I’ve finally worked what to answer when people ask me to summarise what it is that I do for a living. I do NOTHING. Best of all though, I like to think I do it extremely well.

Yes, this may require some explanation so indulge me.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I achieved clarity. It was at roughly 5.15pm on the day of the League One playoff final back in May, taking place that day at Old Trafford. We had approached the prospect of the end of the game with some small furrowing of brows. Adrian Durham, our able host, was effectively going to be on his own for the last 45 minutes of the show as his co-presenter and the assistant commentator on the match had to leave shortly after the game finished. Extra time and penalties were a desirable scenario here, taking the match right up until the end of the scheduled broadcast, but in the event it was not to be. Peterborough United demolished Huddersfield Town by the small matter of three goals to nil. The match had finished, the trophy was due to be presented and I effectively had to steer a man sat in the stands at Old Trafford through maybe an hour of solo broadcasting, on the assumption that no matter how dedicated the audience this particular match would be unlikely to generate much in the way of telephone response. It was a steaming hot Sunday on a bank holiday weekend after all.

I therefore did what any other producer of my calibre would have done. I looked at the advertising log, the list of scheduled commercials, and decided that the show could overrun. We would delay taking the scheduled break at the end of the match for as long as possible, necessitating some catching up over the course of the hour and potentially reducing the need to fill the gap with recycled interviews. So as Kev, our pitchside reporter ran around with a radio microphone and grabbed just about every member of the Peterborough United side, I watched the minutes tick by with no small measure of satisfaction. This was burning up my show nicely.

Then I saw a tweet from one of my colleagues, listening in on his car radio. As far as he was concerned this was one of the most compelling things he had heard in some time. All the emotion, all the drama of a team battling their way to promotion, and here we were bringing the innermost thoughts of some of these footballers live and in the moment. Raw, uninterrupted and unedited.

Just thing, if I’d been alert and meticulous, if I had been determined to make my show run to time and to make sure the commercial breaks went out at the allotted time, I would have been in the ears of the presenters, urging them to break, forcing them away from whatever they might have had going on below, just so I could feel I was doing my job correctly. Yet instead we were making brilliant and compelling radio. I realised there and then, the greatest skill of the live outside broadcast producer. Knowing when to do exactly nothing, and just let it all happen.

I say all this because right now I’m looking nervously at my personal calendar for the next month. My employers talkSPORT are the exclusive radio broadcaster for every match of the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, due to get underway less than 12 hours from now, and as one of the most experienced live sport producers in the building, I’ve got the slightly overwhelming honour of being in charge of most of them. For the next six weeks I’ll effectively be on New Zealand time, arriving at the office in the wee small hours of the morning to steer out team of presenters and commentators through some marathon stints of live broadcasting, often with nothing more than a microphone, a set of notes, and several thousand full voiced egg-chasing fans for company.

Throughout it all, the best moments, the best bits of the coverage and my most effective and potentially award-winning actions will be the ones when I do absolutely nothing and just let it all unfold.

I’ll try to write here some of the best moments as they occur, but for those keen to get the real time view, just follow my Twitter account @talkbackstuck or lock on to the hashtag #RWCtalksport for the thoughts and views of the entire talkSPORT Rugby crew. To tell you the truth, I cannot wait for it all to start.