Story: Pink vested masked crew would like to meet masked passengers from Mexico, preferably English speaking and in good health

So, with Swine Flu, or I should say new strain H1N1 influenza, having taken over the media and apparently about to take over the world, we had yesterday received instructions from our head office to stock up on protective suits, footwear, gloves, goggles and masks.

These won’t arrive for a while but in the mean time with one crew at the WHO in Geneva our correspondent desperately wanted to film something Swine Flu related in the UK. Last night, already after 2000, he had been debating whether we could get up to Glasgow and film something concerning the Scottish couple, who were the first two in the UK to have been diagnosed with this new type influenza, and get the footage to Japan by 0800. That wasn’t going to happen, even if I drove us all night, which was also not going to happen.

So today we headed out to Heathrow’s Terminal 5 to meet in the BA flight from Mexico City. The BAA press office had given us permission to interview any passengers willing to speak to us once outside the terminal building. To do this we had to don pink fluorescent vests, which they supplied us, but for which we had to give our names and mobile numbers so that we could be chased up if we didn’t return them. As if.

We were very early and so went to get a coffee inside, I chose us counter seats opposite the International Arrivals so that I could sit the camera on the counter and record a variety of level and stable images of the trolley wheeling arriving passengers and those who came to meet them. Once we met up with the press officer and he reiterated that no filming was allowed inside I asked if at least I could take a shot of the arrivals board and the flight details for the Mexico City arrival, to this he agreed.

Now it was just a question of waiting and as we did so more media turned up, including crews from TV Asahi, ITN, and BBC London. My correspondent was on the phone a few times checking with the head office over the company’s policy regarding the wearing of masks by crew for this sort of filming. We were instructed to wear them and so once the plane’s status showed that it had landed my correspondent and I put on our masks. TV Asahi’s cameraman and reporter also had masks so we didn’t feel too lonely, we did however suddenly become the object of interest for the other, non-masked, crews. The ITN cameraman was particularly keen to get a shot of TV Asahi’s Japanese cameraman and I filming in our masks. I told him we were wearing them as company policy, to which he replied “Oh that’s good they think about your health, that would be the last think the ITN news desk would consider”. In actually fact I almost forgot about the mask except for the fact that my breath was forced out at the top of it, near my nose, and directly into my camera’s eyepiece, fogging it up until I pulled my eye away to clear it.

My producer, inside the terminal, tried to get passengers attention and get them to come for interviews but with a mask on they couldn’t be blamed for either ignoring her or thinking she was the health risk. We did get some passengers coming out either still wearing masks over their mouth and nose or at least with them round their nexks, having decided it was safe to take them off once outside the cramped vicinity of the plane.

Everytime they came out the media pack pounced on them for some comments. Almost everyone was asking about the situation and conditions in Mexico, only my correspondent wanted to concentrate on the issue of masks. He wanted to know how many on the plane where wearing them, why this passenger was still/not wearing it anymore, how they thought about the use of masks and the lack of them in the UK.

In fairness to him Japan is a country where the wearing of masks does not raise eyebrows or get one odd looks, they are a common site. I am just not sure if they are being worn as protection for oneself or for others.

Filming my correspondent’s piece to camera was interesting. He went inside the terminal building, stood amongst lots of non-masked people and spoke, with mask on, into a wireless handheld microphone. I stood outside and did my best to film him through the window, getting the camera as tight to the glass as possible to cut out any reflection. Both of us must have looked somewhat funny, but I realized that he must have got away with it as nobody seemed to pay him any attention despite him being a pink vested, masked man talking to himself into a microphone.

Story:  Uniqlo invades Selfridges and British troops march on Parliament.

Uniqlo have just opened a menswear concession inside Selfridges. Since its UK launch in 2001 it has opened, closed and opened at various locations in London, but this is its first store within a store.

We began by getting some shots of Uniqlo’s Oxford Street flagship store and an interview with the CEO of Uniqlo UK. We then moved to Selfridges and filmed in and around the concession there, focusing on the fact that it stocked just menswear and that they were trying hard to include some, ever so slightly smarter and more formal items, along with their new, ‘Made in Japan’ denim range.

We took a lot of vox pops with the male customers and in most cases it was a case of them coming to Selfridges first, and Uniqlo second, and that price was definitely a reason for buying in Uniqlo. So for Uniqlo the move into Selfridges should be a good thing, to increase awareness of its brand, and attract more people looking for a better price-to-quality ratio, especialliy in the currrent econimic climate.

Later that afternoon we had some filming of an entirely different nature, that being to cover the march to Parliament by 120 members of the 7^th Armoured Brigade. They were being given a welcome on their return from service in Basra last year.

Their march from the barracks on Birdcage Walk to Westminster was only 15 minutes and I wanted to capture as many aspects of the short journey as possible. The priority was a piece to camera report in which the picture began on the troops, then pulled back to show my reporter with them before finally following their march to show them heading towards Parliament. I also wanted to show that they were marching through the streets, that people were interested, clapping, cheering and taking pictures. I also wanted to include detail of the soldiers, their boots on the road and especially the look on their faces. It was very much a case of ‘shot and run’ to get all the desired shots and once it was over we tried find some British people who had stopped to watch the soldiers, to get some street interviews. It was amazing how quickly the crowds disappeared once the soldiers had gone, the rows of clapping spectators melted away into groups of tourists.

Story:    “Japan declares war on Scotland!” (Front page headline of the Boisdale Telegraph)

Today was a long one, I was in the office from 0730 until just after 2300. It began with an interview with Lord Malloch-Brown (Secretary of State) in the FCO, we then went on to get a piece to camera in Downing Street as members of the IMF and World Bank headed into No 10 for a meeting with Gordon Brown, we followed this with some general shots of Whitehall, which was surprisingly awkward because most of Whitehall is covered in road works at the moment, red and white plastic barriers seriously detract from the image and look very out of place alongside the old government buildings.

We combined the morning’s interview, the piece to camera and the pool pictures from the meeting and Brown’s press conference to put together a news piece about the upcoming London Summit (G20).

Once into the evening my reporter and I had a completely different filming agenda, that being a Blind Whisky tasting at the Boisdale of Belgravia.

A few weeks ago I had spotted an article in this restaurant’s newsletter, The Boisdale Telegraph, promoting what it described as ‘The most significant event since The Russo-Japanese vodka war in 1904…’

The event in question was a blind tasting of four pairs of whiskies accompanied by a three course dinner consisting of salmon, steak and cheese. Each pair of whiskies comprised of one Scottish and one Japanese, sample A and sample B, the participants then had to fill in a form, firstly saying which in each pair they preferred and then secondly, which country they thought each was from.

The Boisdale is a great restaurant, with a warm, rich and cozy atmosphere. This event was held in a separate room at the back, which soon got very warm, to say the least, and the air became overpowered with the smell of the whiskies. It was also fairly cramped, so the tripod sat unused behind the door, whilst I attempted to capture the atmosphere and pictures of individuals smelling, tasting and trying to guess their whiskies. We had to wait until the end to get the results. It was a close contest, which ended in a draw, and as the host for the evening commented happily that meant that a rematch would be necessary!

Story:    Drugs, Trains & the Olympics

Drugs

Marijuana use and/or arrests for its use are apparently on the rise in Japan, and there seems to be a big gap between what may be seen as students’ social use of the drug and police enforcement of the law. Whereas in the UK, even with the recent reclassification of cannabis back up to a class C drug with harsher penalties, there still seems to be leeway to allow for warnings for first time offences.

My correspondent wanted to look into the use of cannabis in London, amongst Japanese students. This assignment became today with the interview of a Japanese student, who has experience of cannabis use himself and within his social group. He was happy to be interviewed but we were not to show his face and we had to change his voice, his main concern was that he didn’t want his parents to be able to recognize him.

We wanted to begin the filming with an unrehearsed natural greeting scene, so we waited under a railway bridge in the streets behind our office and our subject was directed to us. The railway bridge was a good location, it offered what my correspondent thought was definitely a non-Japanese image, and for me it had the advantage of allowing me to film the greeting scene in silhouette, safeguarding the identity of our subject without having to do anything false with the image. So, we waited, camera rolling, a Japanese man approached, who I thought just had to be our guy, but he kept on walking, straight past us and away, whilst my correspondent muttered that it couldn’t be him. A few minutes later the guy came back, from behind us, and this time did approach us, so my correspondent and I both had to swing round and film the greeting in reverse which, lit up our subject’s face nicely!

The main part of the interview was conducted in the small, largely unused park behind our office. I framed the shot to include the interviewee’s chin at the top and his crossed legs at the bottom. This allowed space for him to make gestures with his arms and hands within my framing, which was desirable, especially as we could not see his face. I gave a directional gun mic to my correspondent and we got under way.

Once the substance of the interview was recorded I moved around taking shots to show the location and more importantly shots that could be used to insert over the interview. It was fortunate that he was wearing a beanie, it gave me more options to film his head and face without exposing his identity. The macro facility was another good tool here allowing me to step back and really push the focus out but without losing the scene.

Once done it only remained for me to ask if we could have another go a the greeting scene. I clearly explained what I wanted and then my correspondent and I waited only for the guy to once again walk straight past us! “Once more please” I asked and my correspondent and I both explained the shot we wanted. On the third attempt it really looked as if our man was going to walk past us once again but at the last moment he just about managed to stop and somehow offer a greeting to my correspondent. It was by now, of course, both very rehearsed and completely unnatural.

Trains

This morning there was, for a change, a good news story relating to the economy. It was that a Hitachi led consortium was the preferred bidder for the construction of a fleet of high speed trains to replace the existing and aging inter-city 125s. Hitachi being involved was the news point for us, especially as we have followed what Hitachi have been doing in the UK. There was no filming to be done for this, just some data collection, fact confirmation and computer generated B-roll to be found.

The interesting thing about this story was that it began solely as a good news story emphasizing the creation and/or safeguarding of British jobs but by the late afternoon it had turned slightly sour with the inclusion of criticism that the bid had gone to Hitachi and that a Derby based company was losing out. My producer and I both seemed to think that it would work better with Hitachi running it but with the trains being built in the UK, less chance for us to mess it up that way.

The Olympics

The four contenders to host the 2016 Summer games our to put in their respective bids tomorrow and as Tokyo was one of the four we were asked to grab an interview with Jon Tibbs, a consultant who has worked on three previous successful bids and who is now working on Tokyo’s current bid. He told us he’d be arriving into Charing Cross Station at 1810 and would be available for interview at the Charing Cross Hotel until 1850. We waited, but his train was delayed until 1820, we waited, but his train was further delayed until 1830 and then 1840, this just emphasizes the case for Hitachi’s involvement in our trains.

Anyway we got our interview in the hotel’s lobby, a two shot and a staged, but natural and unrehearsed greeting scene.

Story:    Four of them and four of us.

0630 and four of us headed to Cambridge, in two separate cars, equipped with one ENG camera and three mini DV cameras. We were on a mission to get some footage of four North Koreans, from the Workers Party, who were on an FCO invited visit to the UK.

Today was the last day of their visit and after Cambridge they were due to fly out of London tonight. They had apparently been here for a week, among other things, visiting Airbus, watching a football match and now were possibly due to visit an aviation and/or chemical engineering department at this prestigious university. Possibly most interesting was the news that they had also been due to visit a decommissioned nuclear plant last week, as an example of how to decommission, but that the trip had been cancelled. The information was very vague, but it looked as if the trip had been offered by the FCO and declined by the delegation. Perhaps it had been a choice between watching a Premier League match or visiting the plant, if so their response was quite understandable.

We had no details as to the timing, method or duration of their visit and only a rough idea of where they might go. So the four of us split up, and took a venue each, mine was the East Asian department at Sidgwick College. As it turned out the four visitors and their FCO escort came, and later left, by train and so my reporter was the only one who actually got any footage of them, at the station. Even with her mini DV camera they were not happy to be filmed, asking her to stop recording, to get permission and to erase the tapes. Their escort was even heard saying that they may have to change the schedule because some Japanese media were around.

Once they left the station, by taxi, we were once again only guessing as to were they might go, with us all trying to cover different colleges In the event one of our drivers spotted the group wandering into Kings College, not a venue we had covered, but one to which a couple of us now hurried over to. I hoped but didn’t expect that we’d see them wandering out again but whilst we waited I took some general shots of the college (even being warned off once), some town shots, and a piece to camera. My reporter and I then moved on to another possible college, Griton, a ladies college more on the outskirts of the town and once again took some general shots and a piece to camera. Why would they be visiting a ladies college? Well I would like to imagine that they wanted to get a good look at the ‘student body’, but it is more probably because it served as a slightly less central and more secluded meeting venue. Either way we would never know because the next time they were spotted was back at the train station heading for a Liverpool Street bound train.

It was a cold and chilly day, which funnily enough got colder and chillier the longer one spent standing around outside, and despite dressing reasonably appropriately my hands and feet were suffering. It did not help that we had not eaten or drunk anything all day, in the hope of trying to avoid the need to leave one’s post in search of a toilet.

We ended up travelling separately back to London, one producer left first with some of the tapes in one car, then soon after our reporter, on the same train as the delegation and later two of us by another car after hanging around for an additional 90 minutes in the vain hope we could get an interview with the delegation’s university host. My producer got no answer from his office or home phone and his mobile went straight to voice mail. We had also finally had our fill of food and drink and so headed back to London.

In the end we never discovered where they actually went or who they actually met in Cambridge as apart from the video of them at the station and the sighting by our driver, we didn’t see them anywhere. Disappointed but not surprised.

 Story: Davos 2009

Well we turned up late and then only just, after much deliberation about whether we would come at all, accreditation trouble, Japanese PM attendance doubts and our own cost issues. Yes, as we left London for the snowy slopes of Switzerland our company had just concluded its annual ‘bureau chiefs meeting’ held this year in London and all talk was of the good job being done, work harder, do more and have a budget cut, the usual “do more for less” scenario.

So it was economy class flights, trains and buses followed by much dragging of kit cases across icy pavements. We were trying to avoid costly satellite feeds and so had the necessary technical items to get our Betacam SX footage into a PC, through an ADVC and FTP it to our HQ.

Day 1 ”diagnostics not prescription”

Today, Friday, began at 0500 in London and as I write I am still waiting to record and FTP a voice over at 0100 on Saturday. So some things have not changed at all, like the length of time, in hours, needed to complete a 60-90 second news piece. The main problem is that it will not be on air until midday on Saturday in Japan, which in theory gives my correspondent another 2 1/2 hours of huffing and puffing over his PC.

Anyway my favourite shot of the day was on the train between Filisur and Davos, I stuck my head and camera out of the window and got a great shot of the side of our red train, the blue sky and bright white scenery as we rode forwards and gently upwards in the sunshine.

We didn’t get into Davos until 1530 and so the rest of the day was spent grabbing shots and interviews here and there to capture the mood of this years Forum.

That aside, I saw Li Lian Jie! That’s Jet Li to most people, and I so badly wanted to break ranks and ask him for a two shot photo, just to show my friend in Sheffield, but I just nodded a greeting to him as he passed me, twice.

We also had an interesting interview with an economist from the Said Business School at Oxford University. He was somewhat technical in his answers but he seemed to think that a lot of this conference would be diagnostic and not prescriptive towards the economic crisis, and that next year’s conference would be even more interesting as America should be in attendance and the fall out from the global downturn would probably be even more evident.

 Day 2 “Tony Brown”

Began with the 0747 train and a 45 minute journey to Davos platz, not quite as scenic as yesterday afternoon because the sun had not yet reached the mountain sides, it was in fact just hitting the peaks as we arrived in Davos.

We walked to the ‘Aula’, which was actually a school building, but was this for now given over to be the venue for the Davos Open Forum, some fringe meetings, and more importantly for us was for today the Japanese press centre.

In general Japanese press rooms are well equipped and busy. This one was no exception with a central table halfl laid out with essential bits and pieces of stationary, in case the journalists still used pen and paper and had forgotten anything and the other half covered in the more important supply of cup noodles and Japanese snacks. As usual the surrounding tables had been clearly labeled for members of the respective news organizations, with phones, power sockets and LAN cables. When we arrived it was just a little busy but soon afterwards with the arrival of the Japan Pool it soon filled up with bodies and noise.

At least we were able to make use of the cable LAN to send some more pictures via FTP. The speed was much quicker than it had been at the hotel last night, 1.5 mb as opposed to about 0.6 mb.

From here we went to see how far our “with the Prime Minister of Japan” press passes would get us. Well, we got into the Congress Centre but not initially into the part where things were happening. We were told we’d need an escort for that. Our correspondent seemed surprisingly reluctant to pursue our quest to get further inside, but my producer requested an escort and before we knew it we had one and where given 30 minutes to wonder, fairly freely, around inside and film. I was even able to film the Japanese Prime Minister sitting and drinking water from a plastic bottle under a World Economic Forum sign and then heading off to the main hall to deliver his key note address. Shortly after this our correspondent got a call from the man in charge of the Japanese press arrangements telling us that we had to stop filming, leave the venue and not use any of the footage we’d filmed. It was Helsinki’s ASEM all over again. The meaning being that we had filmed independently of the NSNP (Japan Pool), which was not, apparently, fair, and therefore we had to follow the Pool protocol. I was (a) perplexed because we were inside, with escort and not doing anything outside of the WEF’s regulations and (b) frustrated with the speed at which my correspondent kowtowed to the Japanese Pool. It may well be that I was missing something but as far as I knew we knew there was a pool and we still came independently ‘to see what we could get ourselves’ and now having got something ourselves we gave it up without even a wisp of a struggle. My experience is that our Japanese journalists expect to be treated equally to the domestic media in any given country and get their producers to push for things that often seem quite unreasonable and yet here we were giving up to one of their own with an apologetic bow whilst on the phone!

We had been following a Japanese executive, from Lawson’s, who was an attendee at the Forum. He had kindly allowed us to meet with, film and interview him a little on any and all of the days we were in Davos, and this we did. Last night we had interviewed him in the lobby of his hotel, and again, as he walked along the street, on his way to hear a speech by Gordon Brown. Today we met him outside the Congress Centre, after the Japanese Prime Minister’s speech, to ask him about it, we then moved to the outside of the Bell DeVere Hotel for some more walking and talking scenes.

We also got word that the Japanese Prime Minister had made a slight mistake in calling Tony Blair, Tony Brown. This was not in one of his key speeches but in one of those doorway or corridor moments where the Japanese media can try and grab a few comments from someone they are following. The impact from this gaff did not become fully aware to us until the Monday, when the Davos package was dominated with Aso’s “Tony Brown”, pushing our contribution off the agenda.

We did at least get a delicious cheese fondue this evening. I had initially liked the idea of cheese fondue but upon smelling them my enthusiasm was somewhat diminished and I understood why separate rooms where assigned to this culinary experience. Once past the smell, everything was good, delicious in fact.

Day 3

We moved hotels this morning, from one about 45 minutes away to one actually in Davos. This done we went to interview our subject once again and take some shots of him working, rather luckily the background was a snowy outside with mountains, trees and even a Swiss flag visible. The rest of the day was spent in the lobby of our hotel, firstly selecting and using FTP to get footage to Tokyo for that day’s late night news programme and, secondly doing the same thing all over again, and again for the next day’s evening news show, in which we had been led to believe we would be getting a longer slot.

I thought I had managed to convey the idea to my correspondent that as we were using FTP we should cut as much as possible ourselves. Not for cost issues but for time issues. We only had the hotel lobby’s wireless network to use and the bigger the file the longer the time required to transfer it. So he spent a lot of time listening to our subject’s interviews and selecting time codes of the bits we’d send. But later as I took the selected audio into the computer I realized that we were almost sending the entire thing anyway, just not in the original order! I was tired and he was falling asleep whilst typing and so I gently asked him if all this was really necessary, and apparently it was. I followed up by enquiring if Tokyo made the decision on which bits would be used but was told that no it would be him who decided, I only just stopped myself from demanding then why was it that we weren’t doing that?

Day 4

The snow is always whiter on the other side…

As we were leaving the hotel this morning a South African business man assumed that we’d stayed on for a bit of skiing, like the BBC crew he’d seen out on the slopes earlier. I wish. He also mentioned that Reuters had been taking clients onto the slopes. As I explained that we were working for a Japanese company he seemed to understand what that meant, that is working non-stop until departure, and told me “you are obviously working for the wrong people”.

The heaviest snow for more than 18years has hit the UK. Public transport stopped and airports were intermittently closed and flights delayed. We were in the Swiss Alps, surrounded by snow but all of us somehow felt that we were missing out on the snow induced chaos and fun back home.

We travelled to Zurich train station and then had to decide how we might go on from there. Our original flight was cancelled, but we had managed to get on an evening flight that may or may not get cancelled later. We could take a train from Zurich to Paris and then try our luck on the Eurostar or check flights from there. Nothing was definite because the conditions in the UK where at their worst in the south, affecting trains and planes. It was decided that we’d try the flight. We stashed as much luggage as would fit into the station’s coin lockers and went in search of lunch, which ended up being in the very obviously touristy part of town at the end of the lunching hour. Once at the airport we had to sort out tickets and go through the process of checking in for our flight even though it hadn’t left London yet and there was still no guarantee that it would do so. We spent the food coupons we were given on beer and wine, medicinal purposes to numb any possible bad news. We then had an announcement that the flight was cancelled and that we should head to the transfer desk to make arrangements, but by the time we got there it was back on again, or at least it had just left London.

We did eventually get to Gatwick at about midnight, and ended up splitting an MPV mini cab with two giggly teenage girls from Stoke Newington, who’d been on holiday living it loud in Istanbul.

We were reasonably impressed by the snowy landscape we passed through on our journey back to the office.

Story:    Images of an economic downturn

My brief was to find images of the downturn in London, such as shops that have closed down, have been boarded up and remain vacant. Woolworths was an obvious choice, and we filmed one on Camden High Street. MFI seemed like another possibility until we discovered that two stores they had closed had already been bought and turned into Waitrose. I guessed that to film them would have not given the desired image. On the Chiswick High Street we did find three closed shops in a row and to film them gave what I expect was  the sought after depressed image but swing the camera the other way and I could have easily captured a more lively and bustling scene.

I also found a job centre that had shut down but immediately had a dilemma about filming or using such an image. What does it mean if a job centre has shut down at a time when people are being made redundant? Could it be that the crisis has gotten so bad that even those establishments that are supposed to help the unemployed find work are unable to stay open? It was an amusing thought.

Story:    No Darling, it’s Gordon.

Late in the working day last Friday we received an email from the FPA alerting us that a senior cabinet minister would be speaking ‘on camera and on record’ about Britain and the Global Economy on the 26^th January.

With the WEF (World Economic Forum) coming up in Davos next week we thought it a good chance for some sound bites from a member of the government. We put our names down to attend and speculated about who it might be. We wouldn’t know until early Monday morning, for security reasons, but I thought that it could be the Chancellor, Alastair Darling.

Well this morning the FPA email informed us that it was to be Gordon Brown. I thought great, a good opportunity for some unilateral shots of the PM. I got to the FPA early, headed upstairs to the room to be used and was stopped by a young man asking if I was the ITN cut away guy, on hearing that I wasn’t he informed me that we were not free to film as the event was being pooled by ITN but would be on ITN, Sky and the Beep. Not happy I met the head of the FPA on the stairs and he apologized confirming that they’d only just this morning heard themselves about the pool arrangements from Downing Street. I called my correspondent and producer passé don the news and suggested we pick up the feed from the BT Tower and record it ourselves. I would just wait outside and film the PM’s arrival, better than nothing I guessed.

My correspondent decided he’d try a piece to camera, with the PM in shot, as he left after the briefing. Mr Brown had arrived by car, and his car and driver waited for him, in fact when they re-parked with the engine running at the entrance it was the cue for us to get ready. My correspondent came rushing out, just about found the microphone I’d prepared for him in time and it was decided that I’d follow Gordon entering the car and then pull back to include my correspondent.

As it happened, the PM came out walked past his car, towards me, a security officer asked me not to move and then asked me to move as Mr Brown passed me and headed off down the street. I could hear my correspondent’s voice  commentating in my headphone and belatedly he appeared in front of the camera, but the moment was gone and the piece no good.

It was ironic actually because whilst I had been waiting outside I was chatting to a couple of other cameramen about how if it had been David Miliband in the FPA today that he would have walked to and from the venue. Someone commented that it was the way Miliband walked that mattered, that it was in a style fairly close to that of John Cleese.

Story:    “If they close a factory..?”

“…Well it’s fine, I couldn’t care less. Why would I care? Why would I care if Burberry closed a factory?”

This was the response we got, accompanied by an incredulous expression, from a man who had just exited Burberry’s Regent Street store.

I can only guess that the man who uttered it must be one of the only people who is (a) too rich to be affected by any sort of economic downturn and (b) hasn’t even noticed that things are somewhat tighter than usual and (c) who definitely came across as completely (excuse my bluntness) stupid and arrogant.

I know there is some other news on today, the small issue of America’s first African-American President’s inauguration but nevertheless my reporter was making a short piece about the news that Burberry would be streamlining its operations by shutting one of its Yorkshire factories and as a result making 290 people redundant.

When asked what he thought about the raising unemployment in the U.K. he looked uncomfortable and said “Well that’s not good is it, sorry must go” and was gone, leaving my reporter and I a little stunned and a lot amused.

Japan is currently debating whether to send some of it’s SDF (self defence forces) to join in the maritime patrols in the Gulf of Aden. That is the area of the Gulf that was subject to 111 incidents of piracy in 2008, up from 32 in 2007, and is this year already on 11. It seems that the reason they are considering this move is to try and help in the protection of their own vessels passing through the region and those that may be carrying trade to or from Japan.

What has this got to do with London? Well it turns out that the headquarters for monitoring piracy worldwide, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) is based beside the Thames in Wapping. So that is where we found ourselves this morning, filming the office and interviewing their ‘Captain’. He was positive on the need for Japan to join the fight against piracy, but insisted that it is before an incident that these naval patrols must take effective action.

At lunchtime we had a slight panic as we were asked to get to Swindon, film a piece about Honda’s just announced two month suspension of production, get back to London and feed it within an approximately 3 hour time span. Not a very realistic plan and one which was scrapped when we discovered it was to be for a 30 second news piece. We settled for filming the news as it was broadcast on Sky and the BBC, as Breaking News, on the televisions in our office. This was actually broadcast!

In the afternoon we had another interview, with an expert on Somalia, at Chatham House. He could talk more about the Somali side of things, and about how ultimately patrols are not going to solve the real problems of a country without any real government, structure and direction since 1991.

The most surprising thing for me during the day was that when we asked how modern day pirates might differ from the stereotype image we have from another age we were told that “they are exactly the same, a group of ruthless criminals”!

The small boy in me was left hoping that this included eye patches, hooks, wooden legs and parrots.

It was somewhat amusing to hear that it is precisely along the naval patrolled passage off the coast that the most attacks happen. Why you might ask? Well for the simple reason that because the passage has been designated a safe passageway, that is where the tankers and vessels travel, but of course it is far too large an area to be patrolled completely and so the pirate ships can take their chances and strike opportunistically.