Behind the scenes: midsummer madness

Our secret location was the Blue Peter Garden

On the day when temperatures were predicted to break all British records and hit 100 degrees in the shade, Breakfast decided to present most of its news programme from the open air.

Now that may sound nice and simple - rather like having your lessons in the playground on a summer's day.

But in TV terms, leaving the studio is one of the most dangerous things a news programme can do.

Disaster is never far away with any live programme - and outside broadcasts (as we still call them) are the most unpredictable of them all.

They take rigorous planning - and nerves of steel.

"We decided to do the show from outside at 0930 on Tuesday morning," explain's Breakfast's director Richard Jack. "That gave us less than 24 hours to make sure that everything was in place."

The location for this morning's programme, we can now reveal, was the Blue Peter Garden - in reality a small patch of greenery beside Television Centre's vast canteen block.

our sound mixing desk

We took three of the studio's seven cameras outside, and cabled them up to the studio.

But - for the presenters - the most crucial aspect of the whole operation was to time the walk between the studio and the garden location.

"I timed the walk at 55 seconds," explains Richard. "That gave us time to get the presenters inside if necessary, during one of our filmed reports.

"I didn't exactly have a back-up plan in case it rained," he adds "but I was on the phone to our weather presenter Louise Lear at 0430 this morning, asking if there were any rain showers on her radar pictures."

In the end, pretty much everything went without a hitch.

Except that is, for the hapless producer who was trying to take Breakfast's regular GP to the Blue Peter Garden - and found his way barred by an over-enthusiastic security guard.

"You can't go in there," he was told "there's a live programme going on"