© BBC

My latest series – Gary & Danielle’s Northern Exposure – is now available on the iPlayer – programme 1 went out last week, and I was really pleased with the feedback. The programme seems to be on series catch-up so will be available on the iPlayer until a week after all six episodes have transmitted. Hopefully it’ll inspire people to go out and do something different in Northern Ireland this summer (if the rain stops, boo!)

The show’s going out at 19.30 on Fridays, with a repeat at around 22.20 on Sundays on BBC One Northern Ireland. If you’re in the UK, you can catch BBC One NI on channel 973 on Sky Digital and channel 863 on Virgin Media.

© BBC

So Northern Exposure starts filming next week. You have one more week to suggest where Gary & Danielle can visit on their trip to Northern Ireland!

To be honest, I can’t wait for filming, I feel like I haven’t been out on the road in ages, and although it’s really long hours, it is fun. We’re filming two episodes next week, and then having a two week break, and then out for a couple of weekends after that. If you see us out and about, grab a photo, and upload it at our new Flickr group. We’ll be taking the best images and putting them on the new Northern Exposure website which will launch the week after next. You can also get updates on how filming’s going from our Twitter feed.

With the worst timing possible, I’m off to Dallas on Thursday – the day after we finish our first shoot. So I’m kinda stressed this weekend, getting everything ready to go for filming, and a five day trip to the US. It’s bad timing to take leave, but with a new series commissioned for the autumn, if I don’t start taking some leave, I’m not gonna get any taken before the end of the holiday year!

Come and say hi if you see us filming – it’ll be manic as always but I’m excited about it!

I can’t really say anything about it yet, but we start going into pre-production in September. All I’ll say is I’m hoping it will be wildly popular, and it is a kind of drama, something I’ve never done before.

Anyways, one of my appraisal objectives this year was to get two series commissioned. I’m only have way through the year and have done it. Shame we’re not going to get any bonuses at all this year GRRRRR!

It’s been pretty hectic recently with me, which is why I haven’t been posting that muc h. Also I haven’t found that much intersting stuff going on recently out on the ole’ World Wide Web.

Anyways, it’s been hectic as I prepared for the launch of my new series, which I’ll be working on from now until the end of August. It’s the return of Northern Exposure, which was presented last year by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his wife Jackie. It did well for us ratings wise, so it was re-commissioned, and this year we’ve got two new presenters – Gary Lineker (Match of the Day presenter and ex England internationalist) and his fiancee, Danielle Bux (soon to be appearing in Hell’s Kitchen).

Northern Exposure is about introducing two celebs to Northern Ireland and getting them to visit places suggested by members of the public. The aim is really to get viewers to go out at the weekend and discover someplace new. So the website is open for suggestions (suggest something here!) and the production team have started researching their own locations.

Seven weeks til we start fimling – I’m sure that will go very, very quickly!

Last week (bear with me, catching up!) I helped out at Do You Remember The First Time? A gig organised by Belfast City Council and broadcast live by ATL and recorded for TV (being broadcast this Tuesday, details at the end of the post).

The gig was held to celebrate the re-opening of the Ulster Hall after a two year refurbishment. Put together by the ATL team, each act performed two songs – one of their own, and one a cover from a band that they had seen play at the Ulster Hall in the past. Acts were all local, including Kowalski, Panama Kings, Lowly Knights (attractive girls included), Ash, and a surprise appearance from Snow Patrol. Unfortunately my favourite local band, General Fiasco, were missing from the line-up.

It was a great night really – I was just looking after some of the bands, making sure they were where they needed to be when they needed to be, so I managed to catch quite a lot of the concert, and it should be well worth viewing as well – the footage does look great. The Ulster Hall has definitely benefited from a make-over as well. Although you won’t notice much of a difference in the hall, the entrance is much nicer, as are the backstage areas (although they are still being finished by the look of things).

At the end of the night, all the acts got on stage for a performance of “Teenage Kicks” which with pyrotechnics and paper cannons was a bit like some weird X-Factor final!

After the gig of course, came the drinks – first in the Ulster Hall, then the Stiff Kitten (as the shutters were coming down and the floor was being hosed in disinfectant) and then the Holiday Inn bar. I left about half four in the morning I think.

Fun night though. ‘A’ was there as well, but I managed to avoid tipsy texting or anything like that. Result!

You can catch the concert “ATL – Live At The Hall” on BBC Two Northern Ireland at 9pm on St Patrick’s Day (Tuesday the 17th of March). If it’s still available on the iPlayer, you should be able to find a link to it on this page.

So on Saturday night, I was at the Irish Film & Television Awards in Dublin – that’s me, the crew and presenters in the picture above. Unfortunately I didn’t win an award (that’s a fake one in my hands), we were there putting together a show for BBC Northern Ireland.

It was quite a fun night really, and we met and got to have a chat with a couple of famous people. Brendan Gleeson was really nice, as was Shane Richie. He was actually very very funny, and made time to speak to us because we were from the BBC. The person I was most excited about meeting was Aiden Gillen from The Wire (he plays Mayor Carcetti in that). He was a  bit nervous during his interview, but apologised afterwards, saying he’s not very good at doing stuff like ‘that’. 

Afterwards, it was straight round to the edit suite for me where I left our tapes to be digitised over night. I was back in the edit at 11am on Sunday morning, and left there at 2am on Monday morning. Then it was back in at 8am that morning, to finish the programme off, which we managed to do at 3.30pm. Then, it was straight round to RTÉ (the Irish BBC equivalent) where the programme was sent to the BBC in Belfast at 5pm. Two hours later, it was broadcast on TV.

To be honest, I was absolutely exhausted after all this! I think I must have got about 3 hours sleep on Saturday and Sunday night, and we never left the edit suite whilst we were putting the programme together.

Anyways, it’s nice to be back home now! If you want to watch the programme, you can find it here on the iPlayer until Monday 23rd February. And yes, I did partake in drinks after the award ceremony which was probably not a very good idea given the hectic schedule that was coming my way. Still, it’s got to be done! Only had a couple of glasses of wine!

Working. That’s the short answer! Tomorrow I’m heading down to Dublin for the Sixth annual Irish and Film Television Awards. It’s being broadcast live on RTE, but I have to turn round a one hour version with red carpet interviews and backstage award winner interviews for broadcast on BBC Two at 7pm on Monday.

It’ll be quite a tight turn around, I’ll be working late tomorrow night and then editing all day Sunday and Monday to get the programme ready. I’ll then have to travel to RTE on Monday afternoon and play the programme up to the BBC in Belfast, where hopefully it’ll go out 2 hours later, barring any major problems.

There’s not anyone that famous going to the awards that I’m excited about seeing, maybe Aiden Gillen as I love The Wire. Oh and Shane Richie in some weird way too. Anyways, hopefully I’ll have fun doing it. I’m quite looking forward to spending a couple of days away from Belfast, and it should be quite chilled hopefully once tomorrow night’s out of the way. If I have time, I’ll try and tweet from the red carpet.

VOICEMAIL NUMBER, #, PASSWORD, #, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, #, 8, 1, 2, 1, 1, 4, #, 8, 1, 3,1,  1, 4, #, 8, 1, 4, 1, 1, 4, #, 8, 1, 5, 1, 1, 4, #, #

Is this the most complicated voicemail system in the world. It drives me insane. That’s 48 keys I need to press. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had the great opportunity of hearing a talk from and then taking part in a small Q+A session with Andy Parfitt yesterday. He’s the head of Radio 1, 1 Xtra and the BBC’s fairly new teen offering, Switch, and was in Belfast for a speech to the Radio Academy here.

It was a really interesting hour and a half, listening to Andy talk about how Radio 1 manages to stay relevant to its audience and is trying to make the most of what new technology has to offer for listeners. He is extremely passionate about the Radio 1 listener, and seems to know them inside out. Which is presumably why Radio 1 does so well. He also told us why Radio 1’s news bulletins are on the half hour and not the hour, but I’m not going to reveal the reason sorry!

If you are mad enough to have missed Laurence & Jackie’s Northern Exposure, episode 1 is now available on the iPlayer.

This week’s programme, 9pm on BBC One Northern Ireland repeated on Sunday evening, sees L&J take to the roads of County Armagh. Tune in and see Laurence micro-lighting! (BBC One NI is avilable on Sky Digital channel 973 and Virgin Media channel 863 throughout the UK.)