BBC reporter waits for The Big One, eats his quake kit

David Willis, a BBC News correspondent in Los Angeles, entertained the home folks today with a dispatch on Southern California's recent spate of earthquakes. He was in bed when the biggest of the Baja quakes rolled through a few weeks ago, during which he "sat there uselessly, watching the ceiling fan rock gently from side to side and the furniture pogo around the room and prayed to God it would all soon be over." He's not looking forward to the next one.

Any minute now, I fully expect the walls to buckle, the computer keyboard to bounce along the desk and the bookcase to sway like a pantomime drunk.

Then, just as my backside starts to vibrate, an anxious upward glance will be met by a cascade of books and family photographs.

My last memory of "the Big One" will be my Homer Simpson wall-clock, a fraction of a second before it bounces off the end of my nose.

Willis made this week's BBC podcast from correspondents around the world. He's better known around LA Observed for trying a few years ago to break into Hollywood as an actor — and publicly admitting it was a failure.

Photo of San Andreas fault at BBC.co.uk