David Thompson
My first two years at the Beeb was spent at Bush House. The shift pattern there was based on a sixteen day rota. It ran as follows:
We had 4 shift groups – A, B,C, and D shifts, and we worked the following pattern throughout the year.
| From | To | |||
| 4 evenings | 16.00 | 22.00 | ||
| 4 days | 09.00 | 16.00 | ||
| 4 nights | 22.00 | 09.00 | (half the team) | |
| 12:00 | 22:00 | (half the team) | ||
| 4 days off |
The night shift was only staffed by half the team, so the other half worked 12.00 – 22.00, nominally, to provide meal reliefs. This was worked alternately so that only 4 shifts a month were nights.
As I was a single kid it worked fine for me. I used to go home to Birmingham to my parents for the off days, on the ‘Midland Red’ M1 express coach from the Victoria Bus station, and I could return on day one of the new shift, which didn’t start until 4pm.
I usually ‘volunteered’ a swap with someone to do the meal relief shift because between the lunchtime and evening meal duties I could nip off to Lisle Street and browse through the radio junk shops for Government Surplus bits.
Of course I missed out on the night shift pay, but my colleagues with families to support gladly accepted the offer of the extra money.
Night shifts were not too onerous, manning the various continuity suites such as LA Spanish and LA Portuguese, “Voice of America” re-broadcast, the African services, and, of course, not forgetting the General Overseas Service, for the ‘Empire’ – sorry, the Commonwealth.
Many hours were spent making tape copies using the two CTRs – Central Tape Rooms. These were large rooms containing rows of BTR2s (EMI tape machines the size, and weight, of an Aga cooker). At other times the edit suites, each with two machines, would be daisy chained together to speed up the process.
You had to run from room to room to start and stop the process, but nobody seemed to complain about the long periods of silence on the copies.
By illicitly copying at double speed a whole nights booking could be compressed, thus allowing some unauthorised sleeping. Happy Days!
Maurice Fleisher
Well, well. Some coincidences here except my initiation into the Beeb, also starting at Bush House, was for only eighteen months before transferring to TV. and some of that time I had a spell in radio OBs.
I well remember the shift patterns and the strange atmosphere in the canteen in the early hours with comparatively few people around. It’s a different world at nights! During long breaks between transmissions at night I would bring in a whole load of my brother’s classical 78s, pop into one of the empty continuity suite control rooms and spend happy hours listening, albeit with frequent record changes……no 33s at that time.
When I was there the control room was downstairs in the basement (ex-Radio Luxembourg studio) but I see that it was later moved and updated. I remember an enormous mains-frequency clock high up on an end wall. If it ever registered the slightest variation of 50Hz it was a major cause of concern to the repeater radio transmitters all over the world. Best job was working in the continuity suites, identified by colours. As I recall ‘orange’ was the South American (Latin) countries but I can’t really remember which countries/areas were covered by the ‘blue’ ‘yellow’ and ‘green’ suites.
During my short sojourn in radio OBs I was sent up to AP one day to man a small insert studio at the other end of the building to the TV studios. (not many people know that!). It was used to send possible locally-sourced interviews down to BH. I found the light switch and that was the only switch I knew how to operate. The room was full of equipment but no instructions. I was trembling with anxiety in case someone rang to say there was an interview on the way. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I figured I would have to call BH and get them to talk me through it but fortunately the interview never happened. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end.
Memories, memories.
Bernie Newnham
And talking of coincidences…
Sunday morning I was eating my croissant and perusing “The Sunday Times” when the tablet beeped. It was Graeme Wall asking about the AP shift. I was first to reply – Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
The following Tuesday, I was at Exeter University, 150 miles from home, for my son’s graduation. Anyway, it was being recorded for the souvenir DVD, and having pointed a camera on a few of these, I looked around for the cameras. Up to my right was one of the crew, downing a Costa coffee before the event started. He was operating a Sony something, a lot like the Z1 I used a few years ago.
I did my bit as a parent, clapping a lot and taking photos. Afterwards Exeter were offering champagne and canapes so I did my bit there too. The same cameraman was working the crowd and I said hello. One thing led to another, and he said he’d been a cameraman at TC from 1969 to 1970 something. I said "So was I, we must know each other, what’s your name?"
"Graeme Wall".
We haven’t met since 1970 something, when we both had red hair and no beards – apart from on here, when two days ago I answered his question.
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world. ……
Dave Mundy
Last year (2014) I was on holiday in Croatia and we had a day trip to Split. Lunch was taken in a walled garden in a small place called Trogir which is basically an island connected to the mainland by a small bridge. After lunch we went into its large church where I met an OB engineer I hadn’t seen since before I retired in 1998.
Earlier this year, on holiday in Malta, we spent the afternoon at Golden Bay and on the drive back to our hotel we stopped for tea and cakes in the ‘silent city’ of Mdina at a famous restaurant high up on the city walls. A man came to speak to me and it was a Radio OB engineer I hadn’t seen for about 20 years. He had seen us leave Golden Bay and had, quite by chance, stopped at the same restaurant for afternoon tea! Many years ago …….. many more such meetings – it really is a ‘Small World’.
Geoff Fletcher
As you mention OB Engineers, does anyone recognise the gent in the specs in photo 1 attached? Was he a BBC EM? I was Anglia UM on a Newmarket race meeting in mid April 1989 and the BBC were also there. This wasn’t usual, so it must have been for something special. We all got along fine and a few beers were imbibed! I found these pictures. A bit of nostalgia for our OB friends. I remember our Engineers were highly impressed with the mast!
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Dave Mundy
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The gentleman in the picture is John Mason ‘Major’, a Kendal Avenue EM, formerly a Sound Supervisor. He was called Mason ‘Major’ because we also had a younger John Mason ‘Minor’ who also started in sound and became an EM. Mason Major was a heavy smoker and had to have a leg amputated some years ago (from 2015).
Mike Jordan
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And Radio Links 100ft tower PTA4 – MLD 864L (newer version of “Powered Transmitter Aerial” originated in the 1940s from fire engines).
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Note the 4 headed mount on the top which was never properly researched and the single head version came off its “shrunk-on spigot” bearing and almost killed someone before being properly re-manufactured. Obviously doing outgoing link and cross-course ones as well for convenience.
Geoff Fletcher
PTA4 was indeed doing cross course links from the start cameras etc.
We (Anglia) covered the two Newmarket courses all season for Channel 4, and had a permanent very tall scaffold tower built for our remote end link, with the scanner end on the grandstand roof.
Mike Jordan
I bet the Anglia rostrum wasn’t as good as our Boat Race one!
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Dave Buckley
Ref: the scaffolding for the boat race – who went on the ‘scaffold appreciation’ course for that one?
Mike Jordan
The first BBC towers were fire engines as in Croydon 1938 (query – Chamberlain’s return stating “Peace in our time”?)
Alec Bray
Time to buy my first car – what to get? One of the garages I went to had a Jaguar for £70. Could have been a Mk II 3.8. It looked good, looked fine. Opened the bonnet – the engine compartment was full – of – well – engine.
But I was advised against it, and eventually got an Austin A30. Later spray-painted bright blue (with orange direction flashers added) it took me and a friend around Europe in 1964:
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(Made it to the top of the pass, but with heater going full blast to help cool the engine.)
Well, anyway, I was travelling back to Reading relatively early on a summer’s Sunday evening – must have been working a relatively short day. People were streaming back into London from a day out in the country.
At this time there was no M4 (it was being built), the main highway being the A4 which at this time was a three lane road: one lane in each direction with a line in the middle which cars overtaking – in either direction –could use: there was quite a risk of a head-to-head confrontation on this type of road (often called the suicide lane).
As the traffic coming back into London was heavy, both the Eastbound lane and the central lane were full to traffic heading East. Then swerving out from the centre lane was a Jaguar – probably Mk II – straight into the single Westbound Lane – and heading straight towards me! Luckily the jag was able to pull back into the middle lane, but it was quite unnerving to see a big old jag hurtling straight towards my little A30.
Several months later I was on a crew with one of the guys who had been on my TO course – because of the crew system and irregular hours, we could often go months without meeting colleagues unless we made special arrangements. Anyway, this guy was chatting to some of the other crew members about his car, a jag (he’d always liked them). And he started telling the crew about a day out that he had had in the summer, a beautiful sunny day, but the traffic back to town was absolutely horrendous. Both the Eastbound lane and the centre lane were packed with traffic, so he had pulled out into the Westbound lane …
Dave Buckley
As for bumping into ex-colleagues in unusual places, my wife and I were on holiday some 10-11 years ago (from 2015) along the coast from Cadiz. We went on a day excursion to Gibraltar. After having a quick cuppa in a café at one end of the main pedestrianised area, we started to walk along.
We hadn’t gone very far when a voice said, “I know that face!” It was Ken Pimenta who had worked in VT and latterly, as VT Ops Manager for Newsroom SE at Elstree.
It turned out that he and his wife lived in Gibraltar – I think Ken was then fully retired, but his wife was a nurse in the hospital.
