{"id":11363,"date":"2020-11-19T10:07:36","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T10:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/?page_id=11363"},"modified":"2020-11-20T16:30:47","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T16:30:47","slug":"more-about-mother","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/more-about-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"More about Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWe all of course recognised \u2018Mother\u2019[in the photo from David Taylor of the crew of \u201cOur World\u201d]. Not the best picture of Mother of course and now, quite coincidentally, I have come across a rather better image dated 30th Oct 1974 in a shot marking the start of David Dimbleby\u2019s spell as \u201cPanorama\u201d anchor man. Copyright to the hilt of course but hopefully in this context not too contentious.\n

\nJoan is not credited by name in the photo information so Googling her is unlikely to turn up the image. I just happened across it.\n

\nIt captures her to a tee.\n

 <\/h3>

Bill Jenkins<\/strong><\/h3>\n[During rehearsals for \u201cOur World\u201d] I do remember Joan  Marsden, when asked to say something to test circuits, coming out with "This is Mother calling the World".\n

 <\/h3>

Pat Heigham<\/strong><\/h3>\nJoan was quite fierce but ran the studio with impeccable discipline.\n

\nA story from Panorama \u2013 true, as I was there…\n

\nRichard Dimbleby was the ultimate professional, but he had a lovely sense of humour.\nFellow technicians will remember Joan Marsden (Floor Manager) known as "Mother" to cast and crew alike, who ran the studio with a rod of iron.\nOne night, to illustrate the number of summonses sent out by one London borough, there was a huge pile of brown envelopes in front of R’s desk. On rehearsal, he leant forward, picked upon the top one, wrote on it, replaced it, and beckoned the camera to focus on it.\nIt read: "To Mother – for Soliciting".\n

 <\/h3>

Geoff Hawkes<\/strong><\/h3>\nYes, she always had a firm grip on the studio and was given to stamping her foot if any of her commands were ignored. You couldn\u2019t fault her for professionalism and getting the studio organised with everything and everyone in place, which was why she was the FM of choice for the kind of shows she did. Didn\u2019t she receive some sort of official recognition for her services to political programmes, an MBE or something like that? Well deserved, whatever.\n

\nA story that\u2019s always stuck in my mind was of an incident when I was doing a VO attachment. We were about to record a show one afternoon when there was trouble with the Ampex clock refusing to run, not an unusual occurrence. Everyone was getting more and more impatient with this including Dickie Higham and Jack Meyer who were sitting to my left. They were of the opinion that the problem was that the clock simply needed winding and that Joan didn\u2019t know how to do it. \n

\nAfter muttering to themselves, and being confident in her errors, Jack pressed the talkback key and said in a slow, deliberate voice, \u201cHit the top, Joan\u201d, with Dickie agreeing that was all she need to do and why wasn\u2019t she doing it. What they hadn\u2019t realised but I could see was that it was one of the newer clocks that was wound with a key on the back, not the top and that she and others had already done it. \n

\nA classic case of people thinking they know better than the expert.  With me being a junior operator I didn\u2019t dare point out to these esteemed gentlemen that it was they who had it wrong, as I deemed they wouldn\u2019t have taken kindly to being corrected by someone like me, so I kept my counsel but have sometimes wished I\u2019d had the courage to speak what I knew to be right.\n

\nHas anyone else been in such a position?\n

 <\/h3>

David Beer<\/strong><\/h3>\nRobert Robinson used to refer to Joan as The Duchess of Hammersmith as she had a flat the other side of Shepherd’s Bush Green.\n

 <\/h3>

Bill Jenkins<\/strong><\/h3>\nThis was Joan’s obit in the Guardian –\nhttps:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media\/2004\/mar\/12\/broadcasting.guardianobituaries<\/a><\/span><\/font><\/a>\n

 <\/h3>

Dave Plowman<\/strong><\/h3>\nAnd what was the name of that block of flats? Had a radio shop on the ground floor where you could get valves tested.\n

\nWas it \u201cThe Grampians\u201d?\n

 <\/h3>

Bill Jenkins<\/strong><\/h3>\nGranville Mansions?\n

 <\/h3>

Dave Mundy<\/strong><\/h3>\nDefinitely, \u201cThe Grampians\u201d. I bought my TMK500 meter in the radio spares shop in the front of the block, plus many Service sheets for TV and Radios.\n

 <\/h3>

Alan Taylor<\/strong><\/h3>\nThat was the building that also housed Babano books.\n

\nTogether with Haynes of Sparkford and their car repair handbooks, they were the publishers who kept many of us going in our youth … disregarding \u201cPenthouse\u201d of course.\n

\nJohn Sullivan (\u201cOnly Fools and Horses\u201d) once told me that inside the cover, the Haynes manuals always stated something like Paris, New York, London and Sparkford. He lifted the gag and turned it into New York, Paris, Peckham …. but mostly Peckham.\n

 <\/h3>

Dave Plowman<\/strong><\/h3>\nAh – is that were it came from?\n

\nI have a T shirt with ‘The Bill’ on tour. Peckham, Mitcham, Camberwell, etc.\nMade by one of the rigger\/driver\/grips, Johnny Ridge. Happy days.\n

 <\/h3>

Nick Ware <\/strong><\/h3>\nIt\u2019s definitely \u201cThe Grampians\u201d – you can street-view it on Google Earth. The last time I saw Mother was about twenty years ago, when we took our girls to see the pantomime at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. She was working as a volunteer usherette, showing people to their seats. As soon as she saw me she set about finding us better seats, which she did, bless her. \n

 <\/h3>

Geoff Fletcher<\/strong><\/h3>\nPete Ware was  a fighter pilot in WW2 and always had a special rapport with Joan.  He once told me that they had worked out that she was one of the plotters in her WAAF days who vectored his squadron (72) onto the enemy formations. \n

\nI witnessed a very funny episode of her putting an idiot uppity director in her place on \u201cPanorama\u201d once in an incident involving Robin Day, but that’s another story. \n



\n————–\n



\n

Joan Marsden \nStage and television studio manager\nBorn 20th May 1919; died 3rd March  2004\n



\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

 <\/h3>\n \n

 <\/h3>\n

 <\/h1>\n

\"ianfootersmall\"<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all of course recognised \u2018Mother\u2019[in the photo from David Taylor of the crew of \u201cOur World\u201d]. Not the best picture of Mother of course and now, quite coincidentally, I have come across a rather better image dated 30th Oct … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11363","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"coauthors":[],"author_meta":{"author_link":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/author\/alec\/","display_name":"Alec Bray"},"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 6 years ago","modified":"Updated 6 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on November 19, 2020","modified":"Updated on November 20, 2020"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on November 19, 2020 10:07 am","modified":"Updated on November 20, 2020 4:30 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","featured_img":false,"series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11363"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11605,"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11363\/revisions\/11605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}