Water, water, everwhere.

Did you ever spill a drink on a desk? I'm always surprised when the top of a desk is left nice and flat, as they make very expensive tea trays.

One Saturday evening a colleague knocked a full pint of water over the panel at the right hand end of the desk in 1A where the various talkback keys were. A lot of the water simply poured straight through to form a nice puddle under the desk, but it was really soaked. It was close to the end of the broadcast day, so we switched the cubicle off at the isolator on the wall and moved into 1B. We left a bucket underneath the desk to catch and drips, and a note for the morning teams.

That night was the staff Christmas do, where we'd see the engineer in an hour or so. We finished off the programme, got tidied up for our night out and left the desk to dry out. At the party we told the engineer what we'd done. By Monday it had all dried out and everything worked as well as always.

It was a close call, and a lucky escape. It was a good job he wasn't drinking Coke.