ONE TAKE KEITH ON TV

I received a phone call last Friday from T.V. reporter, Alex de Jong, of NCBC Europe television asking me if he could bring a film crew to my loft in Claygate and interview me with the pigeons. The recording is for a five minute sports slot on his ‘World Business’ programme, to be screened on Sky cannel 505 in about three weeks time. The programme is also screened on 18 channels globally and on 20 International airlines. Alex comes from New Zealand and has been a reporter for the T.V. companies since 1993, covering many premier sports events including, ‘Euro 2000’, the football world cup finals. His camera man, Simon Winter, works free lance and has covered mostly Classic Car and Motor Shows for the past twenty years.

Although I scrape my loft out twice a day and it is kept very clean, I gave the front a wash down on Sunday evening, ready for the camera crew, which were to arrive to start filming 09.00hrs on Monday morning. Early on the Monday morning it was raining, but luckily stopped about half an hour before the lads arrived from their base in London. The interview covered every aspect of our sport including,  long distance and sprint racing, and of course I gave a good account of our problems with Hawks and the recent ‘bird flu’. I told Alex that the media have nick named me ‘One Take Keith’ and he said after the filming had finished that he would have to book more editing time, because I talk to much. What could he mean? As I’ve stated before, I’m always happy to front up to the national media, to tell them what a great hobby pigeon racing is and it’s not all Trafalgar Square, dirty street pigeons under the railway arches and pigeon droppings. It seems to me that most times I see pigeons featured in the national media, whether it be Television, Radio or in the Newspapers, it’s detrimental to our sport. I’ve now appeared on national T.V. five times and once turned down an appearance on national T.V. because I knew it was going to be a ‘micky take’ and detrimental to pigeon racing. I feel very strongly about this and I hate to see anything adverse about pigeons in the national media! Alex is going to advice me when this ‘World Business’ programme is going to be screened, so watch this space.

TEXT BY KEITH MOTT