Background
Bernie received an email from Annie Bates:
“… I am working for GFC Films on a feature film called “6 DAYS” about the siege of the Iranian Embassy in 1980.
I would be extremely grateful if you could tell me which outside broadcast news cameras would have been used by the BBC during the siege…“
Ian Dow
It was an OB Unit from BBC OBs at Kendal Avenue, rather than a News unit, when the assault by the SAS took place.
Ian circulated some OB colleagues:
The answer was that both Curly Hayward’s News Unit and our own LMCR, with Doug Whittaker and Dave Hume as part of the crew, were there supplying live coverage. Sim Harris of News (ex-OBs) was one of the hostages as he was inside collecting a visa at the wrong time!
Dave Hume “…thinks that others that may have been on the crew were Dave Jennings, and engineers Dave Kirby or Dave Gough. There would also have been a VT Van, probably Ian Rutter but can’t remember the truck number. Cameramen I think were Don Oliver and Paul Harding but can’t be sure…”.
Bill Jenkin
I think Sim probably had other things on his mind rather than which unit was covering it!
David Brunt
The live Snooker Championship was on BBC2, could that have had an affect on the OB allocation?
The end of the siege was on May Day Bank Holiday Monday. Could the news crews have been stood down for the day, expecting hardly any news to take place?
Tony Lennon
It was definitely a Kendal Avenue OB unit. One person I remember working on the siege coverage was cameraman Steve Chilver who left the BBC in the late 1980s. I’m pretty sure the cameras were EMI 2001s, because LO5 didn’t get LDK5s until quite a bit later, (probably when the scanner was replaced by a Type 5). They were the only two ped-mounted cameras in use at Kendal Avenue in the early 1980s on four-channel type 2 scanners (the good old days of standardisation), although the Location Drama Unit used a weird and wonderful variety of cameras including Link and Fernseh. But it wasn’t LO5 used for the siege.
Whichever unit was there from Kendal Avenue, it had been in situ at the siege since very early on, meaning several days previously, so I don’t think the bank holiday was a factor.
Incidentally, if the LMCR was in fact the OB unit deployed, do we think there was enough comms kit on board to do a job like that?
I can’t remember why Curly Hayward’s News OB unit was not sent to the incident, rather than a KA scanner, but it was fairly common for standard OB scanners to be deployed on news output, especially during down time when a full crew might be in base, mostly filling in expenses, and were therefore available at short notice. I certainly got sent out several times over that period to do news work.
Peter Cook
Somewhere in the depths of my memory, I seem to recall that the OB truck (could have been a 4 channel scanner) had just finished a shoot at the Royal Albert Hall, which is only a couple of blocks away from the Embassy. It did not return to base, but was ‘scrambled’, which is why it arrived before the News Unit.
David J Denness
I know there was a unit there for ITN from Trilion with their staff cameramen.
John Henshall
Cameraman ‘Rocket’ of Trilion Video carried an IVC7000P camera, camouflaged in a suitcase, into a flat right behind the Iranian Embassy.
Sim Harris had a print of his escape framed above his bed when he worked at Central Birmingham. His wife Helen said it always reminded her that she was fortunate to still have Sim.
Roger Long
Sim was on our TO24 course
I heard his escapades via World Service when we were high in the Andes in an ex Police Barracks in Bolivia. Very lucky chap, BBC luck.
We wired all the bedsteads for an antennae, later we used 3 Sony receivers on different senders for diversity, even better.
John Barlow
Sim was not alone at the embassy sorting out visas. BBC journalist Chris Cramer was also there and wrote a book about his experiences.
Talking to him, many years ago, he recounted that whilst writing the book he queried with an Uncle (one with an impressive military history) words that he had heard repeatedly when the SAS went in leaving but one terrorist survivor.
It appeared that as each terrorist was taken they were held by the hair and shot dead through the head (the only way to guarantee the safety of the hostages and other SAS members – of course). After each shot the soldier would shout “Magic”. This seemed a touch callous so an explanation was sought.
After much thought, said Uncle explained that Chris had mis-heard. The SAS are like machines in these kinds if circumstances and after each shot would check that the magazine was clear. The routine was called a “Mag Check” and these were the words heard.
I’m glad they’re on our side.
Later:
A couple of people have written to say that Chis Cramer was taken poorly and actually left the Embassy prior to the SAS going in and rescuing the hostages. This makes it rather difficult for him to have heard these words!
Difficult to see how I got this so wrong, which clearly I have, but thanks to Bill Jenkin and Ken Osbourn for diplomatically getting it straight.
Ian Hillson
The TV News OB Unit parked up at the back of TC (TVC) in the 1970s:
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I’ve been in touch with Tony Carter as he was on the BBC TV News OB unit at the time of the Iranian Embassy siege (I was safely back at TC watching it from a distance on that Bank Holiday Monday!)
Tony Carter wrote:
“… I’ve come across all this from another direction, I was contacted yesterday by Nigel Eland, now Location Manager in News, a role fairly similar to Ken Oxley before he retired.
Yes I agree with your memory of the camera line up, it was towards the end of that scanner’s life and it had its original two Marconi Mk 8s and an Ikegami HL79 which had been bodged in somehow. The archive footage that you often see of the SAS blowing out the windows and rescuing Sim Harris was shot with a Mk 8 on top of the 100 foot Simon hoist. Andy Fearon was cameraman at the time. If you remember those Angenieux lenses on the Mk 8, you could undo a locking screw, slide the optical carriage forward and then insert an extra element which gave you x2 or x3 according to which one you put in. For getting telephoto shots they were pretty good considering it was just an extra lens element, the drawback being that you lost about an f/stop and the zoom range was restricted towards the wide end. I seem to remember there was quite a bit of portholing if you went fully wide with the range extender in.
There was another Mk. 8 on a low rostrum in the fenced-off area at ground level, the police gave press conferences and updates there throughout the day. The News ENG Range Rover was also there, but ENG use was in dispute with the Union at the time and it was just used as a handy camera platform and somewhere to sit down!
Many years on, I think our opinion of the Mk. 8s was coloured by the terrible reliability of the things. Ours were pre-production prototypes 0001 and 0002. They had countless modifications throughout the 12 years or so we had them, Marconi staff were always fiddling about with them, they were probably hoping for more BBC orders! But they did produce very nice pictures, even though you could always improve on the auto-registration by hand. When Marconi finally sorted it out (electronically and mechanically) and re-launched it as the Mk. 9 it was a very popular camera with ITV companies and abroad, although cameramen always complained about the offset viewfinder. The BBC never bought any….”
PS See also Martin Kempton’s excellent website:http://tvstudiohistory.co.uk/tv%20centre%20history.htm#colour%20cameras
One of the reasons for Marconi Mk 8s was that they were the only ones available that used lightweight camera cables. Essential if you don’t want a similar size tender following you around the streets of London.
I’ll copy Tony Carter into this – he’s the font of all knowledge, as he worked on it – I was only an occasional guest cameraman and rifle mic pointer.
One of the first bits of advice I was given was: “…be careful when you roll the dish down the gutter, that it doesn’t pick up a dog turd – because what goes round comes round…”.
Tony’s got more pics which the film art department are using to build another one (yes, you did hear right!).
I’ve given Annie a link to Golden Age so they can kit it out and she has passed this on! By Iranian Embassy siege time it also had a HL79 bodged in – so I pointed them in the direction of Golden Age for this too.
Roger Bunce
The actual storming of the embassy was transmitted live. We had our tele on at home, just wondering how Sim was getting on.
Then there was a massive explosion. You could tell it wasn’t a news crew, because the shot held steady, and even widened out to contain the spreading smoke cloud. It was like watching a rehearsed drama.
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The Journalist who was commentating at the time, went into a flap. “They’re killing the hostages!” he cried, “They’re killing the hostages!”. Even to my untrained eye, it was obvious that the explosion had been on the OUTSIDE of the building, so this must be some sort of rescue attempt. The general public hadn’t heard of the S.A.S. at that time.
The next thing I remember clearly was seeing Sim running along the balcony, and I’m yelling to Mrs. Roger, “There’s Sim! – There’s Sim!” (She’d met him once at a party.)
(Click on the pictures below to see larger or clearer versions of the picture:
Click the “X” button (top right) to close the newly opened picture.)
The OB must have been recording several cameras simultaneously on isos, because the main news, that evening, included lots of shots of SAS men sliding down ropes etc. which hadn’t appeared on the live transmission. In fact, those OB Cameramen had managed to capture the whole story – even if the Journos had got it all wrong.
After showing the OB compilation, the evening Newsreader said something like, “There were also some News Cameramen (i.e. film) at the scene, and this is what they recorded.” Cut to the usual wobbly, out-of-focus shots of backs of heads of people in the crowd. Like the Journos, they’d missed everything!
When the Topical Production Centre opened at Lime Grove, they recruited their PSC Cameramen from TV Centre etc., rather than retraining the existing News Crews. I’ve long suspected that the coverage of the Iranian Embassy siege was a factor in that decision.
Geoff Fletcher
That’s just as I remember it too. I remembered Sim well from when I used to visit Bob Hewison at the flat he shared with Bill and Sim back in the day. It was excellent coverage of an unrehearsed event, but you would expect that from the OB guys. Bit unfair to talk about backs of heads in the news shots – the OB cameras had better vantage points.
Peter Neill
Wasn’t it Kate Adie, at that time unknown, who did a crap report which propelled her to fame?
Nick Rodger
My memory of the siege is playing for the BBC cricket team, and having a fixture against whichever Met Police division the embassy is in, on the day the siege broke.
As captain I got to Motspur Park early, to find most of the cops there already, which was most unusual.
“What’s up guys?”
The response from them all was along the lines of……
“…We got wind of something big about to go down, so we all buggered off before all off-duty, all-time off, got cancelled..”.
Can’t remember who won, but it was always fun to play the police, especially at their ground at Imber Court, which is a testament to working for the Civil Service.
Many people responded directly to Annie:
Annie Bates
My deep thanks to all who have helped me piece together the OB broadcast of the Iranian Embassy siege in 1980.
Everyone has been brilliant and in particular Tony Carter. It’s been a joy. What you did will be seen on screen: “6 DAYS”
Warmest thanks to all.
