p3 on the BBC

Barely has this little blog taken its first, faltering steps into the world – it still needs to be burped regularly – and already worldwide fame has been thrust upon it. Well, kind of…

I was sitting at work on Friday, picking my nose - I’d finished writing my remarkably average and slightly underwhelming Business Week program early, and idle hands make the devil’s work – when an email came in from Peter van Dyke at the BBC World Service.

He had been wondering what to do in the final 15 minutes of his program, World Have Your Say, on Friday night. He came across our blog, saw my carp post and got the idea of doing something about different Christmas traditions around the world. He asked me if I wanted to be a guest on the program and talk about our mud-eating, slightly evil looking, fishy Christmas companions.

I stopped picking my nose. Great! A good way to get a mention for our blogs! And it means that I am now officially the BBC’s Correspondant for Polish Mud-Eating, Slightly Evil Looking, Fishy Christmas Companions. They said I could have my own desk! And a secretary!

Come 7.40 in the evening the phone rings and it’s the most silky smooth, BBC-like voice that you have ever had on the other end of the line - ever. They put you on ‘hold’ as you listen to the programme until your time comes.

Millions and millions are listening to the BBC WS – in all sorts of countries. They make the listening figures of Radio Polonia look like a local community radio station.

Finally it was my turn, and I did the bit about the carp in the bath, etc. They seemed to like the idea of a carp swimming moodily around the bathtub, as a poor, slightly inebriated Polish guy hovers outside in the hall with a hammer.

Then Anna, a Pole living in London, came on the line and we had a little chat. Then a Muslim living in Hungary turns up and starts on about the main dish on Christmas Day in Budapest – fish soup. And then there was someone from Nigeria…and so on.

Near the end of the programme the guy asked me if I wrote about food often. I didn’t know how to answer that, so I launched into a plug about p3, how it’s a collective blog and how we are going to take over the world just as soon as we can be bothered to get around it.

It just goes to show that producers don’t only get their ideas from mainstream media anymore – they go fishing for blogs as well. It also goes to show that when we post something on blogs, someone, somewhere reads them. Just occasionally it might be the BBC.