{"id":256,"date":"2010-09-19T15:12:19","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T14:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/?p=256"},"modified":"2024-02-24T16:29:26","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T16:29:26","slug":"clive-doig-stories-from-a-life-in-tv","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/tech-ops.co.uk\/next\/clive-doig-stories-from-a-life-in-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Clive Doig – stories from a life in tv"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was born on 11th<\/sup> August 1940 during an air raid. I came into the world in Nelson Hospital, Merton, and my mother used to tell me that my entry into the world replaced someone across the road who had just left it, under one of Hitler\u2019s bombs. This actually happened, my mother had to comfort the nurse who had been left in charge of her labour, while others were in the hospital shelters during the air-raid and a bomb exploded across the street just as I was welcomed into the world.<\/p>\n

I was brought up on breast milk and milk stout, dried egg and war rations and naturally survived the war. Living in Croydon, we got pasted with everything, Jerry going for the airport, railway, trunk roads and numerous factories. Blitz, firebombs, doodlebugs, V-2s the lot. \u201cIf you hear the put-put of the doodlebug stop you\u2019re OK. The one you don\u2019t hear will get you\u201d.<\/p>\n

Even the first jet dog-fights we used to go out and view over Caterham hills near the end of the war, Messerschmidt Me262s versus Gloster Meteors, which we also once saw trying to intercept V-1s coming in.<\/p>\n

I was called the \u2018Little flag boy\u2019 as, if I climbed up the lime tree at the bottom of the \"\"<\/a>garden, I could see the top of a factory next to East Croydon station, which used to fly a red flag before the air-raid sirens went off. I could therefore run in to the kitchen and pre-empt the sirens and get everyone into the Morrison shelter under the kitchen table practically before the sirens fearful wail started up.<\/p>\n

All these years later whenever I have heard a siren which dies down and starts up again it fills me with the terror and dread which was instilled in me or passed on to me by my parents and elder siblings through their own fears. (A town test fire alarm in Skaelskor, Denmark used to do it for one minute every Saturday morning and sent shivers up my spine)<\/p>\n

I actually loved the war and it was just exciting, bombs, planes, ships, guns, fires, bombsites, ruins, heroes, real baddies, drama \u2013 a little boy\u2019s dream of adventure and sensation, not at all frightening.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately more often than not I would seem to be crying \u2018wolf\u2019 as the little flag boy, because changing the green to red flag only indicated enemy bombers crossing the channel and not necessarily heading for London or Croydon. Too many times did I warn of an impending air-raid and there wasn\u2019t one.<\/p>\n

9 houses got flattened in our road alone by direct hits, and a family we knew well all got killed when a bomb missed their house but directly hit their Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden in which they were ensconced. Their Alsatian dog, who had not accompanied them and was in the house, was the only one to survive.<\/p>\n

I can still vividly remember the order we got into and the positions in which the whole family slept under the dining room table, in the enmeshed Morrison shelter.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the blitz, before we got a Morrison I was normally parked with my elder sister under the grand piano during a raid.<\/p>\n

Schooled in Croydon, when I left in 1958 after A levels, I wanted to go into the Fleet Air Arm, as I had missed national service by a whisker and was jealous of some of my older chums going into the military, especially the Navy and Air Force. But I failed on eye-sight and probably bravery. Two other school mates who went in to The Fleet Air Arm, immediately after school, both copped it within one year, and that was in peacetime!<\/p>\n

Mother had died when I was 15 and I rebelled a little.<\/p>\n

Bill Haley and the Comets at the Davis Theatre Croydon was a highlight, as was Elvis and I spent much non-academic time performing in school plays and operettas, and especially playing rugby and tennis and playing in The Sandrock Skiffle Group.<\/p>\n

Thrown out of the Science B Sixth form while studying Zoology, Botany, Chemistry and Physics for A level, I took Maths, Further Maths and Physics instead, in two terms. What a genius!!<\/p>\n

I attempted to get a placement at English Electric, but I think my new shiny patterned drainpipe trousers were too much for them.<\/p>\n

Cousin of mine, Lee Doig, was a film editor (edited all \u201cThe Prisoner\u201ds and even wrote one episode I believe). His actual name was Lionel and because he was so much older than me he used to sign his name on cards \u201cfrom Uncle Lionel and Auntie Betty\u201d, which I took objection to. Anyway Lee suggested I try the BBC as they were just advertising for engineering trainees with good qualifications in maths and physics.<\/p>\n

Interview in The Langham. Intelligence test first, which was a doddle, as my father had been setting the Moray Intelligence tests used in the 11-plus for years, and always used me as a guinea pig. But the interview was a disaster. I had applied for the wrong stream, a JPTA rather than a JPTO, and my engineering and technical qualifications were not up to scratch. I was told so, as well. Also one of the serried ranks of serious be-suited men who faced me, I think there were ten of them, asked me about my scouting days in the Trossachs, which I had lied about, and I was unable to positively say whether I had been plagued by midges or not. Red-faced as I thought I had been found out by a chief scout or even the government, the interview ended and I left the oak-panelled interview room. Unfortunately as I opened the door, to leave in great haste, I got one of my slip-on black shoes caught under the umbrella\/coat stand as I backed into it. I left the room without one shoe.<\/p>\n

Such was my eagerness to get out of that hell hole of embarrassment that I actually shut the door with my shoe still inside the room. Braving the consequences I gingerly knocked and opened the door again, mouthed feebly \u2018my shoe!\u2019 picked it up from where it was lodged under the drip tray and exited to a gale of laughter.<\/p>\n

I was working for a brief while on a building site as a tea-boy, where for some reason I was called Gladys, and during that time got the notification from the BBC that I had been accepted, not as a JPTA but as a JPTO, an operator. Because of my theatrical and artistic\/thespian side they had recognised my creative side and added me to the list of other eighteen year old JPTO\u2019s who had already been accepted as fodder for the great Public Broadcasting Service machine.<\/p>\n

I am afraid that all my records and photographs and memorabilia of my early years were lost in a fire in 1984, including that first acceptance letter of 1958, so I have never managed to produce any piece of that early collection of officialese ephemera held so dear from the BBC. No Photos, memos, payslips, duty sheets, DOIL slips, script top pages, instruction manuals…all gone!<\/p>\n

On starting the probationary period, (I wonder how many probationary trainees did not make it past the first year) I received 30 guineas a month, less \u00a33 for the first 10 months as I had been advanced \u00a330. It seems strange that the printer ink in my computer costs now more than a month\u2019s salary then.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In 2008 I attended a reunion of JPTO\u2019s, celebrating our 50 years, to the day, of joining the BBC\u2019s No.1 Junior Probationary Technical Operators and Assistants Induction Course, organised by Clifford White down in Bristol. There were about 20 of us gathered from a possible intake total of 56. The BBC nationally, locally and internally showed absolutely no interest in this pioneering group of old men gathering. Even Ariel and Prospero were indifferent to our reunion, and it got no mention, yet…..<\/p>\n

We were the first 18 year olds to be employed as engineers and operators \u2018en masse\u2019, all of us coming straight out of school or thereabouts. Before 1958 most employees in engineering and technical operations had done their national service and were predominantly RAF chaps and much older. We discovered that many of that first 18 year old intake of 1958, the JPTAs and Os had stayed on in the BBC for their whole career. We were the first JPTAs and Os and are still proud of it.<\/p>\n

Evesham JPTO\/A course 1 was a hoot. Apart from learning about microphone responses and experiences in the dead room, the artistry of lighting vases of dead flowers with pups, blondes and redheads, (or was it the other way round? But I have been reliably informed by a technical associate that other than the female form, blondes and redheads were not ), having syncs and flying spot mechau described and image orthicons dissected, cycling races round the grounds, scrumping and scrumpy, working as projectionists in the local cinema, buying second hand motorbikes at the Droitwich auctions, visiting the Nurses quarters in Worcester, and playing \u2018up and down the hill\u2019 games, we also bought a boat so we could sail to the Chequers at Fladbury in style. Fifteen drunk students in a small skiff was too much on the way back and we sank in the Avon right in the middle of the river at the bottom of the field opposite Wood Norton.<\/p>\n

Later, maybe two or three years later, I retrieved the mast and sail which then rotted away in my brother-in-law\u2019s garage for decades. Anyone remember Brenda Knees, worked in Mr Adam\u2019s office in Administration?<\/p>\n

Just like John Summers, 12 years previously, I wished to go on cameras but was put on booms or rather cable bashing and steering boom platforms.<\/p>\n

Only claim to fame in those earliest days was a brief glimpse of me on set of \u201cMother Courage\u201d leaning against a boom platform, picking my nose, in the documentary \u201cThis is the BBC\u201d<\/p>\n

Was it Tony Youngman who ran the induction course?<\/p>\n

I believe I was first assigned to Crew 2. Peter Friese-Greene senior cameraman. I think that Brecht\u2019s \u201cMother Courage\u201d in Riverside 1 was my initial studio experience (although I cannot find reference to this production in IMDb) . I know that I also worked in Riverside 1 with Peter on \u201cQuatermass and the Pit\u201d, because we used to get the same Greenline 715 home. That final popular science fiction series of Quatermass, as well as Mother Courage, was directed by the great Rudolf Cartier, who I later vision-mixed for consistently.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>\"\"<\/a>At the end of the Quatermass series in Riverside Studios, Peter had snaffled a few of the jabolite false bricks used in the ruins off the set, and on our way home in the greenline bus, he lobbed one of them at the bus conductor coming down the aisle to get our money. This could have meant the great man being ejected from the bus, as the conductor reacted with fearful agility and a scream to avoid the missile, which looked real enough, but it simply bounced off his cap, making everyone laugh. Peter proudly let all our fellow travellers feel the realistic looking lightweight bricks and then explained all about the programme, his role and TV in general. Those bricks on that bus must have been the talking point that would set off all those on the London Transport coach future knowledge of how a TV programme was made. The whole journey resulted in a wild frenzy of hilarity. Every time anybody got on the bus they were greeted by a shower of bricks thrown at them. My goodness think of that in today\u2019s paranoid terrorist era!<\/p>\n

Why was the great Peter Friese-Greene, a cameraman of exceptional talent from the very first days in Ally Pally and grandson of an even more famous William Friese-Greene, the British portrait photographer and prolific inventor, most famous for his invention of the kinematograph, Why, after Peter became deaf in one ear, and taken off London TV crews, was he re-assigned to the audio unit in Bristol? To see out his days with the BBC.<\/p>\n

I feel the same nostalgic awe over the names of others, who were our greatest TV cameramen such as Ted Langley, Mark Lewis, Michael Bond, Bert Postlethwaite, Frank Wilkins and Jim Atkinson. What has been the real recognition of their dedicated talents and \u2018creative\u2019 artistry?<\/p>\n

I used to love working with Jim, not on the crew with me as a cameraman or dolly op, but as a vision-mixer. The precursor of the single camera technique now solely employed in modern TV plays, EXCEPT the majority of the play would be on one continuous developing shot on his<\/span> camera on a ped, albeit in a multiple camera \u2018live\u2019 set up. No editing!<\/p>\n

Jim\u2019s mastery and direction , for, as we all know, he often directed the actors more on the studio floor than the director did from upstairs, was unique.<\/p>\n

I always v-m\u2019d for the director Donald McWhinney, especially the Giles Cooper plays, and <\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\nthey would practically always be single camera technique direction, with Jim Atkinson as his master cameraman. What was that movement or style of TV shooting called, expostulated by Mervyn Pinfield and carried out by the likes of Donald McWhinnie and other directors in the mid 60s? I can\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n

In \u201cUnman Wittering and Zigo\u201d with young Hywell Bennett and Denis Waterman, Donald had six main shots on the one camera (operated by Jim) in total in the whole of the 90 minute play. What an easy life you\u2019d think I had as a vision-mixer, except that at three points in the play there are roll calls of every boy in the class, and each got a close up, so for three or four minutes each time, there were about 120 shots and as many cuts. That woke me up! When it came to the actual recording, which was a one off recording on to telerecording after two days of studio rehearsal, there were no recording breaks, Donald, in the director\u2019s chair, FELL ASLEEP, even through the manic fast cutting sequence and did not apparently wake up until after the final roller credits had gone through and we had faded out and broken recording.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did it go?\u201d he asked and finished his half drunk tumbler of gin and tonic.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrilliant\u201d we all replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew it would\u201d he smiled enigmatically, having said very little throughout rehearsals, \u201cI have Jim as my eyes. Well done everyone. The bar calls. All come up for a drink or three!\u201d<\/p>\n

Although I know many tales about my supposed exploits as a vision-mixer have become folk-lore, many of them are apocryphal. I will, later on, tell the truth.<\/p>\n

However. Whatever I have achieved in a long career in television, I still consider myself first and foremost an \u2018operator\u2019 and more especially a Tech Ops man, even though I became a vision-mixer in 1961 and V-Ms and I left camera crews for Studio Management in 1963\/4.<\/p>\n

THE DAY I CAUGHT FIRE<\/p>\n

But one incident in my whole early life at the BBC, while I was still on camera crews, I have dined out on, on many occasions. During my probationary period, after a brief spell on Crew 2 I went to Crew 4 as a \u2018D minus\u2019 graded dolly op 3 or was it 4 or just cable-basher.<\/p>\n

I do get a little mixed up with who was who in those days and what camera crew I was actually on, as John Henshall knows.<\/p>\n

Was Crew 4 Frank Wilkins, Stan Appel, Bert Postlethwaite (senior cam) What crew was I on with Dave Hodge, Alan Kerridge and John Davies. Was I with Bob Cole, Mike Rix and Geoff Feld and Dave Mutton, the other dolly ops, then, I cannot remember.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I was due for a re-assessment of my probationary period, must have been after two years I suppose, to see whether I was suitable material to become \u201cestablished\u201d permanent staff. Or it may have been later when I was possibly up for promotion to the dizzy heights of Grade D.<\/p>\n

Bill Bayliff had taken over from Sammy Sampson as HTO Tel S, while Potts was AHTO Tel.S (Assistant Head of Technical Operations Television Service) and my interview was with him in his new office in the TV Centre. Must have been end of summer 1960 then, and I was on a stay of execution for bad behaviour! No chance of an upgrade for one so mischievous.<\/p>\n

I often cycled in to Shepherd\u2019s Bush and White City from Wimbledon. It was August and very very hot but this time I was wearing a nice \u2018best occasion\u2019 woollen charcoal suit and bri-nylon white shirt with smart collar and tie. Unusually for me, but do remember this was 1960 and even dolly-operators had to wear suits in the TV Theatre and jeans were disallowed, I was pretty smartly turned out, and had bought new bicycle clips instead of tucking my trouser turnups into my socks.<\/p>\n

Interview at 2.00pm. I usually managed to smoke two cigarettes on the journey, one at Roehampton and one at Hammersmith Palais. As I arrived at Shepherd\u2019s Bush Green traffic lights along the Fulham Palace Road, I first noticed that my right breast felt particularly hot and looking down observed that my jacket was on fire, with flames issuing out of the top pocket. Falling off my bike and ripping the flaming jacket off I stamped on it to extinguish the flames, in so doing holding up quite a bit of traffic until I had pulled bike and smouldering material to the kerbside.<\/p>\n

I later worked out the cause. When one smoked and rode a bike, one held the cigarette in one\u2019s mouth and the outside would remain intact smouldering and blackened while the tobacco burned off and blew away. Then a whole length of outer cigarette paper would fall off. This had obviously occurred and the smouldering cigarette paper had dropped into my top pocket, where there were a number of old bus tickets and other bits of essential ephemera, and ignited the whole lot from the inside up. Although it was a hot day I couldn\u2019t believe it was that hot under my armpit, and by the time I saw the flames and had fallen off my bike, the fire had done quite a bit of damage to me and my clothing.<\/p>\n

However having extinguished my jacket I put it on again, re-mounted my bike and rode down Wood Lane.<\/p>\n

I arrived at Potts\u2019 office looking a little worse for wear. He was most concerned and asked whether I had been to see the sister, or wanted to go, if I was injured in any way. I said I was all right, and he kindly suggested I shed myself of my burnt suit jacket and hung it on a hook on the wall of his nice new office.<\/p>\n

I must have looked a bit of a sight. My bri-nylon shirt had melted all down the left hand side at the front and under my left arm, leaving my chest bare on that side. My red braces were blackened. I had singed the few meagre hairs of my chest and my left nipple felt as if it had been excised with a blow-lamp.<\/p>\n

Sitting like that I then had to listen to Pottinger read the riot act to me about my bad behaviour. This was mostly due to a condemning letter in the form of my annual report by, none other than John Summers\u2019 elder brother, George. George was the TOM on my crew and had observed how untoward I was on a number of occasions and noted down a list of wrong doings which were now read to me. George\u2019s letter detailed how I had taught make-up girls to walk along camera cables without falling off, how I had strapped a tubular chair to the back of a motorised Vinten and steered it with my feet, how I had done something unspeakable with a C-spanner, how I had trapped another member of the crew between the double doors going from Studio G into the prop store, the old Studio F at Lime Grove, for the whole of a thirty-minute live programme. How I had unscrewed Pat Lett\u2019s beer handle focus-pull just before a live \u201cWednesday Magazine\u201d and it had come off in his hand as he tracked in to David Jacobs, and he was heard to say over the air \u201cI can\u2019t. It\u2019s come off in my hand!\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily in the middle of this tirade and list of misdemeanour\u2019s being read out to me, Pott\u2019s intercom buzzed and he excused the interruption of my condemnation with a little wave of apology and answered. It was Pauline, his secretary, asking whether he, \u2018Mr Pottinger\u2019 and \u2018Doig\u2019 (untitled) wanted a cup of tea. (NB: Christian names were not ever used in formal meetings and boards and schedules until many years later)<\/p>\n

He smiled stiffly at me and I nodded and with the intercom switched off again he picked up where he had left off, that really my behaviour was not what was to be expected of a probationary tech op or even a dolly op 3\/4\/5.<\/p>\n

Within a few minutes there was a knock on the intercommunicating door between Potts\u2019 office and Pauline\u2019s and in came the girl I had been dating for a couple of times recently, until her policeman father took a dislike to me, with a tray and two cups of tea. I should point out and many of you will recognise this hierarchical status demarcation, Mr Pottinger\u2019s tea was in a standard BBC pale green china cup firmly located on a pale green china saucer, while my \u2018cup\u2019 of tea was in a waxed paper beaker wobbling and slopping about on the tray, both, may I add, emblazoned with the BBC logo. But, as she placed the tray on his desk, to everyone\u2019s amazement, my jacket, hung up limp, unobtrusive and lifeless on the wall peg, suddenly came to life and burst into flame again, a flame that immediately scorched and burnt the newly wallpapered executive wall in the newly furbished AHTO\u2019s Office, and billowed ominous back smoke up to the ceiling. With a move of such alacrity, of which many fire officers would have been proud, I leapt up grabbed my beaker of tea off the tray, ran over to the wall and threw the contents over the offending jacket, dousing the flames and reducing the conflagration to a mere blackened softly smoking, burnt-wool smelling, warm wet mass. The reason for this renewed blaze had obviously been the draught caused by Pauline opening the door.<\/p>\n

It was all highly dramatic, and although Pauline had not quite got over the shock of seeing me in a half melted bri-nylon shirt with a bare singed nipple, she too was quick to react and picked up Pott\u2019s official BBC cup off its saucer, ready for more fire fighting duties.<\/p>\n

When I announced that the conflagration had abated and was out, she relinquished hold of her makeshift extinguisher and handed it back to Potts and exited.<\/p>\n

The Head of Tech Ops was worried enough about having to castigate me without having to add that I had nearly burnt down his office and possibly the whole of the newly opened TV Centre, and had no alternative to bring the interview to a close, and advised me to take my jacket away and go and see the sister, and what is more telling, take the rest of the day off!!<\/p>\n

Later I did get my upgrade to D and Potts was always friendly with me whenever he saw me, sympathetically so I felt, although I never had another chance to date Pauline.<\/p>\n

Back on the crew, it was Jim Atkinson, so was that Crew 2? Or someone said, \u201cThat\u2019s what comes of wearing a smoking jacket!\u201d, and another said, \u201cYouI should have just worn a blazer!\u201d Although my initial description of my suit being coloured charcoal seemed apt enough.<\/p>\n

They were all such wags and I can well remember, in those halcyon days of television, everyone having such good fun. We were all so proud of working on all the varied and wonderful new and seminal programmes. Those in the 60s were the most exciting, rewarding and ground breaking days of TV, inevitably led, both technically and artististically by the Beeb. Here I am eulogising about the BBC, whereas in point of fact I was an agent provocateur and union representative, hell bent on bringing down the old country-club management and the proliferation of middle management and expansion of desk-bound non operative jobs and services for the untalented.<\/p>\n

The BBC was a stuffy, bureaucratic, authoritarian organisation with old-fashioned managerial ideas, mainly due to its heritage of RAF and senior service men.<\/p>\n

Later after I had done stints as an AFM and FM with Studio Management and then PA in Light Entertainment, one great RAF Commander, Head of Light Entertainment , the redoubtable Tom Sloan, interviewed me at the end of my attachment.<\/p>\n

Not only did I sink from view when he offered me a low armchair in front of his desk, so that I had to perch on the edge to be able to see his glaring blue eyes and twiryl moustache, but he never once actually looked at me, and was far more interested in viewing the statue of Helios which was apparently relieving itself into the bowl as it was pouring with rain. Basically he stared out of the window as he told me off. Tom Sloan alikened Light Entertainment department to the Army. There were commissioned officers, the directors, producers, head of genres and naturally himself, then there were the NCOs working in direct communication with officers and finally the ranks…all the rest in the studio. He wanted his PAs ( at that time a PA was an Floor Manager assigned solely to LE or Drama \u2013 later to be known as APs) to be like Regimental Sergeant Majors, their function to keep control of the troops in the studio. I, Doig, he still adhered to the surname principle, was certainly not an RSM. What he did not want was some jump up intellectual buggers aspiring to be officers doing the job of running the studio floor. What this had to do with LE programmes I had no idea, and had I been so awful at discipline working on the first series of Dad\u2019s Army with David Croft, the very first special with Barry Humphries (Edna Everidge and pink gladdies) with Dennis Main Wilson, or The Dusty Springfield spectacular with ….I suppose I had!!!<\/p>\n

Ray Butt got the job, I didn\u2019t. As most of us know, at one time Ray was a very good RSM, only much later did he gradual turn into officer material.<\/p>\n

But despite Tom Sloan\u2019s edicts thank God there were bright young things coming through who took the artistic and creative risks that made the BBC so popular and necessary.<\/p>\n

Still to come at another time:<\/p>\n