Claire Adams about her experience of being filmed for a fly-on-the- wall documentary FINDING out the results of your end of year examinations is a nerve-racking experience. Imagine then how it must feel when a camera is trailing behind you, filming your every emotion and reaction for a television documentary.

That is how it was for Claire Adams, a student midwife, in the fly-on-the-wall documentary Baby School (Sunday, Channel 5, 7pm).

Claire, 21, from Holmer Green, and a student at the University of Hertfordshire, discovered she had failed one of her examination papers under the glare of the television cameras.

She says: "The cameras have got me exactly how I reacted. It was not staged. That was my reaction, which was very hard."

Her failure has not put her off achieving her ambition of becoming a midwife.

"I have not lost my focus. I am going to succeed as a midwife. I am not going to give up. It would have been such a waste of a year. I am going to crack on and re-submit the paper," she says.

Claire decided to train as a midwife after spending two years as a nanny.

"I've always been interested in midwifery but I thought you had to be a nurse first, but I wasn't really interested in being a general nurse. I didn't want to cope with dying, geriatrics and trauma patients. Then I realised I could apply for the course."

Claire is one of four students on the three-year midwifery course taking part in the series Baby School.

The cameras have been following Claire, Alison, Cassie and Charlotte for five months through the peaks and pitfalls of training to be a midwife.

Hundreds of would-be midwives applied for a place on Claire's course and those lucky enough to have been selected agree it is tough.

Claire agreed to take part in the documentary because of her passion for the profession.

"I thought it would be a good way of promoting midwifery because we have a shortage of midwives across the country."

And, of course, she felt she could not turn down the challenge.

"These opportunities don't come along every day. The fact that they were interested in me made me think I might as well go in for it. Life is too short to think 'if only I had gone in for it' and to see the other girls having a good time."

But has it turned out the way she expected it to be?

"I am worried about how it is going to portray me as a student midwife and what people think. But I have only been myself."

The four girls are all very different.

"They are trying to make us into characters," smiles Claire. " One of the girls is the happy-go-lucky type. I feel I am being portrayed as the one with my head screwed on, the sensible one.

"I am worried about what people think. But people must realise I am a first year student and I don't know it all."

Taking part in a fly-on-the-wall documentary meant that the cameras could turn up at any time without warning.

"There was a time when I was nervous before a presentation and they came round to the flat. I didn't particularly want to be filmed but I thought it would be good for the programme.

"I didn't want the programme to come over as if it was an easy course and it is all lovely dealing with babies. It is very hard work. There is a lot of stress involved and I wanted that to come over. I wanted it to be what it is. So I was happy for them to film me when I was all stressed out.

"I don't feel I have put on a show. There were times when I wanted my hair to be straight and my make-up to look good. And I do look at the programme now thinking 'I should lose weight', and 'Do I really look like that?' or 'My uniform is a bit tight'."

But there were also occasions when Claire did not even have time to put a comb through her hair before the cameras rolled. One time was when they filmed her in the labour ward helping to deliver a baby.

"Luckily it wasn't my first delivery. And the birth all went fine. I just forgot about the cameras."

Claire however didn't realise when she put her name down that the cameras were not only going to be following her at university and at hospital (she was based at Watford General and Hemel Hempstead hospitals) but they also pryed into her home life too.

"I felt it was me who wanted to do the programme not my family. I thought it was too much into my privacy. So I did have a line that they couldn't cross."

Although she didn't allow her parents to be filmed, she did allow her boyfriend, Hugh, to have a piece of the limelight.

"I thought that he is part of my life. But they wanted to know everything. How I felt about my relationship, whether it is serious. They really wanted a wedding."

One of the episodes traces Claire through a young person's rites of passage -- leaving home. She moved out of her family home and in with Hugh into a flat in Holmer Green.

"It was my choice to leave home. We've been going out just over two years. My parents supported me 100 per cent but they thought it would be better financially if I stayed at home and saved money instead of struggling. I love my parents. But we wanted our own place."

During the move the cameras were able to catch Hugh by himself and they asked him some personal questions about their relationship.

"He was downstairs in the street unloading the van and I was up in the flat. That's how they caught him. I don't know what he said to them. I will find out when I watch the episode," she laughs.

The hardest part of being filmed wasn't when she was doing her job or studying but when she was socialising.

"It was hard to be natural when I was out and about with my friends. When I told my friends they would be on the telly, a lot of them didn't want to be," she says.

Now that Claire has had a touch of the show business world, she is quite happy to hang up the microphone and get back to being a trainee midwife.

"I do like to dress up and have good fun but I have never thought of being famous. It wasn't my ambition. My ambition is to look after people and care for them.

"Baby School is something to put on my CV. It was an opportunity not to be missed. After all it is not every day someone wants to make a documentary about you."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.