I Now Work for the Beeb Don't You Know

...well I say that but in reality I only worked for them for two days a couple of weeks ago. It's not really anything to write home about when you look at it like that but it is one massive break through for me and considering that working for the BBC and especially in Children's is something that has always been extremely high on my career wishlist ever since my work experience placement on the CBBC show Do Something Different way back in 2007, I feel that this particular baby step needs all the enthusiastic clapping and the "who's a clever girl" comments I can get. I now have a fully authentic BBC Casual Staff Number of my very own which is massively exciting and hopefully it's going to lead to much more work with them in the future.

I was the Art Department Runner for a CBBC show called Who Let the Dogs Out? which is a really lovely little show where children teach their dogs how to do tricks and yes, I have had that song by The Baha Men stuck in my head ever since I worked on the programme. I was helping the rest of the Art Department (three highly amusing Scottish men) transform a beautiful but very dusty Victorian bath house into the most amazing dog agility course I've ever seen...it even had a trampoline! Much heavy lifting and prop assembly and sticking my fingers together with masking tape and using industrial strength white tac to stick things to the walls and hoovering and dusting later (ironic really seeing as it was International Women's Day at the time and I was the one wielding the duster!) we had a really stunning setting for the initial dog try-outs. The next day the rest of the crew came on board, filming began and there were lots of little doggies everywhere for me to make friends with. It was all a very exciting experience and even better in hindsight when I found out a week later I had just missed the day when all the dogs started weeing on the carpet which I would have found very amusing if I was there at the time except for the fact that I would have had to clean it up. Still it could have been worse I guess...

I learned so much from this job and not just the fact that I really miss having a dog in my life. This is not the first time I've worked within the Art Department of a show but it is the first time I've worked in an interior setting where we've had to dress everything from scratch. Normally I'm outside digging trenches in fields, planting flowers, lugging hay bales around and doing other crazy things whilst the rain pours down but this is the first time I've been involved in dressing sets with graphics and it was a new and exciting experience for me. It was also very nice to work with people who have much more experience that I have (the Production Designer has also worked on Waybuloo and MI High amongst many other things...I was slightly in awe) and it was good to be shown the ropes by someone who has been in the industry for many years.

The entire crew were just a bunch of really lovely people who made me feel so welcome and it reminded me why I love working in Children's TV in the first place. It was just a wonderful experience and I'm itching to work on more kiddie's shows now. Bring it!