Be my guest

They say when you enjoy what you do you never work a day in your life. So much of that enjoyment, though, can very much depend on the people around you. The nicer the people, the nicer the working environment, don’t you think?

With that in mind, I do spare a thought for those people who loved going into work for the social element of it but now find themselves sequestered at home, working from a laptop in the kitchen or bedroom or spare room (if they are lucky to have a spare room so they can be separate from the rest of the family). I can’t imagine what the school holidays have been like for those at home trying to conduct meetings on camera with the children having a knock down, drag out fight in the background or with the telly blaring to keep them entertained, as the weather has been so shocking!

That’s when my thoughts turned to my own job and how lucky I am to be able to still go into work each day and be around wonderful colleagues, especially our guests. The number and variety of guests is wonderful, they all have their own personalities that makes working with each of them so much fun.

This last week alone I’ve been working with a multitude of guests, including the wonderful Jenny Blackhurst. Jenny brings us great brands like Phase Eight and Nina Leonard and is always full of fun, energy and chat.

Clare Edmondson is another lovely guest who brings us Radley London (gorgeous bags, wallets and purses in great designs and quality finishes) and also more recently, Clare launched our new range of Skechers Apparel, have you seen it?

There is something for the men and the women in the range and was massively popular when it launched last week, so keep your eyes peeled for more from the range soon. As more of us are either spending more time wearing relaxed leisure clothing or are thinking more about being active, this range couldn’t have arrived at a better time!

Imogen Connolly is another one of our guests that I have been with this week. Imogen, who works as a fit model so she really knows about clothes and now they should work on the body, brings us several fashion brands as well, including the incomparable range from Joules. This is very much a smart casual range that allows you to be on the go and always looking stylish whilst you are. Immey (as we sometimes call her) also works as a voiceover artist, which is not surprising, as I could listen to her all day.

Ruth Langsford and myself were together last Saturday for two hours when Ruth was bringing us her fab faux leather (read that as machine washable!) biker jacket, which was hugely popular. I have great respect for Ruth and her range, as she is involved in every single step of the process and is always at QVC having meetings and fittings and consultations and she is, quite rightly, very particular about everything from fabric choice to fit. Her range has really built since she started with us and I would dare say you could build a complete wardrobe just from her brand alone, which makes it easy to mix and match.

Having hung out with Ruth for a couple of hours, I made my way to Studio C down the corridor to spend an hour with Nikki Gewirtz from Lola Rose. Nikki is fun and playful and a joy to work with. If you were watching us last Saturday you’ll have heard Nikki refer, multiple times, to how professional she was. That was mostly because, with Covid restrictions in the studio, we no longer allow our studio managers to enter our space when we are on air. Normally they would do that to bring in the next item we are going to show you and then remove the item we have just seen. Well, as they are no longer allowed to do that, this task has been given to the guest. Nikki, love her as we do, was managing to drop things and bash jewellery busts against each other and got confused about what was the next item we were going to be talking about, so we were laughing all the way through the hour. Hence her referring to how professional she was being. To be fair, it isn’t easy to talk about each of the items and keep talking whilst you are lifting them up and moving them and then looking for the next item and place it on the desk all while still talking and trying not to make too much noise! We did have a good old laugh though.

I’ve just noticed that all the guests I’ve talked about so far are fashion guests! Hardly surprising as many of the shows I do are fashion shows as that is a passion of mine, but we do have other guests.

The other day, I worked with a really great young man called Jack Morrison. He is one of the founders of Your Zooki, a great supplements brand we have at QVC. He started the brand back in 2017 with a friend of his and they have been going from strength to strength. So great to see a British company started by two young entrepreneurs doing well. One of the reasons they have been doing so well is because of the quality of their products and the ease of taking them too. They have a whole range available, so check them out. With us about to head into autumn/winter again and with everything that has happened in the last year and a half, there really hasn’t been a more important time to think about supplementing our diet with a boost of extra vitamins and minerals.

So as you can see, I am lucky. We have some amazing guests. These are only half a dozen out of hundreds that we work with regularly, every one of them is a joy and a pleasure and I do thank my lucky stars every day to be so fortunate to have them with me on air. I hope you enjoy their company too.

Before I go, I just wanted to mention a couple of Today’s Special Values coming up this weekend.

I will be launching a Today’s Special Value from Shark on Friday evening. Pre-launch at 9pm and then another hour with me at midnight. We will be bringing you the Shark Cordless Upright with TruePet and Duoclean. So if you are looking for a powerful cordless vacuum, this could be just the one for you.

On Saturday night at 9pm, there will be a pre-launch of a wonderful Liz Earle Today’s Special Value. It’s a 6-piece Face, Body & Fragrance set on 4 Easy Pay interest-free instalments and it’s actually already available on our website if you want to get in early, as I know it’s already been popular, especially as it contains some hero productslike Cleanse & Polish and also their No.15 fragrance! Just click the link and check it out.

That’s all from me for now. Just to say, if you are lucky enough to be able to go to work and you have good work colleagues that make your working day that little bit easier, just take a minute to let them know you appreciate them. They really can make all the difference!

Until next time,

Miceal Xx