It had been a difficult week. Not only had Chuckle Brother Barry died, my pet hamster, Mr Hargreaves, had developed amnesia and kept walking into the patio door, and I’d also had to drive 8 hours through near stationary traffic all the way from North Wales to get to the Town Hall in time. Taxing at best of times, but, without a car, nearly impossible. So I wasn’t in the best of moods – which is my excuse for not smiling much. That and the fact I was missing the Leeds v Stoke match. But I was determined to support our new Mayor Diogo Rodrigues in his latest initiative to bring the town he loves into the 21st century.

‘The Mayor Goes Live’ was the first of a new series of broadcasts from Bridgwater Town Hall fronted by our new progressive young Mayor Diogo and widely available across social media, across the town and across the globe in fact.

Q & A

The idea is quite simple. Diogo turns on his laptop and his web cam films his response to a series of questions sent in via messenger. So in fact anyone could ask anything and we could answer live whilst at the same time people could develop the discussion on the comments section.

As it happens, the idea was a good one. There were 5,500 views and 146 comments. People asked questions ranging from ‘When are you going to get the shopping trolleys out of the river?!’ (soon)  to ‘Why did you turn down Tescos?’ (civic pride matey)’ and ‘Why are you planting flowers everywhere?! (We’re not…but they’re nice aren’t they).

Diogo operated the buttony thing with a screen on it (computer is it?) while I looked serious in the background and occasionally down at my phone (Leeds won 3.1). We got through a good 45 minutes of Q&A and response was favourable so Diogo is going to repeat it again on 26th August with a different guest (phew..).

On the record

However, now that we’re up there in cyberspace, why not have a look at what we said?! And then next time, you join in too.