4pm. The artists in residence office, my base at The South Bank, gets a lot of love from the South bank Staff, cause it’s on the river, looking out on the embankment  and you can kick back and watch the world go by.

Gil Lloyd from Artsadmin  my projects and commissions manager pops down as does Rachel Holmes writer and head of literature at The South Bank.  We meet and greet and talk South Africa, both Rachel and Gil are from South Africa and I’m really pleased they’ve finally properly met each other.

By now Paddy Occonnel is in the bag. The event is on.  A phone call comes through to the south bank from the BBC who are apparently unhappy not with the  Paddy Occonnel suggestion but with how it happened. A message was left on the answer machine of the exec producer of Saturday Live to say that Paddy was doing it. 

Unfortunately we at The South Bank were thrown into a situation of damage limitation and needs must. I was determined that the replacement for wonderful Fi must be someone of equal quality.  For a moment I thought it was all going to become ridiculously and unneccasserily adversarial between the BBC and The South Bank, two organisations that I have the utmost respect for. That, I quote,  the poets should introduce themselves was bordering on offensive as a solution and The Southbank nor I would allow it. I’ve had enough.  At 6pm I bike home.