James Cusick's Blog: Mediterranean Sea/Atlantic Ocean

Mediterranean Sea/Atlantic Ocean.

Chat Shows!

12th November 2009.

Hello everybody, today we leave the Med after spending the last seventeen days here. We are due to transit the Straight of Gibraltar this afternoon, before turning to the north and our next port of call Lisbon, Portugal tomorrow.

Today I have two chat shows to host, the first is at 11.00am with Captain Julian Burgess. I have lost count of the number of chat shows I have done with different Captains and, the passengers always turn out in their hundreds to see them! I have a set list of questions I use but after I have worked my way through them, I go out in to the audience with a roving microphone and the passengers get the opportunity to ask the Captain some of their own questions.
Then this afternoon at 3.00pm, I have the second of my chat shows with the Headliners Theatre Company, and there are thirteen of them! I don’t think ‘Parky’ ever had so many people on stage at once! The passengers love to meet the boys and girls of the Headliners Theatre Company. I ask them to introduce themselves first and to talk about their individual careers, (before their current contract on board Oriana), and then I ask them all a question about life onboard, musical theatre, etc. We also get a couple of the dancers to demonstrate a quick change and the passengers are always amazed at how quickly all of the cast have to change between, and even during certain numbers. We then have a question and answer session with the passengers. Both of the chat shows today could have anything up to 600 passengers attending.

Chat shows are a really good daytime event and they are something I very much enjoy doing. I have had the honour of doing chat shows with sports personalities, politicians, celebrity chefs, journalists, entertainers, actors etc etc. Here are just a few of the wonderful people I have conducted chat shows with on our fleet of ships; Gary Rhodes, Carol Barnes, Dame Tani Grey Thompson, John McCarthy, Lord David Steel, Eddie Edwards, Kate Adie, Marco Pierre White, Pam Ayres, Paul Daniels, Polly Toynbee, Tim Sabastion, Bob Wilson, and even The original Stig !!!
I consider the chat shows should be entertaining and informative. I am not Jeremy Paxman and it is certainly not my job to try and catch out the person I am chatting to! Having said that I do like to be prepared and always try to research the person I am going to chat to, and have a great many more questions ready to ask them than I ever require!

It’s a photo gallery of Istanbul today, we were there on 5th November, enjoy!

The Turkish National Flag, flying proudly in Taksim Square.

Under the mighty Bosphorus Bridge, the bridge is one of only two joining Europe and Asia. . The distance between the two towers,(main span), is 3,524 feet, the clearance of the bridge from sea level is 210 feet. It opened in 1973.

The Bosphorus Bridge looking from the European side over to Asia, the Ortakoy Mosque is on the left of the photograph.

Looking down the Golden Horn from our berth in Istanbul.

View across the Golden Horn from, left to right, The Tapkapi Palace, Haghia Sophia Museum and the Blue Mosque. It’s a private swimming pool for this lucky passenger!!