I'm blinded by a fierce white light. It's suddenly really hot. My mouth feels like I have just eaten a sand sandwich. Panic wells up inside me, then the disembodied voices start. Words drift in front of my eyes. I can see flames. A cauldron of flames. I feel as if I'm about to go to pieces. Then a distant voice starts to count down, I take a deep breath and I start to speak.
"Good evening and welcome to Stadium Australia here in Sydney for the first day of competition in the 2000 Paralympics. And I can tell you the entire city is still buzzing after last night's fantastic opening ceremony."
The white lights are attached to the ceiling and are also responsible for the heat. The disembodied voice comes from an earpiece, the words are on a teleprompter, the flames are Olympic in nature and make up part of the opening credits playing on a studio monitor. But the dry mouth and the feeling of panic are all mine.
I am sitting in a television studio, metres away from the set where proper TV presenter Manish Bhasin presents the Football League Show every Saturday night. The "show" that I am presenting has been created using old footage to enable producers to have a look at a crop of potential presenters for Channel 4's coverage of the Paralympics.
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