John Howell
This was the occasion when I learned the true meaning of panic!
“Grandstand”, Studio E Lime Grove, myself Sound Mixing: opening sequence, presenter link into VT, cut straight from VT to Racing from Somewhere.
During the link a sports assistant had come in with refreshments and, seeing that I was busy, put down a cup of tea at my right elbow, I think you can guess what’s coming, the link ended and I moved right to address the VT fader and, Dunk, Glug, Glug, Glug the contents of the cup disappeared into the Main Output module of the sound desk.
VT was faded up and the sound issued forth. I remember thinking at that point, “…something is going to happen soon, I wonder what it will be?…”. The prompt cut bypass light came on next to the clock on the wall, "…here we go…" I thought. Out of the VT to the racing was fine. In the meantime frantic calls to the Studio Engineers resulted in a Main Module appearing with its fader missing.
With a surprising presence of mind I switched the Racing OB to an Independent Group thus bypassed the main fader which was then replaced with a dry one. We then came to a betting change and of course the lip mic didn’t work.
The Director didn’t get very agitated and merely instructed the OB to do their own betting flashes while we sorted ourselves out. Well the sound started crackling and breaking up so I did the most hair-raising thing so far, took a double ender and plugged the incoming OB line directly to the studio output. There, we’ve got a few minutes to get things going again, which, amazingly, was achieved.
The last scary moment was pulling out that double ender!
We came off air and the Director put his head around the door and proclaimed that we must get some more reliable equipment!
Jeff Booth
Similar stories from VT. There were Studer (other professional ¼” machines are and were available) ¼” machines on trollies in most of the editing areas. They had integral sets of audio faders.
Similarly, when a polystyrene cup of (Green Assembly) tea was spilt into the guts of the machine, the Engineers’ first question to the ‘victim’ was “how many sugars?”
Alex Thomas
On liquids in the mixer, the TUC conference in Blackpool was being covered by a Chrysalis truck when the director, one A.M., tipped her coffee into the Grass Valley mixer whilst live on air with Arthur Scargill in full cry on the rostrum.
The shriek on talkback and the awful silence which followed made us look at the output. The coffee trickled into the effects box and triggered off various shapes and patterns. We all watched as Mr. Scargill’s face was wiped and then had a black cross superimposed over it as if he was Beelzebub himself.
It took several minutes before a crash mixer was put into circuit and the Tx limped along till the end of the session.
A phone call to Grass Valley brought 2 engineers up to Blackpool who repaired their mixer overnight and from then on, no liquids at all were allowed in the truck.
Rumour had it that the cost of the call out was not far short of £10 K.
Alan Stokes
I was a relatively new Sound Supervisor. TC6 – “Children in Need”.
Malcolm Johnson had spent a considerable amount of time cleaning everything possible in or near the desk as it was, at the time, a ‘getting on a bit’ Neve. When I arrived on the first day of rehearsal/set-up I found a BIG notice on the desk which read words to the effect of "This desk has been extensively cleaned and sanitised for “Children-in-Need”. Please do not put any drink or food on any surface."
On the left wing of the desk were laying a number of very elderly and not all that reliable, EP8 (?) radio talkback receivers for use by various Production staff and presenters. They were ready for battery changes or something, i.e. all open and with the works exposed.
Yours truly walked in with a brace of coffees and was distracted by one of the Grams Operators asking something. It almost goes into slow motion here! Just for a moment I put the coffees down on the left wing. Yes, I know, I know! I turned round to answer the Grams Op. and sat on the said wing. The coffee went everywhere (no sugar) including filling the talkback receivers.
I don’t remember exactly what Malcolm said but you can imagine….!
Although the idea was that we shared the mixing for the long show, I was not allowed near the desk for the whole time, even though I had successfully (well, nobody complained) mixed the previous year with, I think, Alan Machin.
Mike Giles
I was working on “Any Answers” in Bristol, when it consisted simply of listeners letters arising from the previous week’s “Any Questions”, read by a cast of exquisite male and female voices, recorded and edited during Thursday afternoon, if I remember rightly, for later relay to London, usually for them to record and replay, but occasionally played live into Radio 4, (or was it the Home Service?) when the editing took too long.
On this afternoon, I had recorded the show on the usual TR90, single ended, because we only had two machines and one was needed to play in extracts from “Any Questions”. I had monitored the recording on cans throughout, apart from when I played in the extracts, so we were happy that a recording existed and after a few retakes, we cleared the voices and I spooled back to the beginning of the retakes, but hadn’t unlaced the tape. As I reached across the machine for a razor blade, I felt the cuff of my sports jacket (!!!) touch something and the machine took off in record and reverse spool ~ pressing buttons did nothing. The only recourse was to kill the power, with the consequent spiral of loose tape flying up into the air! Without telling me, the produce had kindly placed a cup of tea (with milk and sugar, which I don’t take) on the only available flat space on the TR90, next to the control panel. I just didn’t see it and it had gone straight down into the works. Further apparent calamity as the producer tried to help mop up the tea and promptly trod on a lot of the loose tape on the floor!
But luck was with us – I had failed to stop the recording before doing the retakes, so there were several minutes of idle chit chat, now partially wiped, crushed and covered with a clearly audible whistle, decreasing in frequency as it went, as the tape had passed the record head at a rate of accelerating knots. As I wound back through this mayhem, the whistle suddenly stopped – a razor blade’s width from the closing "Goodbye"!
I gave up the sports jackets soon after that – and ties – much too dangerous in the presence of machinery, not to mention the canteen custard.
Tony Crake, Dave Mundy
The only thing that a certain SS was good at was pouring coffee into the sound mixing desk desk 10 minutes before a live Sunday Cricket!
He also poured a tin of coke all over the LMCR desk on a by-election. Could have been my fault… if I hadn’t woken him up and faded up the stage mics to hear the Returning Officer.. then the Desk would have been saved.
Alan Stokes
I know drink in the desk happened at least twice!
One was my fault. When Sypher 2 opened, it had, for then, a new whizzy set of motorised faders, under computer assist (or control, depending on whether you liked them). When you powered up the desk, whatever the position of the faders, it set them all to fully open then fully closed. So, depending on where they were, if you ignored the rules, you arrived first thing in the morning and put your coffee on the flat fader area. When you powered up it either threw the coffee on the floor or in the desk. In my case it went in the works! I just yelled at my assistant, "Call Sound Maintenance and tell them there was no sugar in it!" I NEVER did it again.
Secondly, I remember reading in the Engineering Fault Record book an entry by a Sound Supervisor initials KG, ex-OBs. It just read, as I recall, "Coffee dropped in desk. All disappeared inside but none appeared at the drain plug."
Bernie Newnham
When I was being Acting Editor/Deputy Editor (both unpaid), a producer raced into my office one late afternoon and said that they’d just chucked coffee into the Pres A Grass Valley vision mixer. In fifty minutes time it was due on air with the weather. Down to Pres A we went, where engineers were shaking their heads. I looked next door – Pres B was empty that day. So we shifted all the screen and projection and lighting gear next door very very quickly. It turned out to be "no sugar", so it only took a day or two to get cleaned up (ultrasonic maybe?)
Chris Booth
Back in the 1980s we were editing a Chris Ogliati documentary “Marilyn, Say Goodbye to the President” in Edit Suite F (I think) when the graphics lady arrived for a visit and immediately dumped an entire cup of coffee in the Cox 850 mixer. Its output collapsed to a soft edged iris combine with a diagonal wipe and the black. Services rushed in, asked the ‘sugar’ question (“no” in this case) and immediately deposited the entire mixer in a large bucket of water. Amazingly, after a dryout and application of several hairdryers, it was back in service by supper time.
Jeff Booth
I recall that in one of the more obscure rooms in the basement inner ring, there was a large butler sink used for dunking the said coffee soaked equipment in!
There was also the incident when one of the female VT operators left a cup of coffee on the bridge of a VPR2 (a 1” VTR) and when the top tape cover was opened, its contents were deposited into said machine. VT11 I recall?
Tony Crake
Another TR 90 incident…this time in LG Studio E but No Coffee involved!
“24 Hours”, the pre runner to “Newsnight”, had an opening sequence very similar to ITV “News at Ten” with the BIG BEN strike between each headline.. This was off tape, all yellow ‘leadered’ up… TR90 ideal machine: the capstan driven by a huge motor guaranteed "instant start".
‘Head 1’ went through. Spool through or even leave it in play and stop at the next ‘yellow’. Undetected by me the old sticky bit of well-used edit tape had parted and wrapped itself round the capstan….
‘Head 2’ was followed by Big Ben but at several octaves higher….
I could not work out exactly what had happened and dutifully played in after ‘Head 3’. The capstan was by now enormous and the desk PPM went ‘end stop’ , but no audible sound was heard.. .
There was by now a huge chunk of molten tape round the capstan.
The SS ( poss. Frank Radcliffe? ) thought it very funny… called Maintenance who appeared with another machine.
I found a Master tape in that little cupboard on the wall and edited some more Big Bens together!
Peter Neill
I had a remarkably similar experience. Same programme, same headline sequence. Levers-Rich m/c. Opening music from TK. Presenter reads first head. I play first sting (I don’t think it was Big Ben). Press stop button. Outer shell of button sticks to my finger then flies off and lands in the small gap between the two RP/2s. Play second sting. The only way I can think of stopping machine is to lean very heavily on the feed spool and let go for the next sting. Repeat a couple of times. Play final sting off second machine. Start pushing gram decks apart and scrabbling between them to retrieve missing bit of stop button. At this point the tape runs out and starts flapping around noisily. It is only at this point that SS (Alan Fogg, I think) becomes aware that all is not well behind him.
