But this is what it’s like:

first of all, you have to get there. It’s all very well saying that it’s at TV Centre. What you don’t realise until you get there is that the Beeb is a small city state jammed up against Shepherd’s Bush Green. Honestly, if they have guard-geese and roaming centurions (the Roman kind, not the ones from Battlestar Galactica) I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. Although I confess to you here and now that I saw no centurions.

But I could feel them, in the shadows.

(Did I mention that I was nervous? No? Well, perhaps you can tell.)

Anyway, I found main reception, which is moderately easy except that either it has moved or the old shot they used to use on TV programmes for arriving at the BBC is misleading. Anyway, in I went. For some reason, the main reception area has little triangular installantions of plasma screen televisions showing a permanent loop of black and white archive footage about a sporting event which I think was the 1908 Olympics. 

My particular favourite is the ladies’ archery. Vital, of course, to wear the correct clothes, including a tall hat and a long dress.  Probably also that gentlemen watching look the other way when the contestants draw the bow across the chest area.

Anyway, when you leave the reception area and head on into the building, it gets a lot less spacious and airy and modern, and a lot more hard-working and familiar. There are sofas and chairs along the walls where you sit and wait to go into a studio (booth? I have no idea) and those little red lights which tell you the mic is on or off in a given room. I sat down with the panel and a couple of other guys I dimly suspect were really famous.

Everyone was nice to me. That helped a bit. I couldn’t help thinking, though, about that thing about juries in criminal trials looking or not looking the defendant in the eye. I wasn’t sure what the panel members were doing… Were they looking at me just to be polite?

(In case you don’t listen to the show, there are three panel members who review the book right there in front of you. Sometimes there’s also a listener-reviewer.)

So we went into this little square room with a decent-sized round table with chairs around it and microphone on it, and we all sat down. The whole thing was smooth and everyone else seemed to have a handle on what it would be like and so on. The process, incidentally, is completely hypnotic to watch. When the newsreader comes in, she just sits down at a chair, puts on a set of headphones and reads the stories off a printed page. That clear, stern voice sounds just as good in person.  I always wonder what radio newsreaders look like. Now I know. (I’m not telling, so nyah.) When the news is over, she gets up and goes out again. Perfect.

The big story of the day was David Davis. I’ll make the obvious gag: it’s the first time I’ve ever been interested in or approved of anything he’s done. But it’s true – and so many other people seem to feel the same way.

Anyway, we listened to some stuff from the news department which was going out while we got ready.

And then Simon asked me the first question and I thought:

LIVE IN FRONT OF A MILLION PEOPLE OHMYGODHELPME… SOUND THE DIVE KLAXON!  MAKE DEPTH THREE HUNDRED FEET! CAST OFF THE MAIN MANGLEWURZLE, JUST GET ME OUT OF HERE!

and I had no idea what to say. So I said what we’d all say at a moment like that:

“Er…”

But it went okay, and the important thing: the reviewers really liked the book. Even the listener-reviewer, who gave me a scare at first.

But I definitely need to work on my live fu.