Although documents aren’t nearly as sexy as pictures, especially if you’re a cameraman, quite often they can illuminate a time rather well, even though they seemed incredibly dull when they were stashed away and forgotten.

In the early seventies, the nation was endlessly on strike. I can’t really remember why, I think it was just a current way of thinking which went on till Margaret Thatcher came on – stage right – with her handbag.
The BBC decided to hold a long run of seminars where the workers could meet, ask questions and eat BBC sandwiches with the management, presumably so that they would realise that these were human beings with problems too – though rather better paid to solve them, of course.
There were lots of seminars, run by John Goss, and Brian was on the 27th. This is the group from tech-ops that went with Brian. I’ve blurred the names as it seemed just a little personal, though I’d be quite pleased to un-blur individuals, as I wouldn’t have thought anyone had anything to be ashamed of….click for big as usual.

…I’ve just been looking through the full list again, and suddenly realised there was no-one from IT, but of course back in those dark ages of thirty years ago, there was no IT – amazing…

And so to the nitty-gritty – what did those on the seminar, not just the ones above, want to ask the management? In my personal experience of a number of these sort of things, nothing at all, and questions are dragged out of unwilling participants. Still, at least they didn’t have to do any role-playing.
Viewers to this section might like to rhetorically pose the questions in a current light eg “What is management doing about an ageing work-force?” could well be answered “We made them all redundant ages ago” etc

Brian has also sent photocopies of a Radio Times supplement for The Pallisers, which was one of the earliest dramas to have it’s exteriors shot on tape instead of the grotty low res 16mm of the time. Unfortunately the state of video technology then made the exteriors look like they were shot yesterday instead of in the 19th century, so it wasn’t that much later that drama went wholly over to 16mm for everything. “Gone Hollywood” was a phrase much used, and only later did the drama department admit to just how much the transition had cost. Still, that’s progress, and now the era of studio drama is long over. But it was such fun at the time….

Brian wants to know, rhetorically again, why on this list of credits, only one group of people are missed out – ie the studio camera crew. I used to wonder that at the time, and apart from sarky comments by the OB crew who did get credits, there doesn’t actually seem to be a valid reason, apart from “that’s what we always do”.
Personally I found it rather hurtful then, and reading this again now it all comes back. So if you were on the studio crew for The Pallisers, speak out, and I’ll make up a credit roller for this page, 32 years late!