Would you like to taste the wine, sir/madam?

I hate this ritual. It's awkward and odd and has no place in all but the very best restaurants.

95% of wines are okay. In the restaurants I frequent, 99.5% of them are okay. Most are screw-top, and modern bottling procedures are such that even cork-stopped wines are usually always as they should be.

But still, we have to go through with the tasting. What is the point?

Traditionally, when one person is paying the bill, that person is asked by the sommelier/waiter to taste the wine. Not because of their inherently superior knowledge, but because it re-inforces the hierarchy of their position as bill-payer. You might be breaking bread as equals, but some are more equal than others.

We wait for the bill-payer to say the wine is good enough to drink, then it can be shared among us lesser mortals.

In terms of real, genuine practical effect, the only thing this obviates is the pouring of bad wine into more than one glass.

It's out of date. I don't like it.

Hmm I think, as I take a sip doesn't taste corked, but I'm hardly having an epiphany here... in fact... it tastes exactly like the second cheapest wine on the menu, which is, funnily enough, exactly what I ordered. 

The waiter knows it's bog-standard supermarket screw-top plonk with a 400% mark-up, and so do I. He's now been waiting exactly five seconds for me to say something, which is far too long to comment on what I already knew would be okay. Why are we doing this?

"Lovely" I say, failing to make eye contact with the waiter, or my dining companions.

Let's stop this now. In future, I'll order the wine. You bring it.

If there's a problem, I'll let you know.

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Going offline

I have been on holiday for the last two weeks. At the behest of my wife, I switched off the data connection on my phone, so my time online was limited to occasional blasts of laptop action via the pay-as-you-go mi-fi I brought down to Devon with me.

I also did my best to stop writing emails, posting twitter or facebook updates, buying papers, listening to the radio or watching television.

Obviously I got a pass when it came to the riots, but the general idea was to be offline.

Did I "relax"? Not really. I got a chance to do more childcare, which isn't exactly relaxing. I got faintly agitated about not knowing what was going on in the world. I got the feeling of being slightly trapped. I found the whole experience a bit... stressful.

So this week, whilst still in Devon. I started buying papers. It's what you do on holiday. Listening to the radio or watching television always feels a bit odd when you're out of a routine. And besides, a newspaper is the media best suited to the beach.

I used to love a good newspaper. Now I just spend my time asking myself why I spent a pound or more on this awful chod.

They always were yesterday's news, but a paper nowadays seems to be mainly lifestyle gunk put together for and by a bunch of Hilaries and Timothies. There is the occasional wonderful article (the Saturday Times magazine's piece on human echolocation was like finding an oasis in a desert of dross), and the star columnists always seem to deliver, but the overall tone of every broadsheet (and I tried them all this week) appears to be one of wittering smugness.

So I crept back online, to follow the news rabbit down various random and illuminating holes, to do some account-checking and fact-finding, to see what my friends are up to, and to fire up the email in order to catch up on some longer-form correspondence.

And to relax.

Right, I'd better go. The children are kicking off again. Never a dull moment.

Word on the Street

I have just updated my biog to take account of what I've been doing for the last couple of years.

In doing so I found a link to a language programme called Word on the Street I did for young people at BBC World.

This went out on BBC Persia, and was sold to various other territories.

I could be big in Iran.

Nick Wallis Biography

Hello. I am a freelance presenter and broadcast journalist. I currently present the BBC Surrey Saturday Breakfast show, a job I have done since September 2011.

You can listen to my latest show here, or listen live on Saturday mornings between 6am and 9am online or on 104FM and 104.6FM.

Recently, I have been output editing the mighty Newsbeat at BBC Radio 1.

I have also presented a number of reports for the BBC1 regional investigative journalism strand Inside Out. Have a look at one here. I also write a monthly column for a glossy magazine.

I infrequently take to the stage to do stand-up comedy. I got the bug after doing this for Comic Relief. If you want to check out my amazing range of facial expressions, have a look at my profile pics.

If you would like to discuss work, please call me on 07976 432174, or email nick@nickwallis.com

From the beginning...

After deciding I wanted a career in radio whilst at University, I got involved with my local student radio station, Shout FM.

In 1995 I became Shout FM Controller, and in November 1995 was elected Chair of the Student Radio Association, where I worked with BBC Radio 1 to set up the Student Radio Awards.

This brought me into contact with lots of industry people, one of whom, Sammy Jacob, employed me as a Broadcast Assistant at Xfm before its full time launch in 1997.

I was quite keen to get on air, so I started travel presenting. Then, in 1998 I started travel presenting full time at BBC Oxford. Whilst there I was trained up as a journalist, eventually becoming a reporter and newsreader.

In 2001 I moved to BBC Three (then called BBC Choice) to help launch its news service and get some TV reporting and presenting experience.

In 2004 I moved to Radio 1's Newsbeat to become a reporter, specialising in entertainment news.

The same year I went freelance, retaining a contract at Newsbeat, but also picking up presenting work at BBC Radio 5live, regularly covering Richard Bacon and Stephen Nolan.

In 2008 I started reporting for ITN's London Tonight and Five News. In May 2009 I became one of the Five News weekend presenters.

Later that year I was offered the BBC Surrey Breakfast Show, which I presented for three years.

In 2010 I presented a joint BBC/British Council language programme called Word on the Street, which has been broadcast around the world. Get me.

Them's the bare facts. If you want to read a less chronological and slightly more colourful account of what I've been up to - have a look at Memorable career-related incidents so far, written just before taking the BBC Surrey breakfast show.

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Start 'em young

Health warning: this blog post features me writing about my daughter in a proud dad kind of way. If that sort of thing makes you retch, please watch this instead, it's much better. 

*waits patiently*

Okay, you have been warned. Take a look at this...

It's written by my six year old daughter Amy. According to her, it's a news bulletin, and was created entirely of her own volition. She surprised us by marching into the kitchen this morning and reading it out. I have tidied it up below:

"Nana Knickerbocker's in town. Watch out for her.

"And with her sister Gail Force.

"Get your tickets ready and entry [enter?], because you might win.

"And they'll be hiding round the town.

"Oh yes, round the town."

It's only when a child tries to communicate using "grown up" parameters do amateurs like me actually get a proper handle on how their brains are working.

So in Amy's world, "news" doesn't have to be factual, or related in any way to the real world. Nana Knickerbocker and Gail Force are stars of Gigglebiz on CBeebies, a comedy show on the BBC pre-school children's channel.

Above: Nana Knickerbocker, as coloured-in by Amy.

Interestingly, one of the other characters in Gigglebiz is the newsreader Arthur Sleep. Amy likes Arthur Sleep and Gigglebiz, but she never claimed to be doing an impression of him. Also Arthur's "news" stories are almost exclusively gags, and Amy's script was not a gag - she wasn't looking for laughs - she was "broadcasting" important Information.

Although, as soon as she had read us her bulletin, Abi, our three year old, said brightly "you're Arthur Sleep", and walked out.

On the editorial side, I have no idea where Amy got the "showbiz news/promotional plug masquerading as a news item" story concept from.

I guess Amy has only come across the didactic news style of broadcasting when a) hearing the news on the radio and b) watching/hearing some big promotional push aimed at her age group. So she has picked up that style as being "news", but the only stuff she's ever understood has been promo guff, hence her subject matter.

Above: Gail Force.

In terms of metre, Amy's bulletin has a 17th Century oddness to it. What I love about it is that it's written to be spoken. There's something declamatory about the sentence structure. As someone who has spent most of his working life writing material to be broadcast, it's great to see that Amy is developing (albeit unconsciously) an ear for this too.

The rhetorical flourish at the end is just a delight - "Oh yes, round the town." has echoes of a town cryer, but also reveals something about her thinking - she knows she has to grab your attention, and has gone for a kind of conversational repetition as a way of doing so.

I don't think my daughter is particularly intelligent, or special or anything like that. I just wanted to record a moment that meant a lot to me, for what may be obvious reasons.