Albert Barber
Does anyone remember the surgery at TVC?
Sara Newman
I fainted on “Tomorrows World” and ended up in the surgery. The Doctor’s name who took care of me was Newman – same as mine at that time. While I was there I was shown around and saw they had a mini operating room.
Hugh Sheppard
In the 1980s the MO at TVC was in a spur off the 6th floor. John Newman it was, and his BH boss was Dr. Eric Blackadder, said to have given his name to the LE series.
Dave Buckley
This reminds me of a story from a temporary secretary we had in TV Training many years ago.
One of the areas she had worked in was Dr. Blackadder’s office in BH. A documentary production unit was going in a jungle somewhere and had asked the MOs office for advice on the area concerned – particularly poisonous snakes.
The secretary was told to phone the Snake house at London Zoo and ask them, which she did. Apparently there was one particular snake in the area which could give trouble and she asked if there was any antidote available from the Zoo. There was, and she was asked where they could send it. She started to give the address, starting “Dr.Blackadder”, and the phone was put down!
Bill Jenkin
Dr Blackadder, who died in 2014, hated the fact that his name had been used for the series and tried to get the DG to get it changed. Alastair Milne decided that he did not have copyright over his name and let it go ahead.
Chris Booth
Ah, Doc Newman!
I vividly remember his ‘warnings’ in the pre Seoul briefing (1988) about the dangers of drinking too much alcohol on the flight (best part of 24 hours).
I was delegated to meet and greet later on at Kimpo, and observed him ‘pouring’ off the flight from Hong Kong – physician etc. etc.
Also the jabs were ‘extreme’ – especially the Typhoid. One of my editors developed an extreme fever the day post jab and was told by his doctor that “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you had typhoid!” Doc N must have had a batch of industrial strength typhoid injection!
John Howell
(Click on the picture below to see a larger or clearer version of this picture:
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This I believe is the aforementioned Dr Newman (standing centre) testing his ‘hands-on’ technique with John Motson on the way to Mexico.
Doc Newman is rumoured to have brought a considerable quantity of condoms. Knowing the severity of the rain storms in Mexico, we wondered if he was helping out the Sound Department with waterproof mic shields, or maybe they were just for his personal use.
Peter Cook
That would be the same John Newman who in 1988, whilst conducting a diving medical and without warning, carried out a prostate examination. I later learned that three of my colleagues who were also dive training were subjected to the same procedure. Explanation was “… we wouldn’t want that to explode under water…”!
In subsequent years the annual medical was performed by Harley Street diving specialist John King who thankfully did not repeat the practice.
Hugh Sheppard
On a pre-Moscow Olympics check-up. It was his post-digital rectal research remark that stayed with me: “Well, that’s OK and it seems you’re not AC/DC”.
Mike Giles
I also went to Moscow in 1980, but was not molested beforehand!
Dave Mundy
We all remember the D-I-Y blood-pressure machine which could put the fear of God into you! One happy-go-lucky gram.op. was called back to see the quack after having used the machine and ended up having a very miserable life until his untimely death due to something unrelated to BP!
Martin Hopkins’s speech after one Olympics: he paid tribute to ‘… all the hard-working people there except for one… ‘! We knew he was referring to the doc. who had a very nice relaxed holiday and eventually got the push from TC after complaints about his ‘hands-on’ approach, especially. with the ladies!
Peter Cook
Chris Bretnall, Nick Roger, Alan Jessop and myself did not fit into the “ladies” category. At least he could not pretend that the ladies needed a prostate exam!! Our experience was somewhere in TVC but not in the doughnut bit.
Mike Giles
I thought he got the push after Seoul, if I remember rightly, where he led “interesting” excursions into the nether regions of the capital, which made me and others shudder.
Charming chap on the face of it though!
My memories of the surgery place it firmly high up in TVC main building. I too went for jabs several times, but I once visited with a scald after spilling News Tea Bar soup on my hand. The sister said that the Tea Bar had already been warned about the temperature of their microwaved soup, as many visits to the surgery were for scalded lips, inflicted when people sipped their soup in the lift as it set off ~ with predictable consequences arising from Newton’s laws of motion! Next time I got soup from News Tea Bar, they under-filled the cup before microwaving, then topped it up with cold.
Barry Bonner
I remember the surgery well! I visited to have some jabs for the Korean Olympics and just as the nurse was about to inflict grievous bodily harm she asked if I was allergic to anything, I replied eggs at which point she exploded and I was given a thorough dressing down! The reason…..every jab she was about to use was cultured in eggs! My “blue jab passport” ended up with “EGGS” written large in red ink right across the front! Still use it to keep records of tetanus etc.
Peter Hider
I spent a considerable time in the 1980s with my trousers down in the TVC Surgery for jabs prior to foreign filming. It was superbly equipped like a ship’s hospital with a couple of bed cubicles for serious cases awaiting transfer to hospital. On one of my visits I was poised with a needle a few inches from my back-end when, conscious of the potential transfer of diseases by blood, I asked if said jab (gamma globulin I believe) was a blood product. The sister confirmed it was and left me, buttocks freezing, to phone the School of Tropical Medicine who confirmed that it was but it was superheated during manufacturing so there was nothing nasty left in the vaccine. I still use my Blue Vaccination Book.
I visited the Lime Grove surgery after taking a belt off a 110 volt DC wallbox in D or E that was entirely live when plugging up a Mole. The surgery was situated just up the short flight of steps by the small lift that went up to the studios. In contrast to the TVC surgery this was a dismally small room equipped with a pleasant Nurse, telephone, desk and a first aid box. After finding my temperature had risen several degrees I sat there for a couple of hours before returning to the studio where, having missed the rest of the rig and crewing, went home early.
I think the Senior Cameraman was Mike Bond. He gave me my first ever shot. It was on Blue Peter and consisted of crabbing along a row of all the national banks’ signs laid flat on the floor. I had to be at the top of the ped panned fully down. Because he had crewed up and the spare guys had an early he had to track me, which I think was the only occasion I was ever tracked by a Senior Cameraman. What a charming and great guy.
Geoff Fletcher
Is that where we used to go to see the nursing Sister? I found two mentions regarding medical “emergencies” at work in my diaries, both at Lime Grove, but I can’t remember where she was located. Was there a surgery or nurses first aid room at TC and Lime Grove? It appears so from the entries below. We had an actor injured on set at TC on at least three different occasions and the TOM called in Sister to administer first aid in each case. Again, no idea where she was based in TC, but there must have been a room somewhere.
John Howell (Hibou)
Fifth floor TC, roughly above the club food bar, I can’t find a room number, sorry! I went there for various vaccinations prior to going to Mexico for the World Cup in 1986.
Geoff Fletcher
Yes – that rings a bell with me – I thought it was on the upper floors somewhere – I recall thinking it was not very handy for the studios where I supposed most of the in-house accidents occurred. I think the East Tower room (suggested by Graeme Wall) may have been in the post Fletch era – i.e. after February 1970.
Dave Buckley
Yes, there was a nurse at LG. While working at LG, I got stung by a bee while out at lunch one day. I went to the nurse (cannot now remember exactly where in the building), and she looked at the sting and gave me a pill (probably anti-histamine), which effectively put me to sleep for the afternoon!
Pat Heigham
Whilst working in TC4, I think it was, I rested my hands across two TR90 decks, and the next thing I knew was picking myself off the floor. I had got a mains belt right across the chest. Apparently, whiskers of connectors inside the plugs of both machines had made connection with the earth, i.e. chassis grounding.
The surgery was very concerned and would have sent me home by taxi at the end of the day, as not a good idea to drive myself. However, this wasn’t necessary. The heart is still going BTW, some 50 odd years on!
Snakes: This isn’t a BBC story, but concerns my work on a 007 Bond in Thailand – the splendid Aussie nurse, very pretty but somewhat built large! addressed us at lunch, one day: ” Listen up! We are shooting in a ruined temple tomorrow – there are poisonous snakes around, but no worries, mates, I’ve got all the anti-snake serums, but if you do get bitten, I’ll want to know what colour it was!”
Same film – larking around in the Bangkok canals (the Klongs, there was one called Klong Pong!) the production decided it would be a good idea to have the unit inoculated with a gamma-globulin injection against hepatitis. When we could be released from work during the day to visit Judy, the aforementioned OZ nurse, I went in and asked her, left arm or right? “Neither”, she said: “Drop yer pants, it’s in yer bum!”
Ouch!
Bernie Newnham
There was a point in the early 1990s when the BBC decided in its wisdom that it should promote books, records and tapes etc on screen. We had been doing this for years with “Radio Times”, but the brief was always “promote the magazine via the programmes mentioned”, which we got away with, though I was chastised a couple of times for being too commercial.
As a then senior member of promotions I said that the world might not appreciate the BBC running commercials, but I was ignored by the new management who had come from LWT and C4 to tell us how to run the BBC and obviously knew better than us . Not only was I ignored but I was put in charge of making the stuff. Maybe they thought I’d resign on principle, but my principles put my family first, and it needed to be supported.
Anyway, we started making commercials on miniscule budgets and were an amazing success. Books, records and tapes flew off the shelves.
What we couldn’t do – mostly – was work inside the BBC system for some political reason. Also BBC VT didn’t have the toys we needed to make commercials, so off we went to the editing houses of London. This was a big deal for them – the BBC wafting round London – any facilities house would die to have the BBC as a client. So my colleague David Fuller and I were much lunched.
One day we were taken to some posh place in Islington, and I – again – had the scallops, which I loved. We got back to our office, which at the time was 6005, on the posh bit of the sixth floor. We weren’t at all posh – I assume it was the only one available. I was at my desk talking to Ian Stubbs on the phone when I suddenly felt really weird. I said “gotta go, Ian” and raced to the sixth floor loos by the main lifts. I didn’t make it, and puked outside the DG’s office, 6001. I pushed on to the gents, which turned out to have key access – not for us plebs. So I puked outside, and headed down to the fifth floor, where I sat in a cubicle for some time, completely flaked. Eventually I managed to make it to the surgery a few yards away where I was much looked after by nice ladies. I don’t know who cleared up after me.
A few months later the Monopolies and Merger Commission came down on the BBC like a ton of bricks. I didn’t say “I told you so”, but we all knew.
