11th May 2016
…The Queen has been filmed saying Chinese officials were “very rude” during last year’s state visit by President Xi Jinping. She was discussing their treatment of Britain’s ambassador to China with a senior police officer at a Buckingham Palace garden party on Tuesday.
Buckingham Palace said the Chinese visit had been “extremely successful”. Chinese officials in both London and Beijing also recalled the visit’s “success”.
The Queen’s remarks were filmed as she was introduced to Metropolitan Police Commander Lucy D’Orsi, who the monarch is told had overseen security during President Xi’s visit to the UK in October.
She is heard to respond: “Oh, bad luck.”…
David Denness
What on earth is going on? Royal protocol has gone out of the window apparently.
Every event I covered in my many years as an outside broadcast sound supervisor for many networks including all the UK broadcasters, USA networks, Japanese, Australian and many others it was never acceptable to hear what The Queen was saying, or what anyone was saying to The Queen.
The most you could broadcast was a perception that she, or they, was saying something but not defined speech.
I have no idea which network it was that released this material into the public domain but I suspect the head of it will not be in the next Honours List.
Gary Critcher
BBC 6 o’clock News said it was shot by an official source for release to broadcasters worldwide … one of those shoots … a sort of ‘world feed’.
… the thing I couldn’t understand was how the sound was so good when obviously no-one was mic’ed up.
Roger Bunce
You can’t really blame the cameraman for things people say when he happens to be pointing a camera at them. BUT – Who on earth released it into the public domain? Seems bl**dy unprofessional to me. Quite apart from Royal Protocol, there’s also the diplomatic damage it could do to a very sensitive conference about corruption. Why would anyone want to sabotage that? Or was it being broadcast live at the time? In which case there was nothing much anyone could have done about it.
I just hope the blame doesn’t get traced back to the BBC. If it does, then we can kiss goodbye to charter renewal. BBC News were fairly stupid even to broadcast it.
I felt the same about Gordon Brown and the bigot-gate incident. Time was (correct me if I’m wrong Sound Guys) that private comments, made by someone who’d forgotten they were wearing a radio mike (presenter going to the loo, etc.), would be kept private. Not quite the sanctity of the confessional, but that sort of thing. They didn’t even get released on Christmas Tapes! So, why did no one protest when Gordon Brown was caught off guard. I think that was a Sky microphone, and Rupert Murdoch had a vested interest in undermining Gordon Brown, but no one complained about the lack of professional standards.
Is there any way we can blame this latest fiasco on Mr. Murdoch?
Ian Hillson
It’s a good job HMQ was indiscreet about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit last October at her garden party, otherwise the Beeb telly news would have had to lead on that Cameron gaffe… and that wouldn’t go down too well with Downing Street, would it?
Sky News bravely opined that Call-me-Dave’s gaffe may have been deliberate…
Assistant Heads may yet roll,
Alasdair Lawrance
The footage was credited to “the official Palace Cameraman”, which struck me as a bit odd, never heard of such a thing before. Any half decent lip reader could’ve interpreted that, anyway – in my ILEA days, there were enough who could do that (for special needs education), and in other languages, too.
Ian Hillson
They could have pixellated the lips as well…
Robert Miles
It looks like the Official Palace Cameraman was ex-ITN:
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“…Royal cameraman Peter Wilkinson seems to know to exactly what a courtier should know. I suppose he is the world’s only courtier cameraman…” – Michael Nicholson, former ITN colleague of Peter Wilkinson.
Bernie Newnham
A highly experienced royal cameraman. I rather doubt that the stuff he shot gets to news outlets without going through endless layers of flunkeys, so I rather suspect that this “accident” wasn’t an accident in any way whatsoever…
Mike Giles
A piece on Peter Wilkinson in the Surrey Downs magazine (26 April 2016) lends weight to the theory that publication of the “indiscretions” was not accidental:
“… Peter’s increasingly assured position of trust is reflected in his filming style.
“I used to do only distance work, but now I move in a lot closer,” he explains.
“Early on I would have discussed with the Queen whether to get a shot of her shaking hands, or being seated with a guest, but now she is very aware of what’s required. If she’s visiting a school, say, I will set up near a desk and she will come over to talk to the children. There’s more natural sound and atmosphere now, but as long as the Queen knows I’m recording, she’s happy with it.” …”
Dave Plowman
Even if it had been a live event, it still wouldn’t be the fault of the cameraman.
David Denness
If that had been shot on previous occasions it would never have been released as shot. It would have been taken into a dubbing suite, or even an edit suite, and generic atmos laid over it, either reducing The Queen’s and Cameron’s voices to a mumble or replacing them altogether at those sensitive moments. Alternatively it would never have been released, especially regarding Alasdair’s lip reading comments.
Geoff Fletcher
Is this a new policy for royalty coverage? We have never or hardly ever before been allowed to hear what was said on these occasions, but now two potentially embarrassing audio “leaks” in three days?
Dave Plowman
It does seem odd – wonder what has changed? A mic on the camera can easily pick up such stuff if the camera is close enough. So I’d guess a conscious decision has been made to transmit it.
Nick Moore
After leaving the Beeb (many years ago) and before retiring, I spent the last 15 years of work on contract to a number of homeland HMG security services. This type of gaff (David Cameron’s comments) doesn’t just happen, every recorded item from the PM or prominent members of the Royal family is vetted before it is released, this would have been authorised.
Some political correspondents’ are surmising that this could have been a ploy from Cameron to take coverage away from Boris and the launch of the Brexit Campaign, a more cynical and conspiracy view would be that by insulting the Chinese and African states it would scupper any future trade talks, again taking the wind out of the Brexit Campaign.
Either way it would have been deliberate, and as already stated, pretty good audio given past garden party recordings and somewhat breaking with normal protocol and etiquette.
Albert Barber, Peter Neill, Graeme Wall
There is a copy of the classic Wilson walking out of the studio at LGS saying “ and I don’t want this all over the BBC tomorrow ….well it was!
He was complaining about a question about his private affairs saying why didn’t they ask some people how they could afford yachts.
Bill Jenkin
A tape of the Wilson interview (from a programme called “Yesterday’s Men”) was offered to (by the then outlawed) Radio Caroline but even they thought it was wiser not to broadcast it.
It’s a good job they didn’t as the BBC would clearly have been in the firing line.
Dave Buckley
I have a copy of this tape as the interview was shot on film.
A transcript of the interview was published in Private Eye at the time, and I played the tape and compared the PE item – they matched exactly!
Mike Jordan
Ah Radio Caroline!
I was at Wood Norton at the height of its days in 1966 and, being a Comms trainee, we used to work in the old MCR. One day (or more?) we substituted the line feed of Light Programme (via the “secret” line from Droitwich) with Caroline onto the ring main. When it went off tune a bit, a lecturer came in to re-tune it as it was proving so popular!
Dave Mundy
Marvellous stuff, the Wilson interview! How I wish that we had recorded Maggie Thatcher and Rupert at the Tory conference chatting off-camera when he asked her, “How can I get the British people to buy my rubbish when they’ve got the BBC?”. She replied, “We can fix that”. And the rest is history, as they say!
Peter Neill
I must dig out my tape of Reagan referring to Thatcher as Vice-President.
Tony Crake
One of the “great” ( ? ) Mrs Thatcher/ BBC moments was the “Nationwide Belgrano Affair” with Sue Lawley. Sue left Mrs T to the persistent nautical questioning by the Merchant Sea Captain’s Wife who knew all her “points of the compass” and “nautical law” much better than Mrs T! Made Mrs T look a right fool…
There was a film doco team in the corridor at LG to pick up, as Mrs T left “E” at LGS and she was in an absolutely foul mood….yelling about the bloody BBC and what she was going to do to them all the way down to the Scene Dock and the Prime Ministerial Limo.
It has been shown twice to my knowledge (once on that very long programme done when Lime Grove was closed).
Bill Jenkin
That was Diana Gould. A teacher from Cirencester. Although she was married to a former lieutenant in the Fleet Air Arm she had a double first in physical geography at Cambridge and had studied the Antarctic and had always maintained an interest in the Falklands. She had also been a Meteorological Officer in the WRNS and had been unhappy about the official version of events surrounding the sinking of the Belgrano. She was hardly just a sea captain’s wife.
I have always thought since then that there should be a Diana Gould award bestowed at every General Election upon the ordinary punter who has managed to humiliate a party leader the most in public during the campaign.
Diana Gould died in 2011.
