Bernie tells a tale …

“On the first day of Breakfast Time, when there’d been no transmissions on BBC1 before 1000 before, no-one knew that the network mixer did a self-test at 0830 by running through all the sources – 20 of them – one by one. ”

“A good friend was once a TA whose job was to cut to the next programme in NC1 – the original NC1. One day there had been golf during the afternoon on OS6, and after it had finished we were left with Birmingham Pres output on it, which was the same as ours except for the BM visuals and voice in the junctions. Our man was enjoying during the early evening listening to them during our junctions – something he should not have been doing. Before 2100 he put News on OS5, instead of his usual OS6, so he could keep listening. Of course in the heat of the moment at 2100 he cut to OS6 instead of News just as Birmingham cut to us, thus howling BBC1 in sound and vision. After a while Birmingham put their clock on their output, and everyone else’s, before Dave (oops!) worked out what he’d done. The network director, Bernie, was hauled over the coals by the head of department, but explained that as our man was an engineer he had no control over where he put his sources, and certainly couldn’t at 2100 check which button he was about to press. All true – ask Dave Hardin.”

This one from Malcolm Walker (former Head of Pres) –

“During an early ‘Grandstand’ one Saturday afternoon, when all the switching was done in CCR1 at Lime Grove, the equivalent of NC1, director (and later Ass Ed) Nick Franks decided to have a look see what else was going on to relieve his boredom so did a quick run through of every source available to him. Unfortunately he did it on the TX row of buttons instead of the preview. All would have been well, with only the great British Public watching, except that he chose to do it immediately after the start gun for a swimming race had been fired and only completed his wander through the sources as the winner touched at the end of the race. Sadly for Nick this race was being telerecorded, and later that evening Alan Rees the producer in telecine, arrived in CCR1 clutching some yards of film and asking who was responsible!!”

This one from Gordon Waters

Gordon worked at AP before and after World War II. He was the first Senior Television Engineer (Telecine) from 1949-1952, when he left the BBC and emigrated to Canada, joining the CBC in its Engineering Dept.

“When the Baird system was installed the system to use on the announcer was a Nipkow disc. As the announcer, ( in this case Jasmine Bligh) could obviously not wear cans (ie. headphones) and due to being in darkness and facing a huge rotating disc, how could she be cued to commence talking?

Initially an engineer would sit out of shot, wearing cans, and on cue would squeeze Jasmine’s hand. On one classic occasion, having a long wait the engineer had let go of her hand. On receiving the cue to start talking the engineer made a wild stab to find Jasmine’s hand and grabbed her knee. The viewers were treated to an opening “WHOOPS err, Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen ”

A solution was quickly found, a small solenoid was strapped to the announcer’s ankle which operated a vibrator which on cue would tickle !!”