It was another miserable morning when myself and Jade (I made her come with me for moral support) set off in the car to not so sunny Manchester. This in itself was no easy task, we first had to drop our multitude of Kids and Dogs off at various childcare establishments! So we packed ourselves, a flask of tea and a pack of Haribo into the car, and off we went.
The journey was relatively straight forward apart from the car de-powering a few times on the motorway. I am renowned for cars which like to give up at the most crucial times. Such as when I took Jade to the hospital in labour with tot number 3, and the exhaust fell off the car in the middle of the city. I then had Jade holding up the traffic with her enormous 9 month pregnant belly; stopping me from being run over while I lay under the car tying the exhaust back on with a dog lead!
A few wrong turns around Manchester and we finally arrived into the car park at Media City; in good time for me to strip off my Mummy clothes and put my grown up clothes on. Yes, you heard me right, I stripped off in a Manchester car park, I am a country girl and a Mummy, I don’t worry about these things.
So the first thing we decided to do was find food, so off we wander into Media City. If you have not been to Media City, its quite a place. It is very shiny and looks like one of those super cool places that you don’t go with children. Many of the big TV shows are filmed there including Coronation Street. It’s the sort of place where Jade and I, who came in her tweed, stood out like a sore thumb. Especially when you take pictures of each other whilst swinging around a signpost!
So we found somewhere to eat lunch. A super trendy gastro type bar with industrial type furniture and lots of converse wearing cool people. So after attempting to eat lunch and practice my pitch it was time to go grab my props from the car and go meet the producers from Dragons Den.
Into the BBC building we troop, with box loads of nappies and wet bags. Like most people going to an interview, I had dressed accordingly for the situation. When the producer came down to meet me and Jade, she was in a mini skirt and trainers and looked far too trendy (I suddenly felt much older than 29!).
Jade wasn’t allowed to stay to watch the interview and pitch, but she managed to sneak into the building by carrying my props for me for all of five minutes until she was politely thrown out. She wasn’t too bothered, she was finally free to go shopping without little ones for the first time in a year. All you Mum’s will know what a luxury that is. She even saw Craig Charles wandering around outside the BBC building, yep, I had no idea who he was either but apparently he was in Corrie and Red Dwarf.
Then it was just me, two producers and a video camera. Nervous wasn’t the word for it, and then they told me that I would get thirty goes at getting my pitch right. So off I went, goes one, two and three, had a few hiccups but I was gaining confidence and by the time I got to goes five and six, I had it, I was in the pitching zone and I nailed it.
The feeling as I left the building was something that will stay with me. What ever happened next, even if I wasn’t successful at securing a slot on the show, I would always be proud of just getting to this point.
