From this weekend, Bradford plays host to the biggest Millennium exhibition outside the Dome. T&A television writer David Behrens lifts the lid on BBC FutureWorld.

SOME DAY soon, it will no longer matter if the phone rings when EastEnders is on.

By pressing a button on your remote, you'll be able to pause the programme in mid-sentence and 'download' it into your TV - even if you haven't got a video.

Then, when you've finished nattering, you can return instantly to where you left off.

That, says David Vercoe of the BBC, is the digital future now before us.

And it's only the beginning. Ten years from now, you'll be able to buy a 3ftx2ft TV screen just to cover a damp patch on the wall. Or roll one up, take it home and stick it to the front of the fridge.

It isn't as fanciful as it seems. In fact, says Vercoe, the first of the devices are already on sale in the US.

The former head of Radio 2 is up to his ears in new technology just now. It was his idea to corral the best of it into a touring exhibition which would remove the barriers to the digital world and showcase the equipment in a user-friendlier atmosphere than the sales counter at Dixons.

The result of his endeavours is FutureWorld, an ambitious, interactive mini-theme park which opens its doors to the world in Bradford this weekend.

The BBC has produced nothing like it before. It isn't a programme - although programmes will be broadcast from it - but a giant "open house" for viewers.

It's big, it's free, and best of all, it's not in London.

"It's the BBC's way of marking the millennium year," says Vercoe, now the project director on FutureWorld.

"There was a feeling that the millennium had been hijacked by London - the dome is there and so is the Millennium Wheel. Nothing on that scale seemed to be happening in the regions.

"That's why we decided to take our show on the road."

Today, the riggers and carpenters were putting the finishing touches to the edifice they have constructed from the ground up in just a few weeks.

Tomorrow, FutureWorld will let in its first visitors and on Monday officials will declare it officially open.

It is being housed in the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in the centre of Bradford, and the speed and scale of its construction has astonished staff there.

"It's quite phenomenal," said one. "Just like a film set."

Vercoe is delighted with his first choice of location. "There couldn't be a better place than television's national museum," he says. "It's entirely fitting."

FutureWorld is a Millennium Dome in miniature - without the queues or the prices.

Inside the arena, 11 'zones' take visitors into different areas of the near future.

There are video booths where budding BBC presenters can record audition tapes; a children's area with buttons to push and games to play, and a guided tour of the internet.

There are also major exhibits harnessing the latest computer software to reconstruct the special effects used on hit shows like Walking With Dinosaurs and Mervyn Peake's drama Gormenghast.

And there are sneak previews of devices not yet available - like those roll-up TV screens. "They cost a fortune in their experimental state now," says Vercoe, "but pocket calculators were expensive once, too."

The most interactive element of FutureWorld is the participation of many live TV and radio shows.

Blue Peter will broadcast Monday's half-term edition direct from Bradford, and there will be other regular transmissions throughout the exhibition's seven-week run.

"The great thing is that we're able to integrate with the museum's existing facilities," says Vercoe. "We wanted FutureWorld to be based in a mother ship, not in a tent behind Tesco's. That way we could spend all the available money on the exhibits themselves, not on side issues like catering or toilets."

He estimates that an average of 10,000 people a week will visit FutureWorld, among them hundreds of specially-invited school children. When it leaves Bradford, it will be packed up and taken on tour around the rest of the country.

BBC chairman Sir Christopher Bland says: "People the length and breadth of the UK will be able to sample some of the extraordinary new developments in technology in which the BBC is now involved."

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