BBC Radio 4 ‘Sunday’ programme interview

The day the clocks went forward to British Summer Time and I lost an hour’s sleep, the BBC whisked me off at 6.45am (5.45am by my body clock) in a silver car to Broadcasting House to do an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme. You can pick up a link to listen to the programme from the programme’s website. Look for the segment entitled Baha’i persecution. The interview was about the latest and very worrying development in the persecution of the Baha’is in Iran.

The programme goes out from Manchester. I was in London sitting in a studio the size of a walk-in closet. There was a safety notice on the wall proclaiming that there must be no more than three people in the studio. Fat chance, I thought. More than three and there’d be a serious risk of asphyxiation.

Anyway, I sat in the studio, wearing headphones and supping coffee. Seven o’clock came and I heard nothing. Seven-fifteen came and I thought they’d forgotten me. Then my mobile rang. It was the studio in Manchester. Was I in the studio? Yes, I said, but I can’t hear anything. There’s a technical hitch, they said, and the engineers in Broadcasting House would sort it out. A few moments later I could hear the programme. They were in the middle of a package about whether God could be seen as feminine as well as masculine. Can one pray ‘Our Mother…’ just as one prays ‘Our Father…’?

The PA came on the line and said they’d be on to me after the package.

After I’d done the interview, the PA came back on and told me that they’d been able to hear me in Manchester, even though I hadn’t been able to hear them. They’d been shouting at me to see if was awake. So, even the mighty BBC can suffer its glitches!

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, BBC

Technorati Tags: BBC Radio 4, Iran