After meeting at Starbucks at 10:30am for an obligatory sugary coffee at Manchester Piccadilly, we jumped on the train down to London Euston and settled in for the two hour journey. Arriving at London, we were met at the station by two suited taxi drivers wielding signs with our names on, and ushered into cabs with blacked out windows to obviously conceal the big stars within. This made us all feel very special.

We arrived at Broadcasting House and couldn’t find which entrance we were supposed to go into. The seven of us struggled through some revolving doors with all of our kit bags, only to find that it was the wrong building. It looked like we were on a comedy sketch show. Turns out we had already walked past the entrance we were supposed to go into…

Once we’d got in to the right building, we were placed into a room that was to become our home for the day and enjoyed a free lunch. It was also the room where Gleb Savchenko paid us a visit as he was also appearing on the show. It was a nice room. Lots of BBC staff kept coming and going to check we were ok and had everything we needed. Forms were filled in and a few fun photos were taken with some of the random props in the room.

A few members of NCVR went outside to lay the (tiny) track, as none of us from Rainy City have any experience of this, blessed as we are with a permanent track at The Thunderdome! There was only enough space for 1/4 of the usual track, so we all had to come up with a few new rules on how to play the game and not smash into The One Show studio windows.

We wanted to get outside and on the track as soon as possible to test out the floor, which ended up with us skating outside for 4 hours. Luckily the floor was a nice smooth stone, as only two of us had brought our outdoor wheels with us. With any filming there is lots of waiting around, but turns out there was lots of skating around. Bette Noir arrived to do her little segment, and we all got a bit fan girly. It’s not everyday that you meet the person who brought your sport to the UK.

And then all of a sudden we were going live. We were skating around in the background for the whole of the show and Angellica Bell came to interview us near the end. Unfortunately our piece got cut a bit short, as is the nature of live TV, but hopefully we got across our love for the sport and the basics of the game. Lots of people were watching us outside too, so we had a bit of an audience.

The Corrs played us out, and we danced in the background. It still didn’t feel real! But we had a train to catch, so we quickly de-kitted, said quick goodbyes to NCVR, and jumped back into our chauffeured taxis to Euston. We drank wine on the train home and slipped into the delirium of being absolutely shattered!

We all enjoyed such an amazing experience, and it was a great taste of live TV, despite some of us having our names censored. Turns out derby names aren’t pre-watershed friendly.

You can still catch the documentary Roller Derby: Skate Fast, Hit Hard on BBC iPlayer until 19th December.

Valkyrie, Kiki Kapow, Rampant Ratchet, River Slam, Slayerfest, Harlot Jo Ransom, and KatZilla x