Tony Crake
I just happened to go past the old Golders Green Hippodrome (now a religious centre!) and it brought to mind our outings there on the Dora Bryan Show with Wilf Eynon and Alan Edmonds (Orchestra rig with NO Power Mikes!) seems years ago ! Not sure when it was actually – 1960s 1970s ?
Barry Bonner
Good old Golders Green Hippodrome. I spent many weeks up there on a crew with Tony Milton and Laurie Taylor doing “Rolf Harris” 1969/1970. Great sound desk!
Tony Crake
It must have been the same sort of time. Wasn’t it when TVT was being rebuilt, upgraded and colourised?
I also did PA up there on “International Caberet” I quite liked the PA Stabiliser thing.. but one ‘artiste’ didn’t and made a big fuss, so I had to take it out. Des Browning was always snooping around up there as I recall. The Colour Shows used a KA ‘Drive in’: there was a lot of fuss as to who was going track the Mole/Nike… the OB Riggers or the Dolly Ops!
Peter Cook
The Golders Green Hippodrome!! What memories are conjured up!
My first visit aged about 10 was to see “Cosi fan Tutte”. Whilst my father stopped to turn our car right at the cross roads, a trolley bus doing a similar manoeuvre in the opposite direction did not leave sufficient room when turning. Of course the trolley poles would have been a limitation, as would have been waiting for us to move. Morris 10 hardly touched, but bus sides (aluminium) suffered a lot. I do not remember the Mozart as much as the accident.
On OBs there were pantomimes, one with Roy Castle. Then a series of “Old Grey Whistle Tests” (LO3), presumably when a studio was being refurbed. Meal breaks with Tom (“double or a large one”) Corcoran were usually taken at a licensed establishment a couple of miles down the road towards Highgate.
Dave Plowman
Perhaps my most vivid memory of it was a party held after the “Billy Cotton Band Show” in Jack Straw’s Castle.
Bill Jenkin
“Billy Cotton Band Show”. Were there two periods when the Hippodrome was used to replace the TVT then? The time when the TVT was being converted to colour etc was some time after the “Billy Cotton Band Show” which ended in 1965.
Dave Plowman
The major work done to TVT was to remove the proscenium arch, which involved installing massive steels. Also building the new dressing room ‘wing’, and moving the control rooms from backstage.
When I first worked at TVT, it had Marconi MkIII? (the ones with the beer handle focus) They were replaced with Pye Mk5. Later, of course, the EMI 2001s.
Peter Cook
My diary tells me that I did several OGWT shoots at the Hippodrome in Feb/March 1982. I have no idea which empty TC studio was the usual programme location.
Together with other music programmes like “Rock Goes To College”, New Years Eve concerts and Sight and Sound gigs, I built up an understanding with Tom C. That was useful on Live Aid where I was in the Airship, with no programme sound feed, so heard not a single note of music. He was the only director who directed. Others just shouted and complained. Reviewing my shots afterwards, especially on Elton John, you could have believed that I did hear music as shots on his watch were timed, simply because Rosa was counting bars which together with Tom calling cameras, cuts, zooms, holds etc allowed my shots to blend in seamlessly. Having confidence in each others style was the key that day.
After the evening stint we were able to overfly Heathrow en route home to Fairoaks, because ATC were turning the pattern round from 09 to 27. That was an amazing sight. Airship pilot needed some help finding Fairoaks in the dark!! M25 construction was a handy landmark.
Bernie Newnham
I was at the Hippodrome on the evening of July 20th 1969. I was on camera 5, which was remote controlled from the vision gallery. You had, I think, four presets, all of which were horrible. “The Roy Castle Show” didn’t get watched much from in there, as we had Houston on several screens. Apollo 11 landed mid-show.
John Howell (Hibou)
One of my many memories is my first visit to GGH. I found a quiet room with a phone and rang a number in Ealing on the 997 exchange. Nobody told me that you didn’t need the usual ‘9’ for an outside line. You can guess what happened next!
Geoff Fletcher
For what its worth, I worked at the Golders Green Hip four times –
twice as below:
|
Fri 22 Nov 1968 Sat 23 Nov 1968 |
Val Doonican Show |
Crew 19 – GC Cam 4 – Creeper Tracker: Dave Skerry |
|
Sat 27 Sept 1969 Sun 28 Sept 1969 |
Dave Allen Show |
Crew 8 Sen Cam: Tony Powell Cam 4 -Vinten Tracker: Pete Brill |
There were two more “Dave Allen Shows” with Ron Peveral’s Crew 8 in October 1969.
I think this period in 1969 was when TVT was being refurbished. Not sure about why we were there in 1968 though. Did it take a year to complete the TVT update?
I remember the little Italian restaurant by the railway arch near GGH.
Also, as regards my trusty trackers above, I remember Pete Brill, but I can’t recall Dave Skerry at all
Chris Woolf
TVT took quite a while to refurbish.
I liked the Hippodrome because I lived only about a couple of miles away – short bus ride.
I can remember a Rolf Harris show – last one of series – when half the crew had ‘flu and we were drastically under-staffed. It took ages to de-rig and the party in the theatre afterwards was well under way when we got there. I slaked my considerable thirst (unwisely) on cold white wine. I remember getting off the bus on the way home and discovering that the solid ground under my feet wasn’t – “alcohol induced pavement failure”, it would be called nowadays…
Chris Pocock
I seem to remember working on the early Cilla Black shows in the Hippodrome. I can clearly remember the opening shot – very wide on a mole tracking in to CU. I was the boom op. and had a rifle mic which I had to get almost down her throat for her almost inaudible start of her opening number!
"Step insiiiide, love…." (thanks, Bernie)
I think the shows were live.
Warwick Cross
On the subject of ‘Step Insiiide Love’:
Cilla sang live in the studio to a TK opening title sequence. But if you went to TK to the machine playing it in, you saw that this title sequence had a mag track running in sync. And if you listened to the mag track instead of Cilla singing live, you heard a demo of the song that was simply Paul McCartney with acoustic guitar playing the whole thing in what sounded like his front room.
I still have a copy of it somewhere on ¼ inch.
Graeme Wall
The later series in TVT used “Something Tells Me” as the opening song, but the shots were the same. Rumour had it Michael Hurll only had one set of shot cards!
Dick Blencowe
As far as I remember we used the GGH for a year whilst TVT was being refurbished, and I seemed to be allocated there on many occasions. I worked on the Scott Walker Show, the first show to be done there.
We had several issues with equipment and the sound installation not working properly. The sound desk was a Pye, probably moved from TVT and Len Shorey was SS. During tea break Len asked the crew if they could move the speaker and monitors in the Sound Gallery, as they were not where he liked them. They were, as I recall, mounted on Dexion frames and as there was only a small gap between the wall and the desk it was quite difficult to move them.
After much heaving and pushing we repositioned said equipment with quips about Len only wanting a better view of the football that afternoon! During our struggle a flying lead plugged into a 13amp socket got ripped out. All sound output died! The flying lead was the mains input to the desk.
Rehearsals were delayed whilst the Engineers rewired the plug and they hard wired it later ready for the next day. There were also mutterings of Tech Ops not moving Gallery Equipment around, however Len enjoyed his football!
