ANDY Warhol said that 'Everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes'. He was almost right.

It’s a nice quote. And, in my case, he was bang on. If you replace 'world' with 'North West of England'. And change 'famous' to 'briefly recognisable'. And swap '15 minutes' for 'seven seconds'.

Yes, my shot at the big time occurred last week, when I popped up on BBC North West Tonight, just before 7pm, and probably put many viewers off their dinner. While I had hoped to come across as intelligent and a bit dashing, I actually managed to pull off the far trickier ‘dishevelled and incoherent’. Result!

My brief moment in the limelight came about courtesy of my employer, Brathay Trust, which has its HQ in Ambleside. This is where I hang around during the week, pretending I know something about marketing and generally making the place look untidy whilst drinking cappuccinos.

Brathay’s marvellous octogenarian archivist, Maurice Dybeck, showed us an amazing film from 1953, featuring young men doing all sorts of activities, and titled 'Holiday Adventure – Brathay Hall is strenuous but exciting'. Transferred from a reel of film to DVD, we managed to get a version onto YouTube, and pushed it out to local media, hoping they would be as entertained as we were by the stirring music, posh-voiced commentary, and insights into the benefits of a Brathay programme from over 60 years ago.

Local press and websites picked up on it, and BBC Radio Cumbria ran with it too. Then on the Tuesday I got a call saying North West Tonight wanted to come and film a group of young people doing activities, chat to someone who was around at the time of the original film, and run a piece on Wednesday. Some frantic organisation, and four hours of escorting them around to get footage and interviews the next morning (including Maurice kindly rearranging his car service and a lost cameraman), and a lovely piece about the film, and Brathay then and now, appeared that evening.

Maurice rightly took the starring role, while my unexpected interview was edited down to seven seconds. If you ignore a superfluous ‘a’, three ‘er’ and an unnecessary ‘you know’, 27 of my poorly organised words beamed out across the region. Still, it was a distinct thrill for me to see myself on the TV, while eating some microwaved leftovers for my tea. I played it again, and realised I hadn’t rearranged what’s left of my hair after taking my woolly hat off. And does my mouth really look like that when I talk? Do I really say ‘er’ that much?

Excluding people who I excitedly sent a link to, a massive two people have said 'We saw you on TV', before politely saying I was good, despite evidence to the contrary marking me out as a gibbering simpleton. My laptop got much more screen time than me. Still, it is a nice laptop. I’d probably better stick to writing stuff.