I had one of the best night's sleep I've had in months and was only awoken by the alarm ringing. I could have happily stayed in bed all morning, but I was booked to appear on the Radio Scotland morning show with Stephen Jardine at 10am to plug the show. I decided to walk down to their studios which took 25 minutes or so.
The weather is really close so I was soaked with sweat by the time I got there. Nice. I was on for about 20 minutes and it was a fantastic opportuity to talk about the guests I have lined up. I really couldn't have asked for more. I did an interview with Heart for their nightly news show from Glasgow earlier in the week, so I couldn't have better radio coverage across Scotland. If you want to listen to the Radio Scotland piece it's HERE. Scroll in 1 hour 8 mins.
I then headed back to the Gilded Balloon where all my shows are taking place to do a 15 minute interview with Ewan Spence for his Fringe Podcast. I'll post the link when it's up.
It was then time for a bit of flyering outside the Gilded Balloon, where again I met a lot of LBC listeners and people who had seen me on TV. There were so many more people around than the previous couple of days. Fin had been doing it for several hours on the Royal Mile and said the reaction has been amazing.
Our 4pm show we had Fi Glover from Radio 4 and BBC Scotland Editor Sarah Smith. They both arrived quite early so we had a good old gossip before the show. They had never met before, but got on like a house on fire, to the extent that during the show I hardly got a word in edgeways! But that's the whole point. These shows are all about naturally flowing conversations, rather than me constantly challenging them on whatever they say. The hour went by incredibly quickly, which I think Fi was very grateful for as the room was a bit of a sauna by the end.
At 6pm it was Jo Swinson over at our second venue in the National Museum of Scotland. Jo was hotfooting it from the LibDem by-election triumph in Brecon and I was a it nervous the logistics might beat her, but at 5.15 she arrived looking incredibly cheerful and fresh, even though she'd been up since 5am.
This was our biggest audience so far and it was a very genial chat, although I did spend ten minutes challenging her on Brexit. We had a rather rude man in the audience who asked a perfectly legitimate question on immigration, but he kept interrupting her when she started to answer the question. He really didn't do himself any favours.
Afterwards I went out to dinner with Sophie and Victoria. Sophie is my current LBC producer and Victoria used to produce me but is now with Eddie Mair. When i got back to my digs I have to admit I was so dog tired that I immediately fell asleep and woke up just before 1am to phone Simmo.
Today we have Kirsty Wark at 4pm and Neil and Christine Hamilton at 6pm.
