Page 178 - She's One Crazy Lady!

photographers... Alison Bagley, Alan Castle, Glyn Dobbs (who helped us put together a fantastic calendar using a selection of his beautiful shots of animals), Kit Mallin, who always told us rude (but funny) jokes; Michael Jones – “The Running Man” – who ran the London Marathon for us, as did the sports reporter, Jon Dunham and David Ikin, who I remember well, when he fell over whilst taking a shot at a garden party we attended and I had to administer first aid to his knee. He was more annoyed at having ripped his jeans!
There were many other photographers and reporters, of course, but these were our favourites and I know they loved setting up some of the shots up as they all had to have a crazy element to them.
When David Penman moved on I was invited to meet Jeremy Clifford and wondered whether such a change would affect our coverage, but his arrival only made our presence in the county more widespread. I was asked to go to meet him and knowing he only had thirty minutes to spare I knew I had to do a convincing ‘selling’ job. As is my norm, I spoke enthusiastically and animatedly about what it was we were doing
and why we were doing it. My outpour was suddenly brought to an abrupt halt...
“Will you shut up!”
I looked at him open-mouthed, stopped in my tracks. I froze. Inwardly, I thought, ‘how rude’, but then I saw that he was actually laughing.
“You’ve been here half an hour and I haven’t got a word in yet!” I still didn’t know if this was a telling off. Had I blown it? He was grinning.
“Look, Glennis. You don’t have to worry. We’re behind you all the way. We believe in what you are doing, and, be assured, the coverage will continue.” It certainly did and we were to see Jeremy many times at our events.
I loved going to see Jeremy and to eat his chocolate biscuits. I loved going into all the ET Offices. In those days, their main office in Kettering was full of reporters, photographers, admin and events staff and sales staff. I joked that all the employees looked like robots as they silently worked to deadlines, eyes fixed to their computer screens. How sad it was, years later, when staffing was drastically reduced, and the main office and that of the smaller offices in Wellingborough,
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