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Patrick Heigham
One of the Christmas tapes had a very inventive sequence shot by VT guys of a Dalek chatting up an Ampex! I hope they got Peter Hawkins for the voice as it was mostly his delivery, helped by a ring modulator which I set up for the early episodes – not all my idea, Radiophonics initiated it, but I worked the pluggery.
David Brunt
That scene had Roy Skelton, Hawkins’ replacement as Dalek voice, doing the dialogue. It was telerecorded alongside their 1979 story, elsewhere at TVC.
Bernie Newnham
In the incredibly unlikely event that there’s someone here who hasn’t seen it – it’s here, at 00.50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGk5-SpH4CY
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Bernie Newnham
When I was on “Breakfast Time” I worked part of the time with the announcer, also from Pres, who did the TV previews. Most of the time I was there it was David Wheal. He worked ridiculous hours – live in the early morning and still there at 18:00-19:00 scripting. I used to find ways to give him the off morning off, which Ron Neill didn’t like, but grudgingly accepted.
At some point the Daleks were coming back after a long absence, so I had this idea….
The way we normally did the pre-records was to get one of the Lime Grove crews, Dick Greening or whoever, up to VT. David would sit between two 1″ machines and we’d record him on one of them, whilst playing back clips on the other. A friendly editor would sort out the pull ups, joins etc. I thought it would be a great idea if we could get a Dalek to interrupt at the end of this one, so I ordered one up. The company that looks after them dumped it in the scenery area in Studio F – and the local scene crews said “nothing to do with us mate”, so David and I had to get the thing up the stairs – three floors I think – as it wouldn’t fit in the lift. We took the top up the fire escape and went back for the bottom, which is heavy. Having got it up the stairs we discovered that it wouldn’t go through the door – skirt too wide. So we took it all the way back down again and up the inside stairs, where the door to VT was wide enough to get machines in and out. What fun things we do for TV! So glamorous.
Then we needed a Dalek driver. In the office, I sat next to the Forward Planning secretary, Sue something, later a big time news producer, and she was our Dalek, doing an excellent job. It was all a bit of a deal but looked great, and David got the morning off.
