I ve never seen the inside of a Bangladesh call centre but I can imagine it s a bit like the media tent at the Open. Row upon row of desks housing hundreds of workers all busily tapping away on their computers to the muffled drone of ambient chatter, this is our home for the week and what it lacks in luxury it gains in it s own unique atmosphere.
The seating plan divides the various different types of journalists up a bit like the many diverse offenders within a prison. Sitting in the middle, in front of the giant scoreboard are the hardened hacks from the daily newspapers. This lot have been to every tournament from the Madeira Island Open to the Ryder Cup. They can remember who won the 1998 Greater Greensboro Classic and they live on a diet of strong coffee, nicotine and whatever tasteless grub they can lay their hands on. Cynical to their very core, they d have you believe that nothing will either surprise or excite them. They love a good Monty press conference and hate it when the last group takes five hours to get round.
Sitting on the left hand side, are the expanding army of website writers. This lot are chained to the media centre (not literally) like no others. Watching the action on the big screens, they have to react quickly to events on a golf course they ve barely had the chance to look at in the flesh.
At the back of the press centre sit the radio journalists commentating on the action. GM columnist Iain Carter sits back there bringing radio five live listeners closer to the action. Over the last couple of years I ve had the pleasure of attending various media events with Iain and he s always good value for an interesting and often amusing take on events. (Note to self: this doesn t mean that it s ok to distract him with a wave and a thumbs up while he s trying to talk thousands of listeners.)
Finally, and most importantly the right hand side of the media centre is home to the magazine journalists. Without needing to offer a blow-by-blow account of the golf (we leave that to the hacks and the web wizards to our left) we take a more thoughtful (some would say relaxed) approach to covering the Open. Yours truly is sandwiched between Bunkered and Golf World. As I turn around now to see who is manning the GW ship I see that no-one is home I ll resist the temptation to hide their lap-tops!
So there you have it, the inside of the media centre, into which has just walked our associate editor, Jezz Ellwood. For those of you who are interested I can confirm that Jezz is indeed eating his obligatory 3.30 dark chocolate Magnum. With that last nugget of insightful journalism I ll say goodbye and head back out for some fresh Lancashire air.
