AS the presenter of a daily live show, Angellica Bell is one of the faces of the BBC's new children's digital channels.

She's addicted to the thrill of "going live" these days but recalls that her first brush with live TV wasn't as glamorous as she'd hoped.

"It was nerve-wracking," she admits. "I was so hot, my face must have been pink, and I said that the programme was coming on at five past ten instead of ten past five.

"Then I had to fill a gap and I just couldn't speak. I was shell-shocked. It wasn't funny, it was dreadful at the time. When you first start, ten seconds to fill is like an hour. But now, ten seconds is like two seconds."

Bell is part of the team of presenters - Joe Challands, Jez Edwards, Abbie Eastwood, Anna Kumble, Linsey France and Tony Craig are the others - on Xchange, the live show that launched CBBC, the digital channel for six to 13-year-olds, yesterday.

CBBC's Xchange is the daily show that goes live three times a day, five days a week with a mix of entertainment, gossip, music and sport. There's a chance to see highlights on Saturday and Sunday. Fifty hours of new drama programmes, two Blue Peter series for the digital audience and Newsround are all part of the schedule too.

Bell says Xchange is "really exciting because there's so much happening and the channel is such a big thing for the BBC. We're getting new faces in, brightening it up, giving it a new look - it's going to be wicked.

"The Xchange presenters will be going out and doing all sorts of things. We're also going to make films about kids and what they're doing. It's going to be really interactive because it's on three times a day, with two live shows, so we can set a topic in the morning, get the responses throughout the day and then read them out in the afternoon."

Bell, who has a degree in politics, thought about acting when she was younger but didn't think about doing TV until she did student radio and student telly.

"I never thought it would happen though. You just think, 'why would they choose me?'," she says. "So it started out as a dream. I applied to do a law conversion course after my degree but ended up deferring it and decided to get some work experience."

She spent the summer as a runner for Channel 4's Big Breakfast. Many letters later, she landed a job presenting K Club for BBC Knowledge before being poached by the CBBC Studio 9 team. She worked on BBC1's summer magazine series, Xchange, and the consumer programme Short Change.

"I love live TV because what you see is what you get and if you do make mistakes, you've got to get out of them. A lot of it is just adrenaline and it's just fab, I love it," she says.

"I do make mistakes but no one would know because I cover it up. I remember once, I forgot the names of two guests we had on, forgot them completely. I knew their soap characters' names but not their real names so I didn't introduce them, I made the other presenter do it and the worst thing was, he didn't know them either.

"There's an art to passing the buck and I've always had it. I never had a detention once at school."

The BBC's other new digital channel launching on Monday is CBeebies which will premiere Teletubbies Everywhere, a new ten-minute format starring the familiar characters, and Andy Pandy, featuring the animated adventures of Andy, Looby Loo, Teddy and a host of new characters.

Steve Pratt