Tales of Misheard Directions
This page compiled by Pat Heigham
Peter Neill
When I worked at Newsroom South East (based at Elstree) we had a couple of dispatch riders who would sometimes pick up a rushed tape from a crew and get it back to base while the crew carried on shooting. They were very good at their job but English wasn’t their first language.
One day we were working in Harpenden expecting a DR to pick up some stuff for the lunchtime bulletin.
Then we got a phone call: “I’m in Orpington — where exactly are you?”
Pat Heigham
Week one of a pilot shoot with the police, (which got hi-jacked into “Police Interceptors”, or similar) We shadowed a car crew for a few days, broke for the weekend, to reassemble the following Monday.
The production office secretary rang me to tell me the RV, and said it was West Mersea (which is in Essex). “No, darling, it’s West Mercia – in the Midlands!”
If I hadn’t been on the previous week’s shoot, much red face, probably.
Alasdair Lawrance
In my Beeb Wales days, Carmarthen and Caernarfon were easily confused on the phone, and going from North to South in Wales is not very easy.
Paul Thackray
My Recce to Lakeside ( off the M 3) for a darts OB was all going well until the camera supervisor called from Lakeside shopping centre ( Thurrock) to ask where we all were …
Alan Taylor
I was booked to do an ENG insert for the Montel Williams show from London. We were told to get to London Bridge at midday and set up ready because he would turn up in a limo, he would be dropped off, do his piece and be collected ten minutes later.
We asked them if they really meant London Bridge and asked them to fax the location to us to be certain. Sure enough it said London Bridge.
You’re probably ahead of me already, but on the day we got set up in plenty of time, slightly concerned that we might get moved on by the police due to not having permission. No sign of Montel Williams, but soon we spotted a limo lurking over on Tower Bridge and phoned the contact number. There wasn’t enough time for them to drive over to us and certainly not enough time for us to get over there, so the insert was abandoned.
Pat Heigham
Apparently, the guy that bought London Bridge, to be re-erected in a desert in the USA, denies that he thought he was getting Tower Bridge.
But I’m sceptical!
Nick Ware
Mention of London Bridge reminds me of a day when we were required to shoot London GV’s for an American corporate client. We’d done it a number of times for other clients, so for us it was an almost routine job. If it hadn’t been for a number of video recording format changes over the years, we would just have kept a set of stock shots and copied them off as required.
So anyway, there we were, on London Bridge at 8AM filming the commuter lemmings walking across the bridge into the City. Countless thousands of them every weekday. So we got those shots and then jumped into a taxi to the next location.
Later that morning we got a phone call from the City Police, wanting to talk to us about a suspicious object, thought to be a bomb. It turned out we had left an Anton Bauer camera battery on a ledge at the City end of the bridge. Apparently, the Bomb Squad had been called, and the bridge closed for a couple of hours. Only when they had done what they had to do to make it safe, did they find a phone number on its underside. We had a hard time talking our way out of that one!
Professional, us? Definitely not that day!
Alan Taylor
The new girl at my agency once phoned to ask me if I would be prepared to do an OB covering boxing from York Town Hall. I asked her to check if the name was right and she confirmed it was. I was still sceptical and asked for the postcode. Sure enough it was York Halls in Bethnal Green, London which is nowhere near York.
Same girl a few days earlier was asked if the agency had any Aston operators on their books and confidently said no. She mis-heard and thought that they were asking for astronauts. In fairness it has to be said that she learned rapidly and soon became indispensable.
I got caught out once when asked to do the sound on a Steven Berkoff one man show from the Stratford theatre. Living in Banbury, I eagerly jumped at the opportunity to work just down the road at Stratford upon Avon.
Unfortunately the show turned out to be from the Theatre Royal in Stratford, London.
Alan Taylor
In the 1980s I was once scheduled to do a short notice PSC shoot which was a preview for the Farnborough Air Show. As the shoot was the next day and there would be no paperwork issued in advance, I asked the Kendal Avenue scheduling office which particular Farnborough it was because my UK atlas listed several and I had never attended the Farnborough Air Show before.
I knew it wouldn’t be the one near Bromley in Kent, but there were still three possibles, one in Hants, One in Berks and one in Oxon. She informed me that it was in Berkshire, so the next morning I drove to a lovely little village near Lambourn, couldn’t find any signs of the Air Show and asked a local where the airfield was. I was then directed a few miles further on to Membury, which it turns out had been a WW II airfield, but these days is now better known as a service area on the M4. This clearly wasn’t the right place, so I searched for a phone box, called the office and was then told it was probably Oxfordshire then.
As I detected more than a hint of doubt in her voice and Farnborough Oxon would be a further fifty mile drive from where I was, I asked her to double check, which she did and eventually I was eventually sent on my way to Hampshire, where there was indeed a huge airfield being made ready for an air show.
Alternatively, much earlier in my career when I was on attachment to the Radio Links dept (subsequently known as Comms dept ), I was sent out to do an outgoing microwave link at Newbury Racecourse. When I arrived, there was no radio links truck, although all the other vehicles were there.
We eventually discovered that the rigger had driven our Links truck to Newmarket racecourse instead of Newbury Racecourse.
Peter Hider
I was filming in Soho and the Cameraman Pat Turley (married to Nerys Hughes) asked for track and a dolly. The police arrived and told us that no dollies were to be used in Soho. Pat asked me if I could get a wheelchair which could be pushed by the Grip. I asked my 2nd AD Harbie Verdie to ask Bill Bonner the buyer to source one ASAP.
Bill arrived within the hour carrying an extremely large birdcage accompanied by a very confused Vulture. Harbie, who was a Ugandan Asian, was summoned to explain the presence of an African Vulture.
Just say wheelchair with an Indian accent and you’ll get the drift of what happened.
Doug Puddifoot
A very new and CHEAP freelance cameraman was doing a news shift. It was the BBC’s turn to do the pool coverage of the Queen opening of a sports centre and said freelance was dispatched. He phoned in to say that he had been sent to the wrong place as he was the only one there.
When asked where he was, he replied “By the pool”.
American Geography
Pat Heigham
Working for ABC and NBC Sports NY, we were always appalled at the Americans’ little knowledge of geography.
On a job requiring a move from some place in Southern Germany to Zurich, their travel office had booked flights, when we suggested that it would be a darn sight easier to drive. No hassling with checking in and out with the equipment at airports, and the hire car could be kept to drop off elsewhere. It would cost one extra night’s accommodation, en route, but would save the flights. (Not a problem with timing of the job).
It just annoyed us that no-one looked at a map!
Alan Taylor
I worked for CBS on the Winter Olympics from Albertville. After the games CBS did some great deals which meant that the USA crew were flown en masse to New York and thence onwards to regional airports.
During the few days we were wrapping up, several of the Americans suggested that I stopped at their place in New York for a few days before continuing onwards to England. It came as something of a surprise to learn that it’s possible to fly from France to England without having to change in New York.
Pictures? You Want Pictures?
Graeme Wall
Meridian’s cheap freelance cameramen … were sent to wait outside the local courts to see the defendant in a major case arriving. So they did just that, didn’t take the camera with them though…
Tony Grant
There was a cameraman on the PSC units at Lime Grove who, whilst it would be grossly unfair to suggest he was in any way accident prone, nevertheless seemed to have a bit more bad luck than the rest of us. Now, to continue the London Plus sagas, most days the crews assigned to the programme would turn up at the Grove at 0800 and load all equipment into a Transit with driver, and would be ferried around from location to location. One particular morning, upon arriving at a central London location, he realised that he’d left the camera with the engineering dept. for a bit of TLC. Fortunately, this was in the mobile phone days (albeit the big brick in the back of the Transit) so a hasty call was made to the office, “I’ve left my camera with the engineers, could you please get a DR to bring it out to me ASAP”. “Oh yes, ha, ha, good try”. Phone put down. Same call repeated another two or three times before the office realised that he really had left the camera, but his misfortune was compounded by the fact that it was April 1st.
And on an entirely different note regarding dates, on one shoot we were discussing birthdays, and how at one time or another, most (if not all) of us had forgotten that of a dearly beloved. Our interviewee joined in the conversation by saying that he’d forgotten his brother’s birthday a couple of years previously. Well, OK, but that’s par for the course with what we’ve been discussing we said. “Ah no”, he replied, “You don’t understand – he’s my twin”.
