Who said television was glamorous?

Sue, from Chesham, is the line producer on Picking Up The Pieces (Thursday, ITV,9pm ), the new drama series about the lives of paramedics starring Diane Parish and Simon Chadwick.

Sue says: "The line producer is the person who looks after the money on a film."

In a nutshell, Sue is in control of budgeting the script. She is also responsible for how the show is put together, and the day-to-day running of a film, which can be anything from sorting problems with the filming to actors complaining about their hotel rooms.

Running a film can be like commanding an army. On Picking Up The Pieces Sue is in charge of 50 people including the crew and actors, but unlike soldiers, they are not always willing to do what she wants.

One of the hardest problems Sue had to tackle on the series was having to say 'no' especially to the film directors.

"A director's job is always to ask for more. I call them 'little Olivers' -- always wanting more. Their role is to create a drama out of script as best they can and that can mean having better locations, more extras and bigger stunts for their show. My role is to give them what they want but within the constraints of the budget. There within lies the conflict. I can't always give them what they want."

In the first episode, Sue had to put a stop to a room being painted pink for a brothel scene because the ITV company simply did not have the money in the budget to employ someone to move furniture out of the room, paint the walls pink and then repaint them again.

Instead, it was up to the location manager to find another room with pink walls that the director was happy with.

"I also had to tell all the directors who worked on the film that they could not move walls," says Sue.

On top budget television drama series the walls on a set can be moved so that the film director can get a wide angle shot, but Sue's purse strings were so tight the walls on the set of the ambulance station had to stay stationary.

Sometimes the problems of running a film don't come from those who are working on it or from the locations, but from the elements. Even a producer can not control the weather.

"We got rained out a lot this summer. In a crash scene in the first episode it was raining so hard that we could not do all the scenes on the road, so we ended up shooting the close ups in the car park of a garden centre.

"Another day we were shooting a person having an epileptic fit on a bus. Usually anyone not involved in the filming of the scene is not allowed on the bus, but it was pouring down so heavily the whole crew ended up on the bus as they filmed the scene."

Sue not only had all the problems of filming a prime-time television show, but she also had to juggle the high-flying job with being a mum. "And that was not easy", explains Sue.

The situation was made even more difficult as the filming took place 160 miles away from her Buckinghamshire home in Nottingham.

Luckily her husand Charlie is a motorbike instructor and his job enabled him to take time off to take care of Rosalind.

"In a way he is a house husband," says Sue.

Although Charlie could not up-sticks completely and move to Nottingham with Sue, he travelled up with Rosalind every week to stay with Sue for a few days.

"But it was a complete nightmare," says Sue.

"Often I would feel guilty that I was not spending enough time with Rosalind."

Sue took the art of juggling family life and work to extremes.

"In the morning I would go into work at 7am to start everybody off. I would get the film trucks off and check the mini buses had picked up the actors and actress. When the rest of the staff came in at 8.30am I went home to give Rosalind her breakfast. Then I went back to work at 10am."

At the end of the day, her juggling routine was just as hectic.

"If we did not wrap the film until 7.30pm I would go home. As I only lived five minutes away from the set I was able to go off at 5.30pm and give Rosalind her tea. If anyone wanted me I was on my mobile. All I can say is thank goodness for mobiles.

"While Charlie played with her for another hour I would go back to the office and deal with the problems at the end of the day. And then I would go home to give her her bath."

Sue admits the only way she can hold down the demanding job of a line producer is being able to rely on Charlie and her family.

"I believe in the extended family. I feel like a Greek mamma. My mother lives with us and we rely on Charlie's sister to help a lot too," she explains.

Sue's career in television began after she left university. She started at the bottom as a runner and tea maker on the film Turtle Diary with Glenda Jackson.

Her next step up the ladder was as assistant location manager working for Thames on programmes that were as diverse as Sooty and Rumpole of the Bailey.

Sue landed her first producing position when she made educational films including Tomorrow's People and Mike and Angelo.

She then went on to be line producer on the television soap London Bridge.

In other careers, women have found there is a glass ceiling before reaching the top, Sue explains she has not found that to be the case in television.

"People in films are reasonably liberal minded," she says.

"In television I do not think I have never got a job because I am a woman. That is because women like Linda Agran and Verity Lambert have spearheaded a lot of the big dramas.

"There are a lot of female producers and production managers and increasingly more women directors and now female technicians are coming through -- like clapper loaders and boom operators in the sound department.

"Generally it is not a problem being a female in television."

If that is the case, there could soon be many more women like Sue holding the baby spoon in one hand and a million pound film budget in the other.

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