Dave Mundy
I have shown below pages from the latest quarterly issue of Evergreen magazine (Winter 2017) (a sister publication of ‘This England). They have lots of broadcasting orientated articles each quarter. This article may be of more interest to our buddies north of the M25. The City Varieties plaque is relevant to me as a student at Leeds Uni. as it was the site of one of our group outings! The front row was filled with undergraduates and didn’t we give the duff acts Hell! Paul Raymond’s acts broke the mould of static model posing so he became our favourite producer! Happy days away from home!
Pat Heigham
A question for the Northern Tech-Ops guys.
I’m enjoying (May 2017) the repeats of “The Good Old Days” from the Leeds City Varieties.
Good acts, live music, good sound, well shot – and highly entertaining.
My question is – with the in-vision audience, did they have to provide their own period costume, or was it down to the wardrobe?
David Brunt
As I understand it, a fact sheet about clothes was sent to people with their tickets and they were expected to provide something from the suggestions. From the age of the female audience, they’d probably remember making their own everyday clothes anyway (still might have been).
I would expect there would have been spare bits of costume available to perk up any unsuitable or sub-par items on the day.
Nick Ware
The audience were required to provide their own costumes, and many were only from the waist up!
Ian Hillson
Amazingly good sound.
Pat Heigham
Radio mics were involved, as looking at the re-broadcasted shows, it is clear that artistes have a personal mic fitted, necessary when they perform on the apron stage beyond the orchestra pit.
But good sound!
Ian Hillson
Apparently the sound was done by John Drake.
All I remember was that their handy-person made those ornate little screens to hide the stand mikes on-stage – and that it was a Barney Colehan production (who worked out of BH in Leeds, apparently).
Terry Meadowcroft
I worked in BH, Leeds in those days and Barney Colehan used to use my editing channel (the one and only, equipped with 2 BTR2s) when he needed to edit audio tapes. He did the editing himself.
I think there were 5 engineers plus the boss man; it was the friendliest place on earth with no TV. “Look North” and its studios had not yet appeared.
His daughter Eileen is still very much in our bunch of, er, shall we say, “getting on”, people from the business.
Ian Hillson
BH in Leeds were the first BBC premises I entered as a teenager for a look around in the early 1960s. By then it had two vidicon cameras in the news style which worked into “Look North” when needed, which then came from studio N in Manchester.
Terry Meadowcroft
I first worked at Leeds BH in late 1964 for about 3 months whilst the OB engineer Alan Cumberworth was recovering from a very bad bout of shingles! I was ‘borrowed’ from Bush House to cover for Alan, and the Chief engineer (can’t remember his job title or his name sadly) fiddled it for me to stay until after Christmas so I could be up north for the celebrations. So friendly.
I had to return to Bush House after Christmas, and I am sure that “Look North” had not yet started. I am pretty certain that there wasn’t any kind of TV studio then, and “Gardeners’ Question Time”, Alfred Bradley’s great “Northern Drift”, and a few Brass Bands as well as inserts for the early morning farming programmes was what I worked on then.
“Look North”, which lived for several years in the old church premises in Blackman Lane, started in March 1968, and I permanently moved there soon after to do grams and tapes in the gallery each evening. Great life there!
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I lived 17 years of my life working at YTV and living in Leeds. Had a short (18 month) stay as Head Of Sound at Leeds University Television Service in 1978 after I had left the Beeb and before I moved on to become Sound Recordist (via Film Equipment officer to get foot in door) at YTV where I spent 18 very happy years then a couple of not-so-happy ones before going freelance.
In my early days at Broadcasting House in Leeds before telly in the shape of ‘Look North’ came to town, Barney Colehan (producer) used to pop into ‘my’ recording channel to edit his tapes for the Old Time Music Hall, as he had an office in BH (technical staff of 5 lovely people including OBs and an really nice EIC). I found the folks of Leeds amongst the friendliest in the world!
