Glad everyone approves - Jem, Roger's instructions are spot on.
Catkin, it was in a studio at Broadcasting House - they have banks of studios for this kind of thing (I got quite excited when I went upstairs to go to the loo, and found myself in R6Music... So yes, decent quality (thank goodness - I dislike my voice even more when it's over the phone or a non-broadcast-quality format). But the conversation is tricky because you and the presenter don't have the eye-contact and other signals for making it go smoothly.
Jan, I don't know how many entries there are (Bridport is around the 4000 mark, I know) but I don't read all of them - enough, though, to get a reaally good idea of the range of good stuff that's been entered, and to have confidence that I have picked the ones I think work best. Did you see the two pieces Cherys did for my blog, on being a filter reader?:
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/11/the-hoops-you-must-jump-through-an-insiders-view-of-fiction-awards-part-1.html
You set aside your own subjectivity when it comes to, say, subjects or characters or the kind of story it is - we all have favourite tastes in these things. I wouldn't reject a story because I didn't find a character appealing, say, or it was very blood-and-gutsy and I had a delicate stomach (I don't). But I would reject it if I didn't find the characters vivid and fully-realised and un-off-the-peg, or if it seemed to me that the blood and guts was in there for shock value and didn't actually do or say anything worth saying. Does that make sense?
One thing that was interesting in the couple of competitions I've been involved in is that we did, mostly, agree about which stories were the best - the longlist, as it were: Cherys's 2%. I think what I'm saying is that, largely, a really good story is a really good story for a lot experienced and discerning readers. Which order we then put that 2% in was more variable, because any of those could win on sheer quality, so the casting vote, as it were, is going to be something intangible... at least until they develop a machine for measuring just how high and at what angle the hairs on the back of your neck rise as you read...
Emma