions having been disrupted by IRA bomb threats. Yesterday's scenario was set on the M6 on the approach to Birmingham. I happened to be passing under a series of overhead power lines when the local radio station identified them as a target.

Angel

By 10:25am I was onboard a tube train to the Design Centre in (Angel) Islington. A few hours sampling the industry's flirtation with hybrid CD-ROM formats and I would be free to spend the afternoon in a gallery or two. On the tube I sat next to Andrew Sachs, best known for his role as Manuel in the popular 70's BBC TV series Fawlty Towers. These days he works as a voice-over artist. He looked very, very old and was pouring over a TV script the size of a telephone directory.

Red planet

After the exhibition I travelled back into central London to look for a book in Foyles on Charing Cross Road. There, purely by chance, I stumbled across a book-signing event by TV astonomer Patrick Moore. Here was an opportunity to meet one of my childhood heroes face-to-face. Having watched so many Sky at Night programmes it was like speaking to an old friend. His enthusiasm for astronomy was no less passionate in real life as it is on TV.

We spoke about the current resurgence of interest in the missions to Mars. And he was very proud of the fact that his programme (which recently celebrated its 40th year) is one of the oldest running regular TV series in the world. Though he did concede that much of the show is pre-recorded these days and that he does get to work on location in some pretty exotic places. Although I did my best to contain my excitement, it must have been obvious that I was awestruck. We finished up talking about the General Election. It was a foregone conclusion that there would be a Labour victory this evening, but Patrick Moore was having none of it and confessed that he'd voted for the Monster Raving Loony Party earlier this morning.

As he signed his book for me, I felt like a child waiting for a birthday surprise. We shook hands and when I stepped out into the street I felt like I was in orbit!

Copyright - Paul Fillingham
Last update - 19 August, 2001