The AG InterTel unit at Zandfort F1 circuit

With the infamous 15 cwt Thames small tender brought from Ealing by Terry Heath with extra camera cable Harry Bell exhibiting atop. Over the coming years InterTel covered many of the winter sports and Olympic events for ABC Wide World of Sport. We had long ago learned to give up our winkle picker shoes for some serious winter gear, for most mornings required digging trucks and equipment out from under a ‘dusting’ of snow. Fortunately, not the caterers’ Car – The Generator after a night’s dusting of snow. During these early black and white days as can be seen conditions were beauty to the eye but difficult to manage at times.

Just in case you think my remarks about winkle picker shoes is a total fabrication I have proof!! Only an English crew would take their cardboard ‘pickers’ to the 5 below Swiss Alpine bar and think they looked ‘Hip’. Iain Nowell, Roz, nearly Harry Hunt, Harry Paul and Peter Dearing. Everything we did was a learning curve sometimes just too steep to handle at that moment. For Ron Andrews and I were to bring the articulated AG trucks back from Switzerland to England via Frankfurt Motor Show, neither of us had driven artics. before and we both learnt how to drive them on the way – but reversing them into the allotted parking bay made us look “Idiots” – well that’s what Steve screamed … Of course, Steve could drive anything … completely mad. But one lived the lesson and corrected the errors for the future.

For several years ABC covered events for Wide World of Sport in an in-depth manner, all enabled by InterTel (VTR) Services Ltd. The Winter Olympics including the Skeleton run, Bob-Sled Championships, Ski jumping and Slaloms, Ice Skating Championships, St. Moritz, Garmisch Partenkirchen, Innsbruck, Serfaus, Oberstaufen, Bratislava, Vienna – there were many. It was a tradition of mine to take home to my two girls traditional Dolls from every country we visited (not real ones of course … they had to stay behind). Nothing was easy…

The talk of the day at that time was the move to colour and to keep well ahead of the game, to do so Trevor Wallace purchased three Marconi BD848 and one RCA – all were known as Tk 41s. Yet another mammoth scanner with re-enforced suspension was built and prepared, because the first one bent as the incredibly heavy cameras and all of the support equipment were loaded. Everyone had to spend plenty of long hours at Fred Weeks’ workshops to help get the scanner ready on time for its first major assignment in the snows of Europe. Peter Johnson, a good engineer, had joined InterTel and it fell to him and Vic Cornish to help build or modify the NTSC encoders to work PAL (there were none available). Once installed Vic Cornish and Eckhardt plus all available engineers were battling to get any pictures out of the cameras and I can remember their frustration after days of toil and searching the manuals for the problem, eventually they just gave up and all went to the pub for some de -stress time. They had a longish lunch and, on their return, at least one camera was up and running … They were dumbfounded … Roland Brown who at the time was still assistant sound had been taking the manuals home every night to study the intricacies and during lunch had remedied some of the faults. Trevor’s much earlier insight into Roland’s technical abilities had more than paid off and immediately Roland was upgraded from Sound Assistant to Colour Engineer and has excelled ever since.

Roland Brown

The Live transmissions from Sunday Night at the London Palladium series, directed by Bill Ward, proved to be a test indeed for the TK 41s, not just for their pictures and the amount of lighting required but simply their enormous size and weight, for we could only just squeeze one camera into one of the boxes at the side of the stage and it needed a very thin cameraman such as myself to operate same. Tom Jones, who had just become an overnight success as a stand-in singer at the Royal Command Performance, was set to WOW! America and he never looked back after these shows were transmitted. Lighting was always a problem, as the TK 41s needed 3 to 4 times the lux required for the old monochrome cameras just to get acceptable pictures and more often than not proved to be a cameraman’s nightmare to operate. Viewfinders were particularly noisy picture-wise as one had to focus through the monochrome snow effect.

Marconi BD848 or TK41

To illustrate the weight of theses cameras – at Chancellor Adenauer’s funeral I was asked by the Americans to tilt up the Cathedral spire (the largest church in Europe) for I was with others outside covering the Heads of State as they arrived. I had just covered Lyndon Johnson’s arrival with his entourage of nervous FBI agents, I strained and tilted to the top of the spire ready for a tilt down, it was an extremely steep angle and required all my strength to hold the camera steady when “Bang” – all the Allen bolts on the Vinten head sheared, the Camera pinned me to the scaffolding guard rail with the viewfinder flattening my nose and face. Steve Beamish screamed at me “Terry, your shot’s gone soft”. That was typical Beamish! I didn’t get to see the reaction of the FBI guys as they probably ran for it.

It wasn’t all plain sailing, there were plenty of mishaps, the Generator blowout already mentioned was just one of many trip ups along the way. That same earlier generator on leaving St Moritz late afternoon with Stan Hamblin driving, had just negotiated the summit of the St Julia Pass and was on the homeward bound descent when the steering sheered and left Stan and Genny teetering (for it was top heavy) on the edge of the snow banked drop. We had to offload all the cables and distribute them amongst the other trucks: my 15cwt Thames tender was turned into a 1.5-ton sardine can with tyres resembling squashed doughnuts. Only a thousand miles of silence to go with Beamish as my (blinds down) passenger seat companion … And I didn’t dare to run over an ant after the first blow out.

The multi billionaire Paul Getty was to be featured at his house where his collection of antiques and art were valued in excess of $600 million. One of the riggers launched a camera cable through an open window whilst rigging and smashed a vase. Looked like ‘Ming’: his staff carefully picked up the pieces and gently placed them in a bag.

Harry Storey was helping to de-rig at London Airport when he let a camera cable loose from the mezzanine floor above the departure lounge and the heavy metal cable end instantly floored a tall middle-aged gentleman who was about to depart to New York. It turned out the gentleman was the Head of TWA (Trans World Airlines). He sat on the floor for a few minutes with his bleeding head, then was taken to first aid but stoically went on to catch his flight, telling the very worried InterTel representative “Not to worry, these things happen, I’ll be OK”. (Today you wonder if we could have survived the lawsuit.) He was indeed a Gentleman.

Stan Hamblin had a thing about St Moritz for some years later we had just finished derigging a two-unit colour set up, Stan and Harry Hunt were in the Celerina Village late afternoon manoeuvring the two big tenders when they met on an icy corner, head on. Stan’s truck lost its windscreen, causing immediate pandemonium as his truck and unit was on a tight schedule for Paris in two days’ time. Naturally ‘The Colonel’ Steve was more than angry and said: “you’ll have to drive without a windscreen”. It meant negotiating the dreaded St Julia (Julier) pass at night, sub-zero in an open cab praying it didn’t snow or rain (at least it didn’t matter if the wipers didn’t work) and so Steve ‘ lashed’ out at the local ski shop and bought Stan a woolly balaclava hat and a pair of goggles: we gave him a blanket and said see you in Paris … Stan was left behind to check out the truck as we all rushed off to catch the remaining light over the pass. Two days later when the Woolly Mammoth, all bearded and red from ice and wind burn, exhausted and gaunt, turned the corner somewhere in Paris, the whole crew cheered and gave him a standing ovation, and he smiled coyly like the champion he was. He’d driven non-stop and alone.

On the roof of New Zealand House near Piccadilly, we were going coast to coast in the US when suddenly we lost the feed somewhere at our end. A frantic search revealed a coax hanging in the basement had torn off a connector. Seconds before the satellite switch Chris Evans quickly cut off the broken ends and told Stan to sit there for the duration of the transmission (which was a considerable time as we were covering the riots) holding two twisted wires together. I think we had de-rigged before we found him still at his post in the basement.