Jill Douglas Quotes

Leading up to a live event you need to do your homework and go to bed early. Sometimes it's very tempting to go out with everybody else, They're all going to a party or going out for a nice meal and you think 'oh well I'd like to go', but sometimes you think 'no, if I'm going to be sitting in front of a camera under a light in everybody's home tomorrow I don't want big bags under my eyes and not really know what I'm talking about'.

I really enjoy doing what I do. I enjoy seeing live sport performed at the highest level. What's wonderful about sport is that it involves everybody, everybody has an opinion.

I was always interested in sport. My family are big sports' fans. We always had all the locals round watching big sporting events. I wasn't particularly sporty myself. I played a lot of hockey and rode, still do ride, but I just had a general interest in it. When I was given the opportunity to do sport stories I used to grab them.

I didn't go to university. They offered me a job as a junior reporter and I went off to work for the Southern Reporter. They sent me to college to do my NCTJ, which is a professional exam for journalists, and I started work as a print journalist purely because I was just a pest. They couldn't think of anything other than giving me a job to stop me hanging around.

Try and maybe write a couple of articles for your local paper. Perhaps you need to go to college to learn some things that might help you on the way. If you've got enthusiasm, determination and you love your sport - why shouldn't you be doing my job?

You see history in the making and that is definitely the highlight. You get to meet these amazing sportsmen and women, and see them develop as individuals. You get to meet them when they're first coming into their sport. You watch them develop and you build up relationships with them.

Whether you work in news, sport, politics, whatever, it's exactly the same; a story is a story, is a story. I consider myself first and foremost a journalist.

It's a lot of luck and being in the right place at the right time, that's what I think. Obviously you need to be noticed by people to be given the opportunities, and I think you do have to work hard.

I don't know if other people have found it difficult relating to me, certainly that's not the feedback I've had. I don't think of myself particularly as a woman working in sport. I think of myself as a broadcaster, a journalist, and the right person for the job, regardless of whether I happen to be female or male.

The more you get, the better you become' and therefore over the years you become more experienced and you learn how to deal with it. You know what can go wrong, and you also learn how to react if things go wrong.

You're there right through the match, thinking all the time, making it up as you go along. We don't have anybody write our scripts. You're basically presenting to the people watching at home off the top of your head.

You don't see what's gone before. A lot of that can be long, long boring hours in the gym, long, long hours on the track or, for the likes of Paula Radcliffe, long hours out on the road in the rain running and running.

I think because I came from a very strong news background and people were aware of me from that side of things, they appreciated me as a journalist. Maybe it was less difficult for me.

You've given it some thought, you've tried to prepare as well as you can, but you're reacting to what you see so you can't really prepare that much. It's purely live broadcasting which is very nerve-wracking but hugely rewarding. The game finishes and eventually, maybe an hour later, you're all finished.

I've learned that the effort sportsmen and women put in is incredible. Their commitment to their sport is phenomenal. Sometimes as a viewer, as a sports fan, you only see the end result.

I was in China this year and I spent three weeks there with no luggage, in a really not very nice place and without anything except my passport and my wallet. You're a long way from home and you've got no phone and you can't get in touch with anybody.

As long as I'm working in sport, enjoying it and getting to see some wonderful sporting events, I'm quite happy. I don't want to be really famous. I don't want people to stop me in the street. I want to just enjoy the work, work with lovely people, work on good quality sport and get to experience some more of these amazing moments.

On the day of the game you get there quite early, about 10 o'clock for a 3 o'clock kick-off, because you do a little bit of filming early on. You need to meet the crew and they need to have time to get a cup of tea and all those things the crew like to do before they go out filming.

There are very few lows but lots and lots of highs. You're in an incredibly privileged position because you're able to go along to major sporting events and be ringside. You can see and hear everything.

TV depends very much on the pictures that you see on your television, and all the other things that come up on the screen, whether it be GFX, the studio or the pictures of the game.

If I had to pick one exact moment when we were live on air and something very, very special happened it was at the Athens Olympics. Chris Hoy won the Gold Medal in the kilometre time trial and that was incredible.