3,4,5secondsofdead airarelikeafortnight ..itwasanightmare
NEWS ANCHOR ON TRIALS OF LIVE BROADCASTS Viv Lumsden recalls the triumphs, tragedies, titters and tension on the set of STV’s flagship bulletin
around – with their permission – learning how to structure a piece and edit it,” she said.
In her new berth at STV, Viv co-presented the flagship news show with Shereen Nanjiani and Angus Simpson. John MacKay joined towards the end of Viv’s time at Scottish.
Some days there were huge breaking stories and the newsroom was electric. When Thomas Hamilton massacre Dunblane Primary, killing 16 children and one teacher, Viv was on a day off.
She had to stop herself jumping in her car the minute she heard about the murders.
Viv said: “I had itchy palms. I really wanted to phone in and say, ‘Can I come in.’ Not because I was relishing the story but because I wanted to be part of something. “It was the same with Lockerbie.” It was very unusual for Viv to leave the studio on Scotland Today. But she did the live report from the Dunblane memorial service a few nights later.
“I remember walking with the crew into the centre of Dunblane,” she said. “The service was in the cathedral and I said, ‘It can’t be here, there’s no people’. Then we turned the corner and there were hundreds of people. They were all silent. That’s my abiding memory, the silence. It was just eerie.”
Then there were the days when the headlines were less pressing. She said: “We had laughs. There was one we would have been sacked for if we hadn’t got our acts together.”
A prominent member of the Gaelic community had died. For political reasons that Viv has now forgotten, this had to be given the big treatment on Scotland Today.
She recalled: “No one in the newsroom had heard of him. This was fairly high up the running order and we had to carry this story. We started to joke about it all day.”
It was all great fun until it was time to go on air. Viv said: “I was reading out the intro and I was frightened that I wouldn’t be able to do it.
“I read the intro with my nails in my legs, causing as much pain as I could to keep me going. I had to avoid Shereen’s eyes for the rest of the show.”
As STV’s star presenter, Viv’s duties went beyond the newsroom. She presented a chat show, Viv on Sunday, interviewing the stars of the day.
And while John Travolta, Tom Jones, John Cleese and Shirley MacLaine all joined her on the sofa, her abiding memory is of a passive-aggressive pop star who did not want to be spending his Sunday with Viv one little bit.
“The worst by far was Andrew Ridgeley, the other half of George Michael,” she said.
“He had clearly been sent up to Glasgow against his will. He sat there with his arms crossed and refused to talk to me. It was horrible. I would have killed him quite happily after that.”
Much more to her taste was presenting The Business Game, a preDragons’ Den entrepreneurial contest sponsored by Scottish Enterprise.
She said: “That interested me enormously. I had no idea how complicated setting up a business was, how many things you had to think about – the legal aspect, insurance.
“I loved that and I still bump into people who were on it.”
Then there were the cushion and curtain years, presenting The Home Show with her husband Alan Douglas.
“It’s the most popular programme I’ve been involved in,” she said. “I learned a lot about design, about light and space and the way their proportions work.”
The show ran for six years and gave Viv lots of ideas for transforming her own home.
“Alan and I went through pots of our cash changing our kitchens,” she said. “I responded to a lot of the things I saw while we were making the show. Poor Alan had to just agree.”
Viv’s vivid red hair and equally rich voice mean she is still recognised years after she left STV. She said: “People used to come up to me and tell me that their dads used to fancy me. Now it’s their grandads.”