"Victoria Beckham is available for Peru," my executive producer Julia Simmons said one wintry morning in the office…. "When?" "We'll just have to wait and see…" It was nearly summer before I was standing at Heathrow airport at five o'clock in the morning to catch a plane to Peru and only four weeks before the whole film had to be signed, sealed and delivered to the rather mysterious and sun-deprived world of post-production.

Such is the joy of working in television; and particularly for Comic or Sport Relief. The organisation has developed fantastic relationships with famous people who are prepared to give up their time for nothing to work with us. The challenge that brings of course is that if something else pops up in these busy peoples' lives - like a film, a photo shoot or a new TV series for example - the presenter often has to juggle his or her schedule to fit us all in. So we never confirm a flight or hotel room until we are virtually leaving for the airport! It makes the whole production period extremely exciting and Dawn, our production co-ordinator, can still - from memory - give us any combination of flights from the UK to Calcutta, Delhi or Bombay with all the variations of connections for internal travel, varying according to which day of the week it is and what time of day you'd like to travel! (well almost!)

As well as filming with Victoria we were lucky enough to work with the BBC One's DIY SOS presenter Nick Knowles and comedian Patrick Kielty. I have worked with Nick a few times now, and like him enormously. He is great fun to be with and is a consummate presenter. He knows instinctively how to express his thoughts and feelings to the viewers and is not afraid to be himself on camera - no matter what the circumstances. This film however couldn't be more different from the last one made with him: Two years ago we were building a community hall and laying a water pipe line in Kenya with Davina McCall for a group of former slum dwellers. Although it was hard work, it was essentially an uplifting and very positive film. This time we were stepping into something altogether darker and more complex: the AIDS crisis in Zambia.

We knew that Nick had the presence and the instinct to explore the issues, without making it too worthy (a word we are terrified of in our office!) or too depressing. But we still weren't prepared for what we found. It was truly, truly depressing - but I had to keep holding on editorially to the fact that this wasn't a story just about an incurable disease in Africa - it was a story about a little boy called Joseph whose parents had died of AIDS. I must say that I kept losing sight of that at times: when we were filming men and women dying, just like Joseph's parents must have died - in pain, lying on the floor; in house after house, room after room. I definitely lost sight of it in the first cut of the film - because I was so shocked that I wanted to tell everyone in the world about the AIDS crisis in Zambia. A few rewrites later I got back to Joseph and his experience of life in that country and slowly the story started to emerge. That's what I love about my job; we have to tell people about shocking global issues yes - but in a way that makes it irresistible for anyone to watch, whether they're 10, 30 or 80 years old - with or without a university degree in international development! Unless it is compelling and emotionally engaging you can't expect to keep a broad audience and you need that audience if you are to really make an impact on the British viewing public at any and all levels of education and understanding of the issues.

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