Caesar Glebbeek is writing an article about Jimi Hendrix’ appearances on BBC-TV – particularly TOTP –  and has asked some of us some questions about staging, sound set up and so on.  He also asked about the BBC Club at Lime Grove as , apparently, bass player Noel Redding went to that bar a few times during various TOTP shows.

Pat Heigham, Roger Bunce, Chris Wickham, Alasdair Lawrance

There was a courtyard/car park immediately south (right hand side looking at the entrance) of the main building, and known as Smith’s Yard (it had a fig tree), and served by a vehicle entrance off Lime Grove.

The Lime Grove BBC Club was on the east side of that courtyard, at the southern end: it was a separate building on this site,   (Next door was a place where bottles were smashed by hand to create cullet for recycling).

To get to the Club from Studio G, you had to go down to Reception (Main Entrance), go outside and turn to the right, cross the yard to the club.  There was not a direct inside link.  There was an outside stairway entrance to the left of the courtyard and which led to Studio "R", the dubbing studio.

Janis Goldring (Janis Bee)

The BBC Club at Lime Grove was across the other side of Smiths Yard so you had to go OUT past Reception and the Hospitality rooms on the ground floor, cross the Yard with Film Despatch and into the Club which was the far side.

Dave Mundy

Lime Grove club was very popular amongst real-ale enthusiasts as it was the only BBC club offering ‘real ale’ in the form of Young’s Ordinary. All other BBC bars only had fizz! I remember running down there at lunch, downing several pints of the ‘golden nectar’ and running back to TVC for the afternoon rehearsals of TOTP, when it moved from Lime Grove. Joe Ellis where are you now? If we had time after a quick studio rig a trainee was delegated to drive us down to the ‘Thatched House’ Young’s pub to meet up with our OB mates. Happy days!

Pat Heigham

The LG club was nearly my undoing – having a beer with another guy, I was offered the second half – “No, thanks I’m live on the ‘Grove Family’ at 7:30”,  and so ambled back to the studio, and climbed up on the boom – the opening dialogue was on my mic. The Sound Supervisor was having kittens, as I wasn’t answering talkback. I climbed on the boom, and as I put on my cans, heard the countdown to transmission! I was 15 mins out! Lucky I didn’t have that second half!

Geoffrey Hawkes

That’s the stuff of nightmares, and everyone’s dread. A narrow escape.

Peter Hider

We had a guy called Eddie who on his return to TVC  from his TO course was allocated to sound. He was one of the only people that I can remember being fired from the Beeb.

He was, apparently, warned after first hitting an artiste on the head with a boom on “Compact” and then, after burning the candle at both ends (and in the middle), fell asleep during rehearsals on another episode and rolled off the boom on to the studio floor where he found, to his surprise, a P45.

Geoffrey Hawkes

I vaguely remember “The Groves” but I think it had gone by the time I joined in September 1963.

I had a spell on Crew 1 Sound in my early days and enjoyed doing a boom on “Compact” in TC2. Dave Hawthorne was SA1 and Mike Brown and John Hurley were SA2 and 3 but I can’t remember which way round. Dave Hawthorne’s operating technique amused me, he was tall and would sometimes crouch on the boom with his legs folded under him like a grasshopper so he could see below the lights. It meant him reaching up to hold the controls, which looked most uncomfortable but it didn’t seem to bother him and he was ace at it. Frank Ratcliffe was often the Sound Supervisor. He was a kindly, patient man and knew how to put me as a trainee at ease and give clear advice and direction.  Having pre-transmission notes felt more like a family gathering, with him as the father figure. I had great respect for him and was very sad when he died. I wrote a letter of appreciation to John, John in his role as head of the Sound house, saying what a good man Frank was and how it had been a pleasure working for him. He thanked me for it and said he’d pass it on to the family. It was good that Phil followed in his father’s footsteps, but sadly that was after Frank had died.

We all depended on one another in the course of our duties, didn’t we, and valued each other on a daily basis. I think that must be why the sense of camaraderie is still evident in what people write on here?

Long may it continue,

John Cox

I remember Frank: in 1964 I was on a sound training course attached to him. I remember him also as a kind man and through him via Nick Ware I supplied my baby son’s crying for the baby girl in “The Marriage Lines”. Up till then the official “cry” was done by the well known actress Marjorie Westbury. The baby cry was used in several programmes later, “Kipling”, “Dr Finlay’s Casebook” and others.

I was then attached to Hugh Barker for a variety show with Roy Castle. Joe Lines on our attachment suggested to Hugh that I should do the Radio Mics – I was appalled when I received the equipment. The first thing I did was to take the BK6B mic to pieces and tighten everything inside. The next was how to get the receiving aerial into the studio, the only way in was through a video cable: I used that and hung an aerial on the gantry. The shot was a long one with Roy Castle singing in the far distance with close up sound and no electrical interference, Hugh was very pleased with this.

The next day the trainees were given a lecture by the director of this show. T L J, a famous man whom I admired for his wireless  and many T V shows. His opening gambit was to show us a video of the previous night’s show emphasizing the sound by Roy Castle and saying “that’s what I want”! The others in the class tried to tell him that I had done it but he would not listen, so the rest of the talk was a waste of time and my estimation of T L J was considerably lowered.