Friday 24/11/2006
Story: The poisoned spy… continued.
We had permission to film inside the Pine bar at the Millennium hotel. We were to get 15 minutes from 1030 to 1045 and no tripods were allowed. On arrival at the hotel we saw a lot of police and were not allowed in, we were asked to wait until our contact came out to meet us. Soon afterwards the manager emerged and asked how he could help us, we explained that we’d come as agreed to film the bar. He told us that that would be impossible, that he wasn’t even allowed in the bar, that the police had arrived at 0400 this morning and the whole bar was shut off to everyone until further notice. Well thank goodness I’d filmed those shots last night. I suggested that I at least film the police presence at the exterior of the hotel and that my reporter should do a piece about there presence there. We then interviewed some people on the street near Victoria about the whole story, I filmed the day’s newspapers, edited the piece ready to send later. In the BBC 1300 news there was a Breaking News item that the Home Office now believed he had been poisoned by a radioactive element in his blood and that several venues in London were being searched and that there’d be a press conference later. This explained the police presence and our cancelled filming at the hotel in the morning.
Polonium 210 has been found in the victim’s body. Traces have also been found in the sushi bar, the hotel and his home in North London.
COBRA has met to discuss the incident. So the story is running on.
After completing our own work just before 2000 I had to wait for the crew from the special news programme, bankisha, to edit their huge amount of rushes and then arrange and coordinate their feed.
Finished at 2230.
Yesterday's News Tomorrow 