230: Wine for Breakfast

Welcome to an At The Flicks interview show. To be more precise, a face-to-face recorded discussion, the first one we have done for years (thanks Covid). The person who honoured us with his presence is Simon Taylor.  For years Simon worked in that most frightening of environments – Live TV.  Amongst his many accomplishments are his work on The Big Breakfast, Johnny Vaughn Tonight and The Paul O’Grady show.  Don’t worry if you live in locales that have never heard of any of those shows, they are very British institutions, however I am sure you will recognise the stresses and euphoria of such work regardless of wherever you live. So it was that Graham and Jeff had to try to remember how to set up the mics and recording equipment for the session.  Not forgetting a glass of wine for each of us, including our guest (more on that later).  You can be judge of whether they accomplished a successful transition from Zoom to Room. As for our chat with Simon, we managed to answer the following questions:  - How did you do guest research before the internet?  - Who were your favourite guests? - Which item brought onto The Frank Skinner show surprised Jamie Oliver? - What was unusual about the Juliette Binoche interview conducted for The Big Breakfast? - What does go on behind the scenes of The Antiques Roadshow? These questions and many more about that toughest of all TV challenges will be answered in this fascinating, informative and often very funny interview. We also briefly chatted about life after Live TV.  Since leaving that pressure cooker life, Simon now works in the world of wine, and we even got to talk to him about wine recommendations – which almost caused Graham to end the interview early so he could go and sample them!  If you live near Stroud, why not go and say hello to Simon in the Stroud Wine Company Shop – a wonderful fellow and very knowledgeable on the subject of wines, and of course, Live TV. Before we forget, please see the link to the Stroud Wine Company website below. If we don’t see you there, then we will catch up At The Flicks. Bye for now.