Lying in a sleeping bag on the floor of a small, dingy, shallow-hulled 25 metre supply vessel, as it is tossed unrelentingly by the Mediterranean, I open my eyes to see our team and our belongings rushing violently back and forth across the room.  After 3 days at sea, I somehow still have to laugh.  On deck, getting some air, I give a thumbs-up to the peaky looking Captain Lukman to check he is ok, at which he promptly vomits into his hands.  Our epic mission from Malta for Tripoli is only beginning, and the thought of arriving in a country on the brink of civil war is an attractive proposition.  Anything to get off the boat.

Our team of four; Tobin, Mark, Mirko and I, arrived in Malta on 27^th March with 1.5 tonnes of broadcast kit, our goal to set up live positions in Tripoli for GMS clients before any other service provider.  Janna and Sargon in London had secured permission to enter Libya, kit had been prepped and our travel to Malta organised.  Tobin had already spent several days scoping out travel from Malta, and when all flights halted upon our arrival, we turned to his sea options.  The 7 hour catamarans refused to take us and so the slower Maltese “Triva I” was our best and eventually, as the situation escalated in Libya, only option.  We stocked up on supplies, generators and fuel and after two days of false starts, we departed Valletta port.  What was sold as a daunting 30 hour journey, developed into a implacable 66 hour trip covering just 350 km.

Out on the Med, the waves grew and the contents of our boat took on an increasingly malevolent edge.  Chairs flew at us, crockery smashed and a television fell from the wall, narrowly missing Tobin’s head.  During one particularly cruel night, our engine failed 5 times and we drifted west for several hours.  Janna somehow remained calm when we rang with our coordinates and the possibility of mounting an international air and sea rescue. But which coast guard to call, and where to?  Could we ask the Libyans to tow us to Tripoli?  Mercifully, the engine was fixed.  We waited just outside Tripoli port for 12 hours and when the coastguards finally called us in, the anchor wouldn’t come up, so the crew simply sawed it off and on we went. 

Four weeks since we left London, and we are still the only broadcast service provider in Tripoli, a scoop that justifies the journey.  Our small and incredibly dedicated team is providing two live positions and multi-format playouts to an endless stream of AP clients, as well as a dedicated news path for press conferences and live shots.

Do you sometimes think the world revolves around you? Of course you do, we all think that. But it doesn’t. It revolves around me. 

Every atom, particle and miniscule globule of matter, like Pixie Lott or safety pins, is permanently circling my being. This discovery was made when I was invited to join last week’s Question Time audience.  At the prospect of Mr Nick Griffin’s appearance, using pure mental power alone, I had convinced the organisers to pick my name from the database.

And so, imagine my surprise that the audience was attacked for being “hand-picked”.  Apparently it was too multi-cultural, too leftie and too young.  To me it just looked like the top deck of the Number 43 bus.  When called by the producers, they did not enquire into my race, age or sexual persuasion. I was asked for my political views, certainly, but it was clear on the night that the audience was filled with supporters of all the mainstream parties, as well as the BNP.  The audience merely confirmed what most Londoners already know; London is polarised - you are either a BNP supporter, or you hate the BNP.  Doesn’t matter of you’re Tory or Greenie.

Our capital is a comparatively well-integrated society, but there are still pockets of people whose valid grievances lead them, unfortunately, to a more extreme/uninformed response. The sort of people who would stub their toe on a coffee table and then take a machete to all coffee tables in the borough, whilst screaming vengeance and scorn upon all trees, carpenters and coffee growers.  As a leftie, I would say, “coffee tables have feelings too.”   

On a grander scale, this extremity of character is, unless you’re a coffee table, all the more frightening: 

BNP supporter thinks:   “I'm uncomfortable with the levels of immigration in society and the lack of resources to cope with it.”  

BNP Supporter says:       “I hate blacks, Asians, gays, Muslims, foreign imports and the Olympics.”  

The Olympics?  Yes, the Olympics. The BNP want to send it back to Athens, from whence it came.  It’s a kind of “sporting repatriation”, which I think is an oxymoron.  As ideas go, it is on a par with putting mirrors opposite toilets. Who wants to watch themselves take a crap?

And what of Nick Griffin?  This man who evokes the image of Animal Farm’s Napoleon like no other non-pig was able to.  I know it may be purile to compare him to a hog, but inaccurate it isn’t. Because that is all he is, a fascist on trotters.  Now he’s had his five minutes, we can go back to ignoring him. Far more beneficial, would be for us to look at the reasons why people feel he best represents their views.  Look at Jack Straw; he leaves all questions unanswered and the unfortunate listener with an intense pain in their head.  His policies and lack of accountability only push people further into the margins of society where they feel they’re actually being heard.  Every time Jack Straw speaks, seven BNP supporters are born.

Back to me. I featured heavily in the show and on GMTV the next day, after being ambushed for a post-recording interview.  By the time my photo was in the Daily Mail (oh, the irony) on the Saturday, I had decide that the world was not in fact revolving around me, but I actually am the world. You are all merely gravitating around my distended celestial body.  Plus, I gained two friends on facebook in one day.

However, as the attention died away, the hollowness of anonymity returned.  I knew my fame would be short-lived, and in expecting this meaningless existence to return, I managed to minimise its impact. Plus, the emptiness tasted chalky, like a Tuesday, and as such was bearably familiar.  Unflattered and not seduced by this period of intense attention, I resolved to settle for short, sharp bursts of fame. Bit like the BNP then. 

Oh.  Not quite the alignment I was going for.

 JL