Very emotional (and a little bit hoarse) coming from the Titanic Launch 100-year celebrations.  The people of Belfast did the old girl proud – a fantastic crowd out on the sun-drenched slipways, hollering and cheering for all they were worth as boats in the Lough sounded their horns for 62 seconds at exactly 12:13pm.

What a great, great day for Dock-world.  It felt like we were part of a movement – a city rediscovering its hope, its pride and its entrepreneurial spirit as we joined together to mark the launching of a Wonder of the World.  Of course the spectre of Titanic’s fate always looms large – and I hope we were respectful to it in our prayers and moments of quiet – but there was such a sense of joy that we could share this rich, wonderful, sad, world-shaking story – and that Belfast gets to be at the very heart of the tale.

We also got to slip in a mention (never pass up an opportunity, eh!) that the different locations of today’s events across the slipways and on several boats out on the Lough all featured the same prayer, led at the same time, by an Anglican, a Methodist, A Presbyterian and a Catholic.  Shared Medley in action!

And then came the media stampede!  I’ve now been interviewed by BBC1, Downtown, Cool FM, BBC Newsline, TV3, Sky, UTV, some French TV channel… in the end I lost count!  So I’m giving up on trying to track down all my TV appearances out there on the airwaves today – safe to say I’m probably terrorising a TV set near you even as you read this!

I’ll hopefully be able to upload some better-quality versions of at least some of this footage over the next while – but in the meantime, for any of you who missed out, here is a very rough recording of the BBC newsline article (which is the same as the BBC Breakfast presentation but with an added interview between me and Mark Simpson:  click this link here.

(More to add later – I’m off now to be interviewed for Radio 4.  Y’know, as you do…)