Cold Open

05:58

Priya is in the chair with ninety seconds to air and the running order says her first guest is a man called Dr Aldo Fenwick, who is going to talk for eleven minutes about bees.

Dr Fenwick is not here.

Through the glass, Kemi mouths he's coming, which in producer means I have no information.

06:00

"Good morning, it's six o'clock."

06:04

Still no bees.

Priya does the traffic, which is not her job. She does the weather, which is also not her job, and which she does with an authority that would alarm the actual meteorologist.

Kemi holds up a piece of paper. It says: TRAIN DELAYED.

Priya holds up four fingers. This means: I need four minutes of something.

Kemi holds up her hands, empty. This means what it looks like it means.

06:07

"…and while we wait for Dr Fenwick, who I'm told is on a train, let's talk about trains."

She talks about trains for four minutes. She has never had a thought about trains in her life. She discovers, live, that she has several.

06:11

Kemi's paper now says: STILL DELAYED. 20 MIN.

Twenty minutes.

Priya has, at her disposal: a travel bulletin she has already done twice, a competition that does not begin until seven, and a studio guest slot with no studio guest in it.

She looks at the phone lines, which are dark, because it is eleven minutes past six in the morning.

She takes a breath.

"Right," she says. "I'm going to be honest with you. My guest is on a train. I have twenty minutes and nothing to fill them with. Lines are open. Tell me what you're doing."

06:13

The first caller is a man called Tony who is a night-shift baker and has been up since one and wants everyone to know that the six o'clock bulletin is what he has instead of company.

06:16

Second caller: a woman driving to Aberdeen who has been in the car since four and is, she reports, "forty per cent hallucinating."

Priya keeps her on for six minutes. It is possibly the best radio she has ever made.

06:22

The lines are now full. Kemi is standing up in the gallery.

There is a nurse coming off a shift. There is a man who has just been told he is a grandfather and has nobody to tell yet because it is twenty past six. There is a fifteen-year-old who should absolutely be asleep and whose mother, Priya suspects, is going to hear this.

06:31

Dr Fenwick arrives.

He is flustered and apologetic and holding a folder about bees.

Priya looks at him through the glass. She looks at the switchboard, which is entirely lit.

"Dr Fenwick," she says, on air, "is in the building. Dr Fenwick, if you're listening — and I'm so sorry — I'm going to need another ten minutes. There's a man on line four who's just become a grandfather."

07:12

The bees are excellent. Dr Fenwick is a natural and gets nineteen minutes in the end, which is eight more than the running order allowed.

07:58

Kemi comes into the studio holding the overnight figures, which are not available at 07:58 and which she has therefore obtained by means Priya elects not to investigate.

"Don't," says Priya.

"Highest six-to-seven since March."

"That's because a man was late for a train."

"That," says Kemi, "is exactly what I'm putting in the report."