Dark, bleak, murderous night

It's not really, properly winter until you have travelled to work in the dark and left in the dark. Today, for me, is properly winter. Getting up at 5.45am this morning was not nice. Scootering 21 miles to the ITN building in the freezing rain, was not nice. Turning up for work half an hour early was just stupid. I forgot there wouldn't be much traffic before breakfast on a Sunday morning...

So I got to look at the day file and joy of joys I am doing an entertainment piece, but more importantly an INDOOR entertainment piece. It being a Sunday, and this being London Tonight, I was fully expecting to be reporting from the scene of another Saturday night stabbing in the freezing rain, but no, I have a 10.30am appointment with Martin Freeman, Jessica Hynes (nee Stevenson, from Spaced) and Michelle Ryan. And possibly Kevin Spacey.

Those crazy actor types are putting on their annual attempt to conceive, write and stage six 15 minute plays from scratch in 24 hours at the Old Vic. The writers get in at 7pm, they write all night. They give their finished scripts to the directors at breakfast. The directors have a think then meet the actors at 10 to start line-learning and rehearsals. They plays are staged at 7pm tonight. Then everyone goes and gets pissed.

It sounds pretty cool, and it looks as if tickets are still available. If you have between £75 and £250 to spare, it might be just the thing. The minimum price gets you free drinks. The maximum price is best seats in the house, free champagne, access to the dress rehearsal, a ticket to the pre-performance cocktail party and entry to the after party where all the actors makes speeches and get drunk. If I had £250 to spare I'd be there like a shot.

I will be filming part of the rehearsal process for the 4pm edition of London Tonight on ITV1, which means I will arrive whilst everyone is at their busiest and unlikely to want to disrupt rehearsals to talk to me. Nonetheless, and at the risk of annoying them intently, that is what I will try to do.

Then I'll get back to Gray's Inn Road for 2pm and spend the next hour and a half frantically editing the whole thing together. I will also try and take some photos for this blog if the cameraman has a stills camera.