The Mausoleum Club Forum

She was a good personal friend back in the late 70s - she helped me through a rocky period in my life, but we lost touch when we both found new partners. She did a lot of theatre work and I don't think she helped her career by moving to France for a period early on. I often thought that (with a coup...

And we mustn't forget that Cyril was the second Fletcher to occupy that seat, the original being Ronald (no relation) Fletcher. And for a bit of real trivia, when they made a series of Junior That's Life, the reader was a very young Shaun Ley - now presenter of The World This Weekend (R4) and occasi...

I have no idea of what arrangements News has with the Archive, but I suspect that sourcing a broadcast-quality clip would probably have cost money, and it wasn't considered worthwhile. They have immediate access to Freeview quality of any BBC broadcast over the last 7 years or so - just the time it...

No further details at the moment. Posted on FB by his daughter-in-law.

I was a boom operator on the series and I'm sure the production date of 1979 is correct, but I also think that they were transmitted soon afterwards. Maybe 1981 was a repeat? I seem to remember that the term "bittersweet" was applied to the series. I don't remember much about it except that a friend...

Same producer (Yvonne Littlewood) as Val Doonican.

"I have no P's" is still in use in my household.

Far more importantly, so has the freelance payments portal.

But these were the days before focus groups and commissioning editors and committees. I find the story totally believable in the context of how things were then. Someone who worked in the presentation department (not Bernie) was having his home television repaired. This was in the days before daytim...

From retired cameraman Roger Bunce (with permission) Here’s hoping I’ve remembered things aright but . . . 1979 or 80, on a late-night chat show called “Friday Night, Saturday Morning”, from the Greenwood Theatre, there was a guest spot, introducing a new American stand-up comedian. His name was som...

drmih wrote:I have to agree with Beaker that Monks was the best by a long shot and I thought it was funny enough in a pilot format to be considered for a series.

But for those of us old enough to remember (or work on!!) Oh Brother! starring Derek Nimmo, it was hardly original.

The French ALWAYS dub their TV shows, and having seen several while on holiday, I've been impressed at how well the voices match the original actors. However, I think it's a different matter with DVDs where, often, subtitles are the only option. That's why many young French people speak English with...

I've no idea what the situation is these days, but when Equity had more of a hold on things it as certainly the case that they liked overseas sales (because it generated extra income for their members) but didn't like domestic repeats because it was seen to reduce employment - every repeat was one l...

Perhaps the real problem here is that the film (and it wasn't really a tv programme) was made in a style that didn't suit the type of people likely to watch it.

The thing is, there are quite a few seasoned pros behind the scenes there. The Launch editor ran BBC London's output for several years. There are journalists from both BBC and ITN. I'm not in London, so haven't seen much of the output so won't comment on that. I'm popping in for a looksee tomorrow -...

I once worked on a live drama on BBC 2 from Studio D LG. It started with a man watching TV in his sitting room. It was fed with BBC1 (live). The continuity announcer said words to the effect of "And just started on BBC2, Thirty Minute Theatre, but now here on BBC1 The news." At which point he got up...

I always found her a very pleasant girl. Did she take the name Samantha after David Jacobs' theme song?

Some years ago a friend who was involved in making radio commercials told me that in certain circumstances they added an item called CAF to the bill.
Client Assistance Fee - when the client insisted on "helping" with the production.

"Top of the Pops" is a terrible title if you actually think about what it means - I mean, who has referred to the charts as "the pops" in anything other than a deliberately affected manner since the late 60s? - but otherwise, it works perfectly. It's almost like a musical riff in its own right. But...

I don't suppose 'Kill the Dead Donkey' would have worked? Flog,maybe... It would need to be something linked to journalist slang, so the only other thing would have been "Spike...", but that just doesn't work as nicely as "Drop..." Yes, it's drop as in 'drop a story'. One of the alternative titles ...

Courtesy of Martin Deane, a former colleague

https://soundcloud.com/huxby/geoffrey-wheeler/s-omNRr

Didn't watch Hootenanny, but generally the BBC's 5.1 output is spot on, however, IIRC this is the first one that's not come from TVC - I noticed some strange things with the 5.1 of SCD, maybe other places are not run as well? I haven't heard either in 5.1 but I've thought that in stereo some of the...

We've really got off the original topic haven't we - but anyway, to clarify, the Swap Shop et al. phone-in equipment didn't have any instruments in CAR - but there were other lines there that got put on air. Before the type of TBU we had in the gallery at MHS we did have standard telephones which we...

When I was in TVC a few months back there were still some wall mounted dial telephones at the back of CCA with the label 'leave on divert - this phone is used for programmes'. I assume they were for the phone-ins, though the numbers on them didn't look familiar I doubt it - As I recall (but I am ta...

Just two words: Wooden Socks.

I've just spent half an hour typing a detailed description of how the system worked only for Safari to crash on me when I tried to put an accent on the word Noel. Yes, there was an "lines busy" message that the lines were switched to when there was no programme. In the Swap Shop (et al.) case, the p...

Sorry to be off topic, but it's just occured to me how technically innovative Bob's shows were in the 80s and 90s. I wonder if he personally drove some of the new ideas that seemed to debut with his programmes, including insisting on certain production techniques he'd devised or that he'd seen else...

The other question is Why didn't network hold on the ident rather than cut to the clock? I don't think that bit is automated (yet).

I can only comment on one of your points - a lot of the automation is set up as macros - a sequence of shots, moves, stings,captions etc. - And once a macro starts you can't stop it. Someone who actually works in those studios now (rather than observer like me) might be able to answer. The clock puz...