| Roger Fenna during a crew discussion on the importance of getting the rig done properly: “No director has ever come up to me and said ‘Bloody good rig Rog!'” |
| Sometime in the 1980s a T.M. who shall remain nameless was setting up a circuit for Breakfast Time with a russian woman in Dundee who was taking action to put pressure on the various authorities in order to get her husband out from behind the iron curtain. T.M.: ” would your like to say a few words for level please” Woman: “what would you like me to say?” T.M.: “just say what you had for breakfast this morning” Woman (very annoyed): “I have had nothing – I am on hunger strike!”. Which was what the item was all about in the first place. |
| Another Breakfast Time in the 80’s Selina Scott turns to the big B.P. screen and asks a question of a man in Belfast. The man in Belfast only gives a blank stare. Selina Scott: “Mr xxxx can you hear me?” Man in Belfast “No I’m afraid I can’t” Scotty: “OK then we had better go on to something else and come back later” M. in B.: “Yes I think that would be a good idea”. Scotty turns back and carries on with the show. |
| As a very green recruit, literally only a few weeks back from Wood Norton, I was attached to Crew 10 (Geoff Feld was acting Senior Cameraman.) and we were doing one of those “Sunday” serials – an adaptation of Charles Kingsley’s “Hereward the Wake” directed by Peter Hammond. We were in studio G surrounded by Normans and Saxons (Alfred Lynch as Hereward). I was cable bashing and all the other spare effort had been given an ‘early’. There was a camera tower in the middle of the studio and as we broke for dinner there was a loud AAARRGH! and bump as the cameraman John (Spider) Whatton descended from the tower rather faster than he had anticipated. John was despatched to Hammersmith Hospital. Fortunately he was not seriously injured – only shaken up with a few bruises – but he was not going to reappear for the recording. As all the more experienced crew reliefs/trainees had gone home there was only one thing for it – I was going to have to do the camera without any rehearsal. Shaking with nerves, I was taken through all the shots by the director Peter Hammond and Geoff before the recording. I can’t remember what it was, but at some point I must have thrown my inexperience into relief by asking some extremely naive question about one of the shots. There was a short silence as Geoff and Peter looked at one another. Finally Peter turned to me and said “I’ll leave that to your professional judgement”…..gulp! |
If this story isn’t true it should be. A cameraman (no names to protect the innocent) was sitting in the gallery during the warm-up on an LE show. He suddenly realised that the rest of the crew had gone down to the studio floor and that he was now late. He leapt from his chair and raced down to the studio floor. Running along the side of the audience rostrum he bumped into someone before rushing out to his camera. The person he had bumped into was the star of the show about to make his entrance. So instead of the star appearing in the follow spot to huge applause it was an out of breath cameraman! |
| This happened on recording of a ‘Call My Bluff’ in TC2 in about 1970. A fairly junior cameraman was preparing himself for a very quick change of shot. He repeated to himself mentally “after the next shot I’ve got the quick move” and got himself keyed up to make the move. The result was that when the red light came on he made the move – a classic mistake which wouldn’t wouldn’t have been so bad if the audience hadn’t been treated to the spectacle of our colleage almost shouting “Jeezus” and throwing his cans off while kicking the ped. The cameraman who shall remain nameless later went on to vision mixing and eventually became a producer. |
