A cat among the pigeons.

Wednesday 26/03/08

 

Story:  A cat among the pigeons

 

Three items today, starting with an interview with Kate Hoey, MP, and her support for a free Tibet. My correspondent was looking for some sound bites for the upcoming Olympic Torch Relay.

 

Next I needed some general shots of pigeons, after I jokingly suggested it to my correspondent as a way to start off the clay pigeon shooting story. Well I got to Trafalgar Square, which used to guarantee pigeons if nothing else, but then struggled to find four, and one of those was missing a leg.

 

Finally our head office wanted a piece about the sale of Jaguar/Land Rover to the Indian company Tata. On the phone and at such short notice the Jaguar PR group said they’d been inundated with requests and so couldn’t help with any dealership filming. I then said we’d be filming from the public footpath to which I was told “well we can’t stop you can we” and the phone went dead.

So I got on the internet and looked up the Jaguar dealerships in London, I then chose one out near Park Royal as the best bet for filming. My logic was that as it was out of central London then it was probably going to be big enough to have a forecourt with cars displayed on it that could be visible from the roadside. 

We went and got some vox pops near Baker Street, which seemed to show that a) foreign ownership was inevitable in this day and age, and b) most people still thought that until today Jaguar was a British company and not an American one. Then we headed out to the Park Royal dealership, which fortunately turned out to be as I’d hoped. Once I began taking shots from the pavement not one but two individuals came out separately from each other questioning whether what I was filming and if I had permission to do so. I just quoted to them what the PR rep had said to me on the phone and they went off to hurriedly tidy up the forecourt and straighten the flags and displays.

My reporter had wanted to interview some Indians about Tata’s acquisition of Jaguar wondering if we should try Brick Lane. As I tried to explain that I didn’t think that was the best choice a group of five Indian men on there way home from work walked past us, what luck, and they were all very proud and enthusiastic about the news.