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Geoff Fletcher
Did anyone ever use these nylon overalls that were made available for crews to wear when rigging studios in summer 1968? I don’t remember even seeing them. I’m particularly fond of the veiled threat in the underlined sentence – I wonder what the consequences would have been if you didn’t take care of them?
Bernie Newnham
Weren’t they for going up into the roof? I had to take a mic up into the middle of TC1 roof once because the more senior sound person who was supposed to do it wouldn’t go. I had to put on a slightly smelly, slightly too small overall, having emptied my pockets first. It has to be said that first time out on that (very solid) grid was a bit scary.
Geoff Fletcher
I recall the overalls we wore when going up in the grid. They had no pockets, and the idea was to prevent anything falling onto people on the studio floor below. Didn’t a penny (old penny) fall on some unfortunate bod’s head and the wearing of the grid overalls was then made mandatory? Anyway – not the same as the overalls in Laurie’s memo.
Dick Blencowe
I don’t think the nylon overalls were for going up in the grid.
There were overalls for this purpose held by the Studio Engineers, they were blue cotton pocket-less, as I recall. I went up in all of the grids during my time as Safety Rep, accompanied by a Duty Manager, often Mike Jones. We sometimes found loose items up there which we removed.
During the asbestos scare we located several areas in the Grid where the cladding keeping the asbestos sealed in were damaged, these inspections were done together with the Sparks. Management had no choice other than closing the studios for repair of the asbestos seal. Apart from TC8 all the studios contained asbestos the cladding of which was repaired during a summer of the later eighties, I can’t remember the actual date. When a studio came up for major refurbishment the asbestos was removed.
We only went up to the grid when a studio was empty and a flashing yellow beacon was activated indicating that someone was up there.
I wonder how much asbestos is left in the now closed TV centre.
John Hoare
As I remember it there was a union move to make a claim for wear and tear on clothing, and this was the BBC spoiler – the fact that they weren’t being worn was part of their plan!
