Pauline Langfield

It is with great sadness that I share with you that Bernie died [on the 17th August 2023]. He had been ill for some time, but was able to spend his last few months at home where he wanted to be.

Thank you to the friends who kept in touch over the years.

If you don’t know me, I’m his wife and we’d been together for 41 years.
If you didn’t know Bernie, then you missed out.

Gary Critcher

Very sad news coming in overnight that Bernie Newnham has passed away. When I worked in VT Current Ops he was the director of “Points Of View”. I lost contact with him but was back in contact about 10 years ago, he was the same person as he was back at TV Centre in the 1980s, always willing to help and to chat. I’m very sorry to hear this.

Alec Bray

Very sad news to hear that Bernie Newnham has sadly passed away. Thank you to his wife Pauline for letting people know, and our condolences go out to Pauline and to Bernie’s family at large.

Amongst all his professional work for the BBC, Bernie set up the BBC TV Tech Ops website. Perhaps initially it was just a place to capture those few photographs of studio technical operations work in the late 1960s and later, under Bernie’s tutelage and guidance the Tech Ops website developed into a storehouse of pictures, stories – and gossip – of technical operations work in the latter half of the twentieth century – a sort of “folk history” of broadcasting in the “golden years” of television, including the opening of BBC 2 and the introduction of colour television, when theatrical style multicamera live or “as live” television broadcasting was the norm. It offered a balance to those academical histories of broadcasting. I never knew Bernie when he worked for the BBC : I found his web site by chance after retirement and when Bernie asked for a volunteer to review, collate and condense a backlog of emails sent to him by BBC Technical operators, as I was recovering from a major operation, I took on that job. That job grew and grew – with Bernie’s blessing: he had a light hand to guide – and gently rebuke, where necessary, and I have been really pleased to have been associated with Bernie’s website. I always had at the forefront of my mind that it was Bernie’s site – and how he would want it to be. It was an absolute pleasure to “work” for Bernie – but now, like parts of Television Centre, the beating heart has gone. So, Goodbye, Bernie – trouble is, we will now never know your stories of working with Ann Robinson on “Points Of View” (how we were looking forward to that!). Cut to “The End” caption, fade down to black. Thank you, Studio…

Paul Thackray

Please see the Message [as above, forwarded by Paul] about Bernie from his wife. As you may be aware the Tech Ops announce system is currently unreliable, so I have forwarded this directly as an email to all those who have emails registered with this group. (I have also copied this to Tech Ops as a few emails occasionally get through.)

Personally I find this very sad news, my thoughts are with those left behind.

Mike Giles

Thank you Paul for relaying Pauline’s sad message about Bernie.

Yet another unwanted milestone.

Tribute to Bernie

Alan Dedicoat’s Eulogy at Bernie’s Funeral Service

Many of the Tech Ops people sent email tributes directly to Bernie’s family. A selection of these, together with many messages from other groups of people with whom Bernie worked with or played with, were put together and formed a lovely tribute – or Eulogy – read by Alan Dedicoat at Bernie’s funeral.

With the permission of Bernie’s family and permission from Alan Dedicoat, here is the Eulogy based on your fond thoughts.

When the clip has finished, please click your Browser’s BACK button to return to this page

 

(a lower resolution version, which may be quicker to load from YouTube,
is available here:)

 

Currently, Bernie’s Funeral Service can be seen in full here.