I got the bad news at Singapore Airport.

We were en route to the UK with plans to film a "front-of-house" drug testing service — where patrons can walk into a tent to get their drugs tested without fear of being arrested — at music festival Boomtown Fair.

But just as I switched my phone on, a contact from the festival called to tell us the testing had been cancelled.

Moments later, we got word that our connecting flight to London had also been cancelled (because of engine problems) and we'd have a 24-hour delay in Singapore.

This was my first assignment for Foreign Correspondent and it was not off to a good start!

Journalist Tom Tilley reporting on the efforts in the UK to combat drug-related deaths at music festivals. ( Foreign Correspondent: Winsome Denyer )

Five days earlier, I'd told Foreign Correspondent's Executive Producer Matthew Carney that I was three months pregnant.

That hadn't been on the cards when I first pitched to him the story about pill testing at festivals in the UK and, as I was to discover, it wasn't to be the most pregnancy-friendly shoot.

The idea was to see pill testing in action in a country with a similar culture to ours, which had had similar debates about its merits and pitfalls.

But the UK was a few steps ahead of Australia, having had front-of-house testing at seven festivals in 2018.

Foreign Correspondent had planned to film front-of-house drug testing at the Boomtown Fair music festival but it was cancelled at the last minute. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Davis )

I'd met the co-founder of The Loop, the only organisation to offer the service in the UK, late last year when she was in Australia to launch a local sister-service.

Fiona Measham and I talked about the potential of a story for Australian TV and she recommended Boomtown Fair, which hosted The Loop's biggest service.

Everything was lined up to make the documentary: The Loop was on board, I had permission from the festival organisers, and I'd tracked down festival-goers online who were happy to get their drugs tested on camera. But it was all too good to be true.

Pill testing at festivals is a controversial issue across the globe. ( Foreign Correspondent: Winsome Denyer )

The last-minute cancellation of the front-of-house testing came down to legal complexities.

The Loop had been operating in a legal grey area and this year it had applied for a licence from the UK Government.

That application is still ongoing and, in the meantime, the stakeholders weren't able to renegotiate agreements in time for the festival.

When we woke up in Singapore the morning after our cancelled flight, we broke the news to the team back in Sydney.

Because of the time difference with the UK, there wasn't much we could do immediately, but when we finally landed in London, we launched into Plan B mode.

Producer/cameraman Matt Davis, producer Winsome Denyer, reporter Tom Tilley and cameraman Tim Stevens at Boomtown Fair. ( Foreign Correspondent )

The good news was we still had very generous access to the festival and The Loop volunteers would still be on site to provide a counselling service for festival-goers who wanted advice about the effect of their drugs.

The festival also had a "back-of-house" service, where they test confiscated drugs in a secure police compound.

If the chemists here identified any nasty substances, they would send out mass alerts on social media to warn festival-goers.

Luckily, we'd spent time before we left Sydney checking out alternatives, just in case, and triple j reporter Tom Tilley had researched a front-of-house drug testing service in Switzerland, operating at a festival on the same weekend as Boomtown.

The team made a quick dash to Zurich to capture footage of front-of-house testing at a huge street festival. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Davis )

So, while I spent the evening reworking the story structure, the guys arranged flights and accommodation for a 24-hour mission to film in Zurich.

The next day we drove to the Boomtown Fair site, set in the English countryside about an hour and a half out of London.

We did a 'reccie' of the festival grounds in a buggy. It was roughly three kilometres wide with steep hills and more than 80 stages.

The festival runs for five days and hosts 66,000 people.

The bad news was that once the public arrived, access to buggies was limited, so we would be on foot most of the time, lugging our gear.

The Foreign Correspondent team hauling their gear around the Boomtown Fair site. ( Foreign Correspondent: Winsome Denyer )

Camera operator Tim Stevens came down from the London bureau to help us out for the duration.

Normally a Foreign Correspondent episode is filmed over 10 to 14 days, but because our story was contained within the festival we had just five days to get everything we needed.

As Boomtown Fair got underway on the Wednesday, we heard the news that storms and high winds of up to 80 kilometres per hour were forecast for the weekend.

Two other UK festivals were cancelled because of the weather and the Boomtown team was anxiously assessing safety measures.

If Boomtown was to shut down, that would definitely be the nail in the coffin on our story.

On the Friday night, organisers closed one of the main stages after a piece of debris fell onto the crowd.

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But they put in an incredible effort to keep the festival open and safe.

Despite the wind, rain and logistics wreaking havoc with our filming plans, we managed to get everything we needed to pull our documentary together.

This included some incredible footage of almost a million people partying in the streets of Zurich!

I may have passively inhaled some dubious substances while on the job, but I'm happy to report that baby is progressing well and fingers crossed it won't grow up with a penchant for techno dance music.

Watch the Foreign Correspondent episode, Testing Times, on iview or YouTube