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Serena Field producer of the Book Cafe has been in touch about the Portobello Book Festival which she attended on Sunday October 10.

Yesterday, Sunday, I went to a very windswept Portobello, outside , to give a talk at their . The talk was called 'Behind the Scenes at The Book Cafe' and it was to take place in . The festival organisers and the library had provided a good-sized room for us and, most importantly of all, good coffee and home-made shortbread. We were off to a strong start.

Just before the event began the Senior Producer of the department and I had the usual struggle to put up the unwieldy ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Scotland signs but they looked great once they were up- and neither of us lost any fingers. There must be a knack to it although I haven't discovered it yet, clearly. The audience filed in and the room started to look pretty full. I checked the photos I was going to use for illustration as the Chair (otherwise known as one of the festival organisers) took her place beside me at the front and we began.

It was a really good hour of stories, literary-based conversation and great questions from the audience - and it went by so quickly. People seemed very interested in how the content of the programme is decided, by what happens in studio and they liked the stories about authors. Strangely, they seemed particularly attentive when I was answering the questions about the times things went wrong! I was hard-pushed to think of any examples of that kind of situation, obviously ...

I hope the audience took away a good idea of how we put the programme together; I certainly got a better sense of our audience and their literary interests. It was lovely to be part of the Portobello Book Festival and I was particularly struck by how friendly everyone was.

We could have gone on talking for longer but we had to give the audience enough time to go on to other events, although a few people came up at the end to ask further questions or to get more information. As we packed up our leaflets and signs I was offered the very last piece of the home-made shortbread- the perfect end to a really good morning!

The Book Cafe is presented by Clare English and is broadcast every Monday 1315-1400.