The Beeb Sees The Light (?)

I posted a few days back about why I turned down an invitation to appear on prime time BBC tv. One of the reasons was that the crew for the Inside Out programme had decided to make the programme using only public transport. Here's what I wrote about that in my email to the programme’s producer:

“Although I'm an advocate and an activist, I'm also a pragmatist - as such I am struggling with the premise of making the film just by using public transport. Although laudable it sounds pretty fraught: my take is that people don't have to own a car, but it's sometimes necessary to use one (for "car" read another appropriate vehicle). If I was doing what I understand you're doing, I think I might hire a car or van for the day.”

Guess what? Since the programme went out, BBC Transport Correspondent Richard Westcott has posted the following,

“… we tried to make the whole film without using a car, because we thought it would be clever. In the end, we failed to make the whole film without a car - it was simply impractical. However, we did travel with the crew to Sussex and London by train but filming at Southampton docks and Mansfield proved impossible.”

I rest my case. The video on the BBC website shows a tv crew dragging heavy equipment along a muddy track in the country. As I said to the Beeb, sometimes, it makes more sense to use a vehicle. But that doesn’t mean you have to own one.