The “Daily Express” “Lifestyles 2000” show, held at Olympic between 8th -16th July 1989, gave people the opportunity to see a BBC’s “Tomorrow’s World” Studio, amongst other items.
Alan Stokes
When I was younger, MUCH younger and still in short trousers, I used to look forward to the Radio Show at Earls Court. As soon as my Dad and I were in the building I would rush to the BBC exhibit and gawp at the cameras and operators, hoping that one day I would be one of them.
Eventually I was but not for all that long. I joined sound and found that more interesting.
Amazingly, in the late 1980s (ed)) I was invited to oversee the audio section of a small studio on the BBC/”Tomorrow’s World” stand at the ‘Lifestyles 2000’ exhibition in the large hall at Olympia. We did no live transmissions, but we used proper studio cameras. I think they were borrowed from TC4 which was out of service having an update of some sort. (Could it have been the Asbestos strip?) Every hour or so we invited members of the public to come inside and be directors/presenters/sound and vision mixers etc. I was suddenly on the other side of the fence and thought back to those days when, as an 11 year old, I asked the recruitment guys on the BBC stand at the Radio Show what qualifications I needed to be a cameraman. I do not tell a lie, their reply was, “You don’t want to be a cameraman, they take anybody for that”. He probably continued with some useful information but I was in tears and went home, thinking I might join ITV!
At Olympia, and in one or two other PR-type events such as the Faraday Lecture series, I always gave freely of my time and friendly advice to anybody, especially youngsters starting out. I knew how that would have made my day, as a kid.
All this is leading up to a video I have placed on the Internet. When I had time, I shot quite a lot of pictures around the hall on my trusty VHS monstrosity. I then edited (then VHS-VHS) a package, just for the crew and TW team who were interested. I recently found my VHS copy and have uploaded it.
For those who might be interested. It can be found at:
It is at least 3rd generation VHS so not HD or widescreen!Just so that you know in advance, one or two of those from Tech Ops who appear are, sadly, no longer with us.
It’s another look back at a time when the BBC did this sort of thing.
(Click on the picture below to see a larger or clearer version of this picture:
Click the “X” button (top right) to close the newly opened picture.)
Hugh Sheppard
Oh Alan, when you were in shorts, I was in longs being gawped at by lads such as you when on a camera at the Earls Court Radio Show (circa 1960). It was a great training ground. Over a long day we all took over the rostrum cameras from each other, unusually coming from both OBs and studios. The underlying rivalry withered as we studio-lads learned some of the skills of OB colleagues.
My abiding memory was in taking over from the late great Frank Hudson to find I couldn’t hold the camera steady. Frank always worked with the Vinten head loosened right off, while I had it set as if through treacle. The distinction was that I was used to being able to shift my ground without the camera moving, while Frank kept his own balance without relying on support from the camera.
Gradually, I learned how to do that, and took the skill back with me into studios. Always grateful to Frank, and always amused to see A. N. Other take over my camera and being almost unable to hold it steady on a long lens.
I suppose that today’s lightweights need a free head anyway, but those big image-orthicons were something else.
Peter Cook
The first few minutes after taking over any camera on almost every sport was fraught as no two cameramen set up controls the same way. As well as front to back balance, pan and tilt drag, panning handle and zoom/focus angle, some preferred opposite sides for zoom and focus or even sense for focus. Then of course there was viewfinder friction and display settings, even which tube to monitor. All to do whilst continuing seamless coverage of golf balls, cricket/tennis players or whatever. Happy days!
Albert Barber
Wonderful to see and a great video too. It’s interesting to have this as a record for a number of reasons.
By this time Producer Choice has pretty well wrecked the structure of production. Many staff by then had or were about to take early retirement and some were retired and on a pension and back working at the BBC. This was then a BBC which still contained some of the fun but many of us could see the writing on the wall. As a producer I saw many of my wonderful and loyal team beginning to feel the pressures of seeing the best work go to freelance outside companies and having to do the day to day programmes. I remember doing “EastEnders” as a director, shortly after leaving the BBC around that time, with a terrific team of professionals who knew what they were doing and enjoyed the job but at the very same time I knew that this team, as excellent as they were, would be split up into the wider world and the camaraderie diluted or gone. As a freelance I also worked as a director on “The Bill” and found similar feelings from an excellent team with the same values, this time they were all refugees from Thames, only this time working for Pearson.
As someone pointed out at the time, “…There will be less and less television made by the BBC, they just want to be a publisher, programmes seem to be a nuisance to them…”.
The video gave me that same sense of sweet and sour of that time but contained my joy of the teams and people I have worked with. Thank you if it was you!
Mike Giles
The video gives a great flavour of the exhibition, which seems very dated (the exhibition and the kit, not the video!) ~ I can’t believe that it was only twenty years ago (from 2015) ~ but nor can I believe that the names of many familiar faces escape me…
Alan Stokes, John Howell, Ian Dow, Hugh Sheppard, Bill Morton, Roger Bunce
Some people in the video, in no particular order:
Sound: Tony Shatford, Doug Prior, Pat Nunn (useen but present.)
Sound Supervisor: Alan Stokes
Camera: Dave Box (just on the edge of frame)
Lighting: Nigel Wright
Lighting/Vision Control: Roger Francis
TM2: Jeff Jeffery
Studio Engineer: Matt Goodman
Producer: Martin Mortimer
Director: Stuart McDonald
FMs: Terry Gray, Quentin Mann
Vision Mixer: Bill Morton, Sue Thorne
Presenters: Howard Stableford, Peter McCann, Miss Great Britain
And lovely to see Derek Miller-Timmins as a presenter. Derek Miller-Timmins was a visitor but a Sound Supervisor for his normal day job.
Martin Mortimore, “TW” Producer, started life as an engineer on DE18 then went to News before moving to production.
Roger Francis
I am the Roger in the “Lifestyles 2000” video. “Lifestyles 2000” took place in July 1989. You can tell the era it took place in by the equipment such as the Link 125 cameras. In just a few years after this London studios had all been converted to CCD cameras, mainly Thomsons.
At the time I was a Lighting and Vision Control Supervisor. For those unfamiliar with TVC job titles at that time, the LVCS was very much a three in one job. You were assistant LD and as such expected to light, deputise for the LD and act up to LD. You were also the lighting control console operator and thirdly, as the name implies, you supervised the vision control operation.
At “Lifestyle 2000” I was looking after vision control.
Geoff Fletcher
I always thought this position – LVCS – was a crucial one. It prevented the Vision Controllers and Lighting Director cancelling out each other’s efforts in certain situations – for example. moody low light levels.
When I moved to Anglia TV in March 1970, they didn’t have an LVCS equivalent so you had the LD lighting for mood on dramas and the VC winding up the lift or opening the iris to “stay on the island” – chasing each other’s tails. Result – arguments, some very testy indeed, and wafer thin depth of field at the sharp end as often as not!
Anglia eventually brought in the LVCS position – mainly due to lobbying by the several ex BBC staff members – such as Lighting Director Stan Thorpe, Senior Cameraman Nobby Noble, Cameramen Jules Greenway and me and others I forget now, plus various visiting ex BBC Drama Directors such as John Jacobs. We did a lot of drama at Anglia back in the day.
Roger Francis
By the time of “Lifestyles 2000” the TM2 post had gone. The TM posts were abolished in 1984. TM1s became LDs and TM2s became Technical Co-Ordinators. Subsequently TCs were renamed Resource Co-Ordinators, Studio Resource Managers and then just Resource Managers. I believe each change of title gave them more responsibility and an upgrading. With the final RM role they looked after the production from first booking to sign off including deciding on how much to charge. So I would guess that Jeff Jeffries would have been either a TC or RC at the time.
In the BBC TMs and then LDs always had control over the vision control. I remember people who left the BBC to work for ITV as LDs complaining that they didn’t have control over the VO. In the BBC the LVCS supervised the VO because
(a) the Lighting TM/LD spent a lot of time on the studio floor, and
(b) what the VO did impacted on what the LVCS did with the lighting balance.
At one extreme you could end up with all the lamps running flat out and at the other the pictures would get very orange. I remember when I was LD on an episode of “EastEnders” where there was a breakdown in communication between the LVCS and the VO. I was running around setting lamps on the studio floor but was subconsciously aware that the studio lamps were getting more and more orange. Finally the Camera Supervisor came up to me to complain that they were working with the irises wide open. Back to the control room to sort it out. The LVCS was trying to create a dark moody effect. Every time he dimmed a lamp the VO opened up. Neither seemed aware of what the other was doing. In any case, the LD tries to get an effect and the setting of the iris, black level and colour controls can make or break it. In practice LDs try to get named individuals to work on their shows because they can rely on them to give him pictures he likes.
I should add that in 1989 as an ex cameraman I was still on the BBC books as a qualified cameraman and did get asked to work as a cameraman again from time to time. On one occasion it was decided by management that I had to be the camera supervisor because the rest of the crew were all freelance and the BBC couldn’t possibly have a freelancer in a supervisory role!
Roger Bunce
Part of the original agreement with the Union, when freelance staff first appeared, was that BBC Staff shouldn’t find themselves working in a subordinate position to a Freelancer. It didn’t last. The Management could care less who was in charge of the shoot, but they did like a BBC Staff person to play the “responsible” supervisory role, because Staff tended to ensure that BBC equipment didn’t get lost or broken, and that it was returned to stores, engineering, or wherever it needed to go. The early freelancers took a more cavalier attitude to such things. They tended to swan off as soon as the artistic bit was over. Later, when most freelancers were ex-BBC, the problem didn’t arise. Also, Managers discovered that they had no authority over freelancers, which they hated. So, they liked to have a Staff member in charge, so that they had someone to boss about.
Ian Dow
OBs had an exhibition kit where we replaced the outer wall of the expanding side of the scanner with a perspex screen which allowed about 40 members of the public on a raised scaffold platform to watch over the shoulder of the production team when we went on air live from various exhibitions. “Big Bash” was a CBBC themed show from the NEC and as well as getting the kids onstage and into the scanner to produce some spoof transmissions (including the inevitable magic carpet flying in front of a green screen) we transmitted live several times a day. I remember the horror on the faces of the “Blue Peter” production team when they realised the assembled public could watch – and more importantly hear – their every action and word. They nearly rebelled when they found out, but did go ahead in the end being very very careful with their language when things went wrong!
At the Ideal Home Show, one of the regular morning programmes from Pebble Mill did part of a quiz show live from the exhibition. They hadn’t realised the set up, where the OB crew ran the whole demo programme, and only sent a presenter with no production staff, so that’s the only time I have ever directed and vision mixed a network insert!
Back to Albert’s remarks about Producer Choice. Our Kendal Avenue crew were manning a “Tomorrow’s World” stand at the Tomorrows World show at Earls Court, using our BBC Type 8 scanner with the perspex side and the usual demos, the public operating cameras etc, when a large group of people arrived at our stand with notepads etc. This group was led by a rather embarrassed TW Producer who explained to us that he wanted to do a live insert from our stand – but was using a hired OB unit parked outside the back of the hall as they were cheaper! We ended up having to lend them some lights, and help them sync up to our pictures as they didn’t have the right gear……Unbelievable!
Peter Neill
Yes, it’s amazing how often staff had to bail out the cheaper contract facility. One episode I recall with BBC South and East. A contract cameraman was sent to do a shoot in the Peruvian rainforest (I forget the regional angle). He argued that the contract rate wasn’t enough to cover him having a spare camera. So we reluctantly agreed to lending him a Beeb one. It returned covered in jungle while his had never left its case!
