Mike Valentine
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Dave Mundy
I hope you all listened to the great man on the radio! Details of the LP can be found on his web-site – www.chasingthedragon.co.uk – no prices shown, one can only guess!
Tony Crake
For those of you who wonder who Mike Valentine was…..
In a nutshell…. he was an SA at TVC in the 1970s and quickly got very bored… then went to OBs in the 1980s. After a bit he got restless there!
Took a big chunk of leave and went off to be The Underwater Cameraman on “Castaway” directed by Nick Roeg starring Oliver Reed.
We all thought he would be back VERY soon…. But he wasn’t ! Now the ‘go to’ choice for the “Bond” Films etc etc…. Good luck to him!
Rex Palmer
When he was on OBs, he already had his own record label – I think he lived in Guildford at the time!
And when he is not underwater he now seems to be a Record Producer (!) specialising in direct cut vinyls ( the latest must have techno ‘gimmick’ )
Good luck to him again!
Pat Heigham
I think that Guild Records was formed in the early 1960s by a fellow BBC colleague, Nick Ware and his brother-in-law, Barry Rose, who was Organist and Choirmaster at Guildford Cathedral at the time. Nick’s father was the precentor there, and I frequently helped them with recording rarely recorded church music. We used my Revox 736 which I had factory modified to run 15 – 7 1/2 ips instead of 7 1/2 – 3 3/4.
There is another outfit called Guildmusic which I think is Swiss.
Phil Nixon, Nick Ware
Nick says he and Barry Rose started Guild Records in 1967, and had an offer around 1992 that they felt they couldn’t refuse, from an Indian chap based in Switzerland who wanted a record label of his own, and bought their catalogue (and several others subsequently) as a basis on which to build. There was a lot of Guild print material, so calling it Guild Music meant he could use it without starting from scratch. Barry and Nick are still around, but not as Guild Records. Nick was at the Beeb from 1961 to 1980. He does not think he knew Mike Valentine.
Mike Cotton – our obits
Mike worked for the BBC from 1956-1989
Bernie Newnham
Mike was not just a fun person to work with but a major contributor to the website it its early years. This is a picture he sent of him modelling the latest glamour styles in survival gear before heading out to an oil rig in the North Sea.
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(This picture has been shown elsewhere on the Tech Ops website – but deserves a repeat showing here.)
Pat Heigham
How very sad to hear this news of Mike’s passing.
He was SA1 on Crew 3 when I joined them in the TVT in 1962. A more cheerful colleague you couldn’t hope to meet and he taught me a great deal during the time I was in his company.
My overriding memory is of Mike operating the opposite-prompt side boom which was fixed to the circle of the TVT and covered the side set for “Crackerjack”, “Pops and Lenny” etc. Mike was standing on one of those green tubular/canvas chairs, but the canvas seat gave way! Grabbing for a hold to avoid falling over the circle’s balustrade, there was a most horrendous twanging as the telescopic boom section performed a 360 degree twist and gave up!
With barely 30 mins before live transmission – no time for a mechanic to arrive from TVC, Mike and I took the arm to pieces, laid them along the rear aisle of the circle and managed to re-attach the internal cables which had parted company!
Such is BBC Engineering training!
R.I.P Mike Cotton – most fondly remembered.
Albert Barber
So sorry to hear this news. He was one of those people that you would remember and was very much part of Television Centre history. All I can really remember is that from a production side rather than an engineering one, he would be a person that would be willing for your production to be a success. It wasn’t so much said, but you would feel he was willing you on with a nod, a smile and something that radiated a professional approach of care and understanding. This quality, often in so many who I worked with, was nothing that you could identify except that it was a contributing part of the creative process of a team.
He will be missed as I fear his qualities seem rare nowadays.
Dave Plowman
He was one of the nicest people I ever worked with in my long career. A true gentleman.
Mike Giles
I am so pleased that I recently had the wit to thank Mike, at modest length, as he was totally uncritical of my arrival at TVC as a regional sprog, who then proceeded to take one of the SS jobs that he and his SA1 colleagues of the time were being denied, although a number of them had significant mixing experience, I believe. He was not alone in this welcome and I am still thankful to all the sound section who greeted my arrival without any apparent rancour, surprise perhaps, that anyone should move up to London from a region, but certainly no malice.
Sadly, Mike has joined an increasing list who have faded out for the last time.
Barry Bonner
Indeed very sad news about Mike Cotton. He had a great influence on my entire career. When I joined the BBC I wanted to be a cameraman and was happy with that decision, then Laurie Duley asked if anybody wanted a short attachment to sound. I volunteered and joined Mike Cotton’s merry band who happened to be on the same crew I’d left. I had a lot of fun and when it came to return to cameras Mike asked me why I wanted to return. I couldn’t come up with any reason to do so thus my entire career changed. In terms of promotion prospects I did far better than if I’d returned to cameras. So thank you Mike and no doubt you are recruiting the angels to your merry band!
John Henshall
R.I.P. lovely Mike Cotton.
Not only a wonderful man but also the first cameraman to operate a lightweight camera on a long arm:
http://www.tech-ops.co.uk/page164.html
Pretty darned good on sound too.
Paul Kay
I am sorry to learn of Mike’s passing. Over the years we worked together on many occasions. He was a great boom operator and a valued member of the crew. RIP Mike
Jimmy Woodward-Nuttt
Geoff Fletcher
One name I have come across is Woodward-Nutt – who was this chap? I can’t recall a thing about him.
Bill Jenkin
Can’t remember Jimmy Woodward-Nutt? Often voluble studio engineer. I remember him doing battle with Stewart Morris regularly in the TVT. As in “We’ve checked out the talkback system, Stewart, and have discovered that it is the Producer which has a fault.”
Where is he now? (2016) Looking after a windmill by all accounts.
Ian Dow
I was on the opposite shift in TV Theatre to Shift 1 led by Jim Woodward-Nutt – and when production teams arrived and saw Studio Engineer Reg Wragg and our merry men of Shift 2 there was a look of relief on their faces! If the PA forgot to ask Jim if they could overrun by a few minutes, on the dot of 10pm he would throw the main breaker and be out of the door with his coat on before they could react!
I believe he went to Inverness or Aberdeen and ran a University TV set up, and sometimes their OB unit was called on for network shows.
A character!
Dave Plowman
Yup. A true character. I think he had also something to do with the Consumers’ Association (“Which?”) at one point.
Mike Bartley
John Hays
What happened to the grams/tape op. Mike Bartley? In about 1960 we were neighbours in the Crystal Palace area of South London and he went to work for Granada in West London.
Mike Giles
Mike Bartley headed for Bristol to make his fortune as a puppeteer, I fancy, or it might have been marionettes, but whatever it was many years since.
Geoff Fletcher
In the George Speaight Punch and Judy Collection at the V&A there is a flyer for a reconstruction of a J Murray1875 Punch and Judy show by a Mike Bartley based in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol, dated 1975. Would this be the same Mike Bartley?
Mike Giles
I think that will be the very same Mr Bartley. I believe he was established in Bristol before moving there permanently and recall that he had a reputation for not showing up rather frequently on days before or after his nominated days off and I think this was to give him long weekends (notional, I hasten to add). He rarely showed symptoms of his ailment when he returned!
We had a chap in Bristol who ran a market garden on quite a serious scale and supplied fruit and veg to the Bristol canteen. He was notorious for taking odd days of sick leave and it became common parlance, even with management, that if you needed a day off and couldn’t get leave, you would take an RHP – not that I ever did, of course! He shot himself in the foot, though, when having rung in sick, he was seen delivering lettuces to the canteen! What characters we have encountered!
Peter Neill
I think Mike took early retirement on health grounds.
I remember he also had a hand in a company- Controlled Autographics, I think – that did Wurmser-type animations, but instead of being on caption stands they were placed face down on a glass table with camera beneath and Mike, dressed in black, operating from above.
Nick Ware
Didn’t he try to sue the BBC for back injury caused by bending over tape machines? You could be pretty sure you would be covering for him if you were on a standby day. Easily predictable in the TODS well in advance.
Dave Mundy
I remember a gram. ops. meeting, chaired by Derek Gough, where Mike was trying to get his idea of a gram. op. ‘station’ accepted. It was where you could be surrounded by machines and edit etc., Derek was keen but it never got very far!
Derek Gough
Nick Ware
Lovely guy, but what did Derek Gough actually do?
Dave Mundy
It was rumoured that he had the best ‘ears’ in the sound department for classical music. He could walk into a studio and pick the exact mic placements for orchestral coverage. However, when under stress, he got a very bad skin condition so he basically had to retire from active mixing.
Another story was that while the sound manager was on leave, Derek moved a desk into his office and sent himself internal mail to establish his right-of-abode!
He was an adviser to Philips Records in Holland and was taken by the idea of Ambiophony, hence the equipping of TCs 1,3 and 4 with the system. As far as I know, it was never used for its intended purpose as the orchestras were never sited in the one correct position! I used it for audience musak!
Trevor Webster
Derek was actually very knowledgeable from his years in the record business I suppose, and he gave me a lot of very welcome and useful advice when I was a young SS. For example, when quite new to the job, I was down to mix a programme of music played by Jacqueline du Pre accompanied and her husband Daniel Barenboim in Riverside Studios one Sunday.
However it was not to be. Just a few days before the day, the big news was the illness which eventually led to her death.
If just half the stories about that girl were true…
Mike Giles
I have recollections of many helpful encounters with Derek during the time that I overlapped with him at TVC, but perhaps time has magnified my memory. I’m sure there were several cups of coffee involved and I remember him being very excited when looking forward to the innovative “Swap Shop” as one his section’s output. And I suppose he had “PlayAway” as well ~ it didn’t get much more exciting than that! (I am right in remembering that kids output was amongst his responsibilities, am I not? Otherwise, it must have been someone else getting excited.)
But a nicer chap than Derek you couldn’t wish to meet, even if it had to be on Reading station!
