I received an email and call today from Radio 5 Live. They wanted to ask if I was willing to be interviewed for BBC Radio Five Live’s Hit List (Sunday 7.30-10pm) in which they broadcast the top 40 news stories which have been tweeted, shared and viewed across social media. The VAT changes within the EU is in their chart this week (at #19 when we spoke) and they believe that I would be a good person to discuss how this will effect small businesses.
The live interview will be at around 8pm (they will confirm on Sunday when the chart is finalised) and will last around 5-10 minutes. They are going to call me at about 1pm Sunday to firm up precisely what we will discuss.
What this means is that if we want to be sure the topic will be included in the show, we need to keep tweeting #EUVAT and #VATMOSS over the next 48 hours to keep it as high in the rankings as we can. Either use the slogans that were suggested for the Twitterstorm earlier this week, come up with your own or retweet what others are doing — it all helps, and it’s because I’ve been so shouty on Twitter that this opportunity has arisen. The more voices in the chorus, the better!
I have been in contact with Rosie Slosek, Clare Josa and Juliet E McKenna of the Digital VAT 2015 campaign today, asking them to let have any information or guidance they might like me to include in the interview, though of course the BBC interviewer might want to focus on a particular aspect — I won’t know for sure until Sunday. Naturally, I shall be making the case for #selfpub authors and other digital micro-businesses as strongly as I possibly can, as well as talking about the effects on me personally.
So, thank you all for what you have done so far and keep it up!