(You may need to look at some of the pages which describe the goings-on at Wood Norton Hall)

John Henshall

Stringing lots of local codes together to get to London? Amateur!

Dial 92 for Cheltenham, then 92 back to Evesham, then 13 (operator level) for London director exchange system. Local call rate.

So I was told but, of course, never dreamed of using.

Mike Jordan

Rather like the very naughty trick of sitting in BH in the old days and dialling 67/68/67/68/67/68 etc until all the lines between BH and TC got blocked!

Now would a Communications person EVER do that?

(For youngsters, 67 and 68 were two examples of internal BBC dialling codes.)

Pat Heigham

Oh! another story, not dissimilar.

Two TVC studios, linked sound and vision – live orchestra in TC3, sets in TC4.  This was for “Titipu” – a version of The Mikado with Harry Worth and Richard Wattis  (broadcast 21 December 1967).

Two days rehearsal and everything was fine and set up to record first thing on the third day.

Came in the third day – fade up TC3 orchestra feed – nothing!

The CAR shift had changed and ripped out all the linking double enders from TC3 to TC1. No-one had thought to tie a label around all the jack feeds!

The director, was understandably going spare, as we were, to try and restore all the tie lines from memory.

Worked in the end …

“Take a Sapphire”

I originally reported that the near disaster programme was “Take A Sapphire”, directed by Ned Sherrin, and I have a 1/4″ master sound tape of the pre-recorded music/vocal which was done at Lansdowne. There is no vision record.

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David Denness

I remember this show fondly. Georgia Brown was brilliant, as usual.

Barry Bonner

I tracked the creeper on this show as I still had aspirations of being a cameraman. I do remember an incident when the Transatlantic crane was delivered and drove with very muddy tyres onto the white floor paint ripping up a couple of tiles!

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