Fred Dinenage blogs about one of his favourite Meridian features

Child’s Eye has been running for more years than I care to remember - but I’ve loved every minute of it.

I now get young Mums coming up to me in the street and telling me they were once on it - and they’ve still got the tape!

In fact in the next week or two we’re going to re-visit one of our ‘victims’ thirteen years ago.

Her name is Tarra Olive and she lives in Bournemouth. When she was on Child’s Eye - as an eight year old - she was at Elmrise School in Bournemouth. It was around Christmas time and I was asking the children what they would really like for Christmas.

Tarra said she wanted a kitten and on the programme (with the permission of her parents) we gave her a lovely little kitten whom she called Jack. I was disappointed - I rather hoped she’d call him Fred!

Anyway, she’s about to turn twenty one - and Jack has now become rather an elderly fellow. They’re still together - and we’re going to surprise them with a bottle of champagne and a tin of cat food!

Happy days. And I just hope that Child’s Eye will continue to run and run. It’s one of my favourite things.

Last week the pupils at Queen’s Park school in Bournemouth showed Fred their school allotment (pictured below). You can watch the special extended version of Child’s Eye here.

Everybody wants to live the dream – but very few of us actually achieve it, and so often spend weeks/months/years grumbling about how things should change – without actually doing anything about it. Not so Tim Kevan, who at the relatively tender age of 36 retired from his barrister job, moved to North Devon to surf, and got a book deal with Bloomsbury.

Nice work!

His first literary outing, ‘Why Lawyer’s should Surf: Inspiration for Lawyers at work’, is a collection of inspirational writings that examine a variety of areas of the mind and body. Receiving a number of positive reviews from the press, you can read a whole heap of extracts from the book over on Tim’s blog. Of which the snippet below is one of my favourites.

“Billy Hamilton, one of the great surfers of the 1960s and step-father of big wave surfer Laird Hamilton said, “To become the energy of the waves, that’s the main idea. You take when the water gives, and you give when the water takes.”

Now he is working on his second book, a novel, and despite much probing from our good selves, he has convinced us that Bloomsbury are keeping everything under wraps, and can’t send even a snippet - even though it’s now in the final stages of tidying up. A shame indeed, but fear not literary fans, as we shall certainly keep you up to date with Tim’s progress.

Meanwhile – he’ll be spending his days at the beach, riding the waves and generally having a great time… Sickening isn’t it!

Tim Kevan, we nevertheless salute you as Meridian Blog’s Pillar of the Community!

Now that Casey’s made the trip up to the Smoke (see post below), I find myself at the helm of the regional site. We’re sad to see Casey go, as she, more than anyone, has shaped the success of Local in this region since the early days (and she buys cakes and always gets her round in!).

But the good news is any changes will be subtle - why change a winning formula?

Casey’s left the site in great shape so I don’t have a lot to worry about - Meridian and Thames Valley is consistently the best-performing region in the ITV Local network, and I believe our content is second to none. Already this week we’ve carried exclusive packages from the Kingsnorth climate protests, Brighton Pride and Cowes Week, and published factsheets on buying property abroad, the Gosport War Memorial Hospital deaths inquiry and ran a poll on England cricket captaincy (our viewers strongly backed the appointment of Hampshire’s Kevin Pietersen). All this and it’s still only Tuesday morning!

From a personal point of view, as news ed I was happy to bury myself in the daily news side of things while Casey led the way on her real passion - film and programmes. All that side of things is important to Local but quite new to me - although I enjoy movies (favourite film of all time, Brighton-shot Quadrophenia) being mum to a five year old means that when I do get out to the cinema it’s to see family movies like Wall-E, or the new Star Wars animation. So I’m looking forward to getting more acquainted with the region’s burgeoning film industry as Local builds media partnerships with showcase events across the South.

Looking ahead, we have loads of plans to make the site even more essential viewing - for a taster, just wait till our FA Cup channel takes off in earnest in a couple of weeks’ time. We’ll be following the big teams of course, but also filming games at the very grassroots level of this classic competition and bringing you action from the very first kick of the ball for the first time.

So, we may be one down, but the rest of the team is still here, and we’re on a roll.

A few days ago we reported on the post offices of Dorset being closed in droves, and with the sad impact this is liable to have on the local community, like the lovely chaps over at Village Counter Talk- we’ve been racking our collective grey matter to come up with a plan to save them. And the answer, we believe, lies in celebrity!

Ideal for pulling back in the punters, and encouraging people back to the hustle and bustle of your old village post office, we suggest that all well-meaning celebrities should give up a morning, or afternoon, and pop by their local PO to pitch in with a few hours work.

Do you think the gents of Dorset would spend a little more time posting letters if Paris Hilton was ‘living the simple life’ behind the counter with sexy Cameron Diaz on a Tuesday afternoon, or imagine how many envelopes were sold if one was to buy them from Christian Bale and Ronnie Wood while Justin Timberlake was helping you with your car insurance?

My personal favourite however, would have to be being served by Meatloaf – and I think the charismatic American putting in a few hours behind the counter would save the Post Offices singlehandedly. Come on Marvin – where are you? Do tell us who you would most like to see behind the counter of your village Post office?

It’s not every day you get to have your photo taken with Su Pollard and Claire Sweeney in 60s getup!

Su and Claire had just stepped off the stage after the first night of new musical SHOUT! at the Theatre Royal Brighton, and were looking to celebrate a successful opening performance. The pair were excited about performing in Brighton, and were delighted with the reception they received here. The high the performers were feeling after the show was pretty infectious, and I ended up staying for more than a couple of glasses of bubbly to help celebrate!