Gosh I cannot believe it is over a year since I wrote my last blog…it’s a bit like when you stop going to the gym, it’s really hard to get going again. At QVC we were strongly “encouraged” to write for the website and I did in fact really enjoy it.

So how have you been? I am pleased that so many of you keep me company on Twitter ( @debgreenwoodtv ) and I can only apologise for having maintained the truly appalling standard of my jokes there!!

Well, what a year it has been! After twelve years of working for QVC I moved on and am enjoying my life as a freelance presenter and trainer. I am still in touch with all my friends, especially of course Ali Keenan and Kathy, so now I have the best of all worlds. QVC was a brilliant experience and I learnt so much. People often ask what it was REALLY like working there and…well, ….I am saving all the best bits for my book!! I promise to change all the names to protect the guilty!!  Seriously, the world of Shopping Television is very special with lots of excitement and laughs but also with the many pressures of performing on TV for 3 hours live every day with no script, no autocue and just your wits and sales targets to get you through.

I took a short four month contract with Bid TV, one of the auction channels and that was an amazing experience too. It was a time of upheaval for the station  as they had realised that their style needed to change which is why they head-hunted me. I must admit at the beginning to feeling a little bit like a footballer who had been signed to a new team, and being asked to play rugby!! The falling prices were a mystery to me, the Klaxons, the unnerving music…it was definitely different!!! I was sad for the 300 people who worked there when the channel went into liquidation before it had made the changes it hoped to make.

In the dressing room at BidTV.

I have been offered jobs with other shopping channels since and I may well take one but at the moment with running training sessions for presenters and guests and other corporate work I am happy to pick and choose.

I had a wonderful experience a few weeks ago when I had the opportunity to go to Dubai to run a workshop for Citruss TV.  I had never been out to the Middle East before and I really enjoyed it. The guys out there made me so welcome that I hope they might invite me back. They are expanding their output to lots of live transmissions  over the coming months and it is a good time for a spot of training and an objective look from an outsider.

They had been conducting a Search for Presenters campaign so I also provided training for the applicants and ran auditions for them. Call me Simona  Cowell!! I was there when the temperatures were edging towards 50 degrees and it was also Ramadan, so that meant that most people were fasting from 3am till around 7pm, so things happened at a far slower pace than I expected!

I enjoyed being in studio observing the Citruss  presenters Rania, Sarah B and Sarah D.

Sarah B and Vanessa on set

They are very professional and do a wonderful job already and I think they will enjoy it all the more when they have to do their presentations live, because it is so much more fun than doing lots of takes. And besides viewers love it when things go wrong!

I had a wonderful time due to being looked after by shopping TV guru, Budd Margolis who took me everywhere. He picked me up from the airport and was waiting for me with flowers and a bottle of water.

Arriving at Dubai Airport

He’s a real character with a fabulous sense of humour and a real shopping telly nerd. He knows every statistic about every channel there is and ever has been. We shared many a meal together including one memorable one  at Operation Falafel on JMR beach. I say memorable because as we were quietly perusing the menu, there was the HUGEST, EARTHMOVING explosion!! I know I am a shopping telly presenter, but I truly am not exaggerating! My life flashed before my eyes and I was on the point of diving under the table, when one of the other diners casually mentioned that was just the way they announce the end of fasting!!! I know people are ravenous but to actually fire a cannon????  What’s wrong with tinkling a little bell?

I don’t know if you have ever been to any of the stunning hotels on the Palm, but I was luck enough to be treated to Iftar a couple of times. Once at the Waldorf Astoria and another at the Sofitel when the boss of Citruss, Nicolas, treated us to a lovely night out. 

Most of my work is in London, though, and I get a great deal of pleasure in coaching presenters and guests for auditions and special shows for Shopping TV. I watch, like a soccer mom, from the edge of my seat when my “pupils” are on the box and will them on! It is very rewarding to watch people start to fulfil their potential.

Now that I have written my first blog after a break, I will make a real effort to keep in touch on this website. And that’s a threat.

Take care

Debbie