The final day began in Kidderminster as I spent the morning trying to get tickets to the Take That gigs (unsuccessfully)! I left Kidderminster after lunch having been out for a rather interesting 2 course lunch in a local French style restaurant in the town centre about 5 minutes away from Jay's house - A stark contrast to the pizzas and fast food we'd been eating earlier in the week!

The journey to Manchester was the worst leg of the tour out of all we'd done during the week and didn't start that well as I almost got swiped off the road whilst making my way onto the M6 as some knob decided to pull into the outside lane at the last minute as I was clearly indicating to pull onto the road, that was probably a sign of things to come as the rest of the journey was very stop start.. to be honest I should have left Kidderminster earlier rather than leaving it til 2:30pm in the afternoon as I hadn't really appreciated the impact of Friday rush hour and the fact that the M6 would be choc-a-block. It was a boring journey too as obviously I was on my own so had to rely on the odd phone call that came through as well as the delights and comforts of BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio Stoke & BBC Radio Manchester. 3 and a half hours later I arrived at Manchester's Victoria station to pick up Paulo who too had endured a long journey from Liverpool on the train. The next task was to stop off at a local supermarket to pick up supplies for dinner - what I was expecting to buy was microwave meals for us all to share but instead Paulo declared he wanted to cook for us all! This sent a shiver down my spine as anyone who knows Paulo will know he can be a little dippy sometimes and the thought of him with a pan of boiling water and raw mince attempting to cook a Spaghetti Bolognese for everyone conjured up all sorts of disastrous concequences in my mind but thankfully all went well and what Paulo cooked was nice and set the evening up nicely.

We were hosting the show from Andy B's new flat in Salford Quays, Manchester - Andy (the one behind this new website) was joined by Paulo and also by Blake Reynolds who tagged along having only recently joined the station so it was nice to meet him for the first time. The show went well, but was a different sort of dynamic to the previous 4 we'd done - we stuck to playing dance music and did the odd feature including a rip off of Two Word Tango on various subjects including past and present OTC DJs which threw up a few random names from the past! For those who didn't hear the show, you also got to witness Andy's first time on the air in almost 5 years as he had to open the microphone and speak as i'd gone back to the car to pick up my video camera - the confusion and awkwardness as him and Paulo tried to bumble through about 2 minutes of telling listeners what was on the show was hilarious when we listened back to it later.

Show over and it was time to venture back out again to pick up the final guest on the tour who wasn't able to make it round for the live show after treading the boards in a theatrical production in Bolton (can you guess who i'm on about?) Yes, it's OTC's very own thespian, Sam Lupton! I picked Sam up from the local train station and we spent about 3 hours after he arrived (and Blake left) having a good old catch up and reminiscing about old times - it was lovely to see Sam, I first met him in Easter for our April meet up and having known him for 5 years previous it was odd to meet him in person but we got on really well and the same can be said for this time, he's such a laugh and it's nice to be able to talk about the early days of OTC with someone as there aren't many of us left now! Infact, Sam (as he likes to remind me) was here before I even joined. By about 2:30am in the morning, Sam called a taxi and we all went to bed - I'd brought my camp bed with me for this night as Andy's flat was small and there wasn't anywhere for us to sleep.. having offered to share this with Paulo for the night as he had nowhere to sleep too I can say I probably regretted that decision after a) practically being pushed out of the bed and having to balance precariousoly on the end all night after lord muck took up all the space and b) Paulo waking up and shouting random things having had a weird dream (this occured several times!) I can safetly say it wasn't the best nights sleep i've ever had!

Anyway, tour done again for another year and an improvement on the previous year which is always good! Who knows if OTC on Tour 2011 will happen but if it doesn't there are plenty of good memories to behold of this, all of which you can see in the youtube video diaries online.

Thanks to Jay, Ian, Rob, Nathan, Jamie, Shaunna, Dan, Andy, Paulo, Blake & Sam for all being involved in the week - it was fun!