Five Minutes Of Fame One of the riders that I teach at Buckenham House Group RDA, Lucy Kelly, was kind enough to put my name forwards to the BBC for the Unsung Sporting Heroes competition.  It is extremely flattering when someone shows their appreciation of your efforts like this, but between you and me, I didn’t expect to hear anymore about it.  Imagine my surprise then, when Shaun Peel from  BBC Look East phoned to say that I had been selected as one of the top 3 candidates, and he wanted to come and film one of my lessons!  Well it was all a bit of a rush after that, we had only 24 hours to mobilise the Buckenham House Team, and several phone calls later we were all ready with our RDA sweatshirts on, the horses were polished and the risk assessment done.  The committee and helpers pulled out all the stops, the proprietor  and staff at Middle Farm Equestrian could not have been more helpful getting the horses ready and tidying up the indoor school, then suddenly there we were ~ Wednesday evening and ready to go.  Mr Peel and his cameraman arrived and I was wired up with a microphone and told to carry on as normal and pretend the BBC men were not there, so off we went. The riders, Lucy, Peggy, Caradoc and Peter did themselves proud, showing off their best riding style and thankfully managed NOT to fall off as they all had done during my nightmare of the previous night! The helpers, Chrissie, Martin, Jackie, Chloe, Denise and Judy were absolute stars as always, although a little less ready to make cheeky comments than is usual in our lessons.  (Note to self – get my own cameraman to keep the helpers under control!!) The horses, Dougal, Breeze, Willow and Arran behaved beautifully and batted not a single eyelash at the camera, although they were well aware that it was there as Arran proved when Lucy was interviewed while still sitting on his back ~ he stood at attention, 4 square, head up and ears pricked throughout the whole interview ~ what a poser!  I am most grateful of all to my friend and colleague Lynn, who teaches our groups Friday lessons, for coming along specially to act as a second pair of “instructor eyes” to ensure everyone was safe at all times.  This was especially useful when Mr Peel tried to interview me while I was teaching.  I know women are supposed to be able to multi task, but I found it quite difficult to watch the ride, teach and string together some coherent answers to his questions simultaneously!  Of course, after the event you always think of something you wish you had said or done, but it’s too late to change it now.  The proof was seen on TV on 22 November 2006. I hope we managed to give a positive impression of RDA.  If you saw it you can judge for yourself. Addendum: Well, I’ve just seen it shown on TV.  Not too bad, although they picked out all the bits I wished they hadn’t, of course.  I thought Lucy’s interview was lovely, especially as I know how shy she is and how hard it must have been for her.  And Caradoc’s interview was excellent too.  Some of Mr Peels’ comments seemed a little fanciful to me, but he did put some good points into his narration which played over the action shots.  All in all I think it was a very good film.  Obviously they have a limited time to fill on the programme, but they seemed to film an awful lot more than they used, hopefully they will send a copy of it all to us for our own promotional videos, that would be very useful.  Now all there is to do is to wait to see who wins the trophy. Lynne RDAGI, Wednesday evening group instructor Lynne did win the BBC Look East Unsung Sporting Hero 2006 and represented the region at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards on 10 December. Buckenham House, like all RDA groups can only run because of its team of practical and administrative volunteers. In this team Lynne stands out as a particularly dedicated and enthusiastic member. The volunteers and riders of Buckenham House RDA group know what a hero Lynne is but we were delighted that Look East agreed with us.