In the days of Gardening Club in the studio at Gosta Green in Birmingham, we had a greenhouse without any glass as a part of the regular set. Percy Thrower would demonstrate potting etc in here. On one show the featured greenhouse item concerned some exotic potted plants. The regular sound supervisor, Bill ‘Beau’ Woods, loved to put the old electro voice lanyard mics in assorted positions to collect effects, Percy was well aware of this. After rehearsal, Bill put one of his mics into the foliage of a plant in the greenhouse, Percy spotted it, and the take included the line ‘these plants need copious watering ‘ together with some very realistic water effects! Another feature of working on this show was the collection of captions built up over the years by Sheila Brayford the production secretary. These 12 x 9 ‘s were an assortment of letraset typefaces and some made with dymo tape. One of the first tasks for a new T.O. on camera was the caption camera. This was a Marconi Mk111 image orthicon without orbiting so it was essential to stay out of focus till the last minute then focus and frame up in time. Anything too early meant a ‘stick’ and too late meant you were never sure of the caption being in frame, in focus, or even on the right lens.

More about the joys of Heron driving (has anyone anywhere got a picture?)

The Heron dolly has led to a number of stories that could account for the presence of only a few grey hairs on many cameramen. I particularly remember an episode of ‘The Newcomers’ in Gosta Green studio. I was driving the heron with the late Bob Hubbard on the front. All had gone well with rehearsals and we were well into the recording session when the crab/steer mechanism failed leaving us stuck at a rather strange angle across the studio floor. A quick check on the remaining scenes revealed that, if the adjacent sets were dismantled, we could cover the outstanding scenes at the angle we were stuck with. This was done and the episode was recorded satisfactorily but it was not a scenario that I’d want to repeat too often. Another incident on this series that comes to mind was a shot involving a pan down to a bucket of water as something was thrown in. Malcolm Topham was the cameraman and, on the take, as he panned down, a piece of something detached itself within the I.O. tube and went straight through the photo-cathode causing an effect that many of today’s trendy directors would die for. Other memories from Gosta include the performing sea lions on ‘Zokko’ (dir. Paul Ciani) and their accompanying smell of fish, the smell of the beer barrel cleaning plant next door drifting in through the so-called ventilation system, and getting to take take 14 on a film recording insert for a forthcoming drama.