The call from the BBC came in the middle of Saturday afternoon. They had seen the footage about Signly by their colleagues at BBC South a few days earlier, and now wanted someone to be interviewed, the following day, live on the sofa, for BBC Breakfast and maybe BBC News. It was then a mad panic to see who from the Signly partners was available to drop everythi ng and head up to Salford – L.S.Lowry country – in time for the first interview at 07:20, ideally overnight – the BBC would provide a hotel. It soon became clear that no one else from the extended Signly team of Roald Dahl Museum, Intermedia and Deafax could make it, so I was elected. To be honest, I was quite pleased to do it, even
Why did you become an interpreter? “I felt it was the right time for me to make a career change – I was an engineer and was getting fed up with working outside in the cold and wet!” What did you have to do to become an interpreter? “Well I had to become qualified and it was quite a lengthy process. I studied my Level 1 and Level 2 at evening school, followed by a pre Level 3 course which gave you all the tools to be able to go out into the world and collect the evidence on the NVQ Level 3, that was BSL language. Then when I finished that I had to do BSL Level 4 Language, at that time it was called that, it didn’t change to Level 6 until later, and then BSL Level 4 Interpreting. So Level 1
