As per my previous count, we had already interviewed at least 15 of them, all of whom had so much to say on hope for the future and the youth of today’s generation. Nicole, the production manager was conducting the interviews, when all of a sudden she decided that others should try their hand at these interviews. She suggested that I should tackle one myself to get the experience of being on set. Of course I resisted, but all my protests fell on deaf ears – for her mind was already made up. So I decided to try and give it a shot, and since I had been present for all the prior interviews, it wasn’t going to be the end of the world for me.
Moments later, we got a call from Susan informing us that one more interviewee was on the way over to our studio, and so, as usual, we set up the lights, and camera and tested the sound on location in preparation for this. The door bell went off, and in walked a tall gentleman, in a carefully chosen neat outfit, giving off the impression of very good taste in clothing. Looking up at his face, I couldn’t help but wonder where I had seen his very familiar face before. It took me a second to figure it out that he must be some famous person, from the way my team members were all staring at him in awe and recognition. It then sunk in that this was the one and only Waihiga Mwaura of Citizen TV. My hands went all cold and my face ashen, as I silently said a small prayer in hope that he wasn’t the person I was supposed to interview. I was just not ready to face a news anchor of the most watched TV channel in the country.
After he confirmed that he was indeed here for the interview, I felt my world crashing down on me and I wished that the floor would somehow swallow me up. I quickly did what I do best when cornered, which involves entering “scape-goat-mode”. In this mode I will do anything and everything to save myself from the the black hole that I keep seeing in front of me. I turned to Nicole and practically begged her to handle this one just this one last time, but she just didn’t budge, and it suddenly sunk in that I was on my own. Bribing her with her favorite chocolate was blatantly rejected too.
So, I then invited him to take the hot seat, as I took a couple of deep breaths and gathered up my mojo to just get on with this. The look of confidence from Nicole and my team members did a lot to help me in this. Lights, Camera and we were rolling. It took me a couple of questions to get the momentum and then I got going, and Waihiga Mwaura being a TV personality actually went a long way in making this interview a piece of cake since he knew exactly what to do in front of the camera; and so I had an easy time.
Afterwards, all the people in the office wanted a picture with him for their facebook time-lines, and he being just the most down-to-earth person gladly accepted. After the camera flashing stopped, we took him around the office to get a feel of how we do things here, and you couldn’t help but see how impressed he was with what he saw.
At the end of it all, this day will go down in my list of my special lifetime achievements, and this is something I will brag about shamelessly for a long time, because I know that not many of you out there will ever have one-on-one moments with such famous TV personalities.
