Paul taking a break from training

The policeman looked at me, then at the ID card, and at me again. He turned the card over, my heart stopped, had the plan had failed?

We had been stopped at one of the numerous checkpoints dotted throughout Kyrgyzstan. I was told to get out and stand by the side of the road. I don’t think the policeman or his team had even seen a westerner, and what they saw did not impress them. It was all the fault of the ID card, I told myself.

This began weeks before when my joining instructions for my latest journey to Kyrgyzstan said that under no circumstances must I give my passport to the police at a checkpoint. What would happen was never mentioned but I could guess, and it wasn’t good. Problem was, I was in the UK and British people at this time would, under no circumstances except the idea of an ID Card.

I tried everything to get identification other than my passport but I couldn’t find anything that required my photo. Then, one day, I read a story in my local paper. Tullie House, the local museum, was introducing a one-year membership and its one stipulation was a passport photo was required for the pass to be issued. Looking back, this wasn’t one of my best ideas, but I was desperate. So, undaunted I went to a local photo-booth (no camera phones back then) and had two photos taken then turned up for my membership. This, I thought could be the answer.

The lady who made the cards looked at me very strangely when I insisted that my full name appear and “could I please have British Citizen printed underneath my name?” Thankfully, she smiled and added the extra detail. Ok, I thought, it did say Tullie House on the front but their logo looked pretty impressive and anyway I had no other choice. I convinced myself it would probably never be required.

So, I merrily set off half-way around the world with a one-year pass to a museum as my ID.

All went well, until that fateful day I was stopped, and found myself looking at a group of suspicious and very unfriendly policemen.

I tried to look confident and innocent as, along with my colleague’s, we handed over our IDs.

The policeman looked at my travelling companion’s with barely a glance. Well to be fair they were actually ID cards. Then he came to mine. I could see him look, then carefully examining the impressive museum logo, the photo and, I hoped the words “British Citizen.”

It was when he turned it over I really started to sweat. Could he read English? Seconds passed. He looked at the card, then at me, then at the card again. What was going through his mind? I was starting to look shifty and nervous. What had possessed me to think this was a good plan?

Then, suddenly, he handed it back and jerked his thumb to the car. We were free to go!

Why was I so nervous? Because, while the fake ID card from the front looked pretty good, on the back was written only one sentence:

“After your visit to our lovely museum, why not treat yourself to a nice cup of tea in our garden room.”

Paul takes his crew to the top of a mountain with early video equipment

Early filming outdoors was a constant challenge. First and foremost was the kit. The camera was heavy and came with all sorts of backup. Film stock, camera darkroom bag (for changing film), and carry cases. All necessary because any carelessness could lead to a “hair in the gate.” The description was apt for that hair which got stuck in the aperture would leave (as can be seen in old footage) a tell-tale flickering line on all of that particular roll of film. Together, with sound and lighting, this was not an easy task to take into the countryside, either here in the UK or abroad.

My first disaster was when I was determined not to stop filming at the top of a Lake district mountain. I had bribed a local hill farmer to drive me and the crew in his tractor and trailer. Looking back, it probably was not the best plan but I was determined. The crew entered into the spirit and we enjoyed sandwiches and beer as we toiled up the mountain in the trailer. Unfortunately, the farmer had a tilting window from his cab hanging over the trailer and as I stood up it knocked me out. The crew filmed everything without me as I sat holding a pad over the wound.

Tracking shots were difficult. These required following a subject as they moved along. No drones or specialist camera mounts back then. On another shoot, an inaugural 15 mile run we were sent to cover definitely needed tracking shots. As usual cash changed hands and I found a local man with a pick-up truck who would do the necessary. It would have been fine if the sound man “Cliffie” had not decided to lean out of the back to put his microphone low for, as he put it, “foot sounds.” As he leaned out, he just rolled out of the truck and into the runners, no injuries except to pride.

My next disaster was not my fault but more serious. We were sent to cover powerboat races on Windermere in the Lake District. Now, these craft were fast and we were offered the chance to ride in one before the race. Harmless I thought, what can go wrong? What went wrong was the driver was as mad as a hatter. What we thought would be good footage became a ride from hell. Let me tell you that water, when travelling at speed, is like concrete. As we careered down the lake another boat’s wake crossed our path, and our boat was lifted and slammed down back on the water, hard. We were lifted several feet with it, and we all crashed down in one tumbled mess. The sound recordist broke the base of his spine and was off work for weeks.

And if we were at risk, it was nothing compared to the kit we used. Particularly vehicles. Forest tracks, mountain roads and muddy conditions all contributed to vehicle failures. On one occasion, as I prepared for a six-week shoot, I was determined not to return to an almighty rollocking for the condition of the vehicles. I had found, at some cost, two 4x4 SUV’s that would stand the harshest conditions. Unfortunately, those vehicles were expensive and I was told that under no circumstances could I hire them. “Get one from the company stock, it’s cheaper” I was told.

What I didn’t realise was that the car I had been allocated by the company had just been ‘earmarked’ for a senior manager to purchase for his wife. This was totally in order when the company had finished with them, but I was warned that it should be returned in “showroom condition”.

Six weeks later, after some of the worst weather for a decade and definitely the worst forest tracks I had seen ever driven over, we returned.

There I was again. I had done the impossible and bent the underside of the car. I wasn’t totally sure what this meant but the senior manager’s wife didn’t get her new car and next time I got my SUV’S.*

This marks the end of the Hopeful Traveller. When I began my broadcasting career, I could never have dreamt that I could write a story and it was instantly available to 62 countries, wow! I have always felt that its best to live in the present and only look into the past if something can be learnt. I still believe that. Thank you for reading my adventures and good luck to you all in the future.

David Bean “The Original Hopeful Traveller.”

It had been a rough few weeks. Our country series “The Hopeful Traveller” was doing very well, both locally and nationally, the pressure was on to make more episodes.

This was why me; David and the crew were filming in April. Not the best month for weather. To be fair, we had been lucky so far, and David could be relied upon to produce the goods.

While in the middle of a field, miles from anywhere, David was talking to the camera about some fact or other when, over the rise, stampeded several hundred sheep. They made straight for David and penned him in, looking at him with curiosity. Without a second’s pause, David turned to the sheep stretched out his arms and said, “You may wonder why I have gathered you all together.” A great piece of TV and the sign of a true performer.

David had many skills, but he was, at heart, an East End London boy never happier than with a pint of beer in his hand. As can be seen by the photo, he was not the snappiest dresser. With that knowledge, I really don’t know why I thought it a good idea for him to visit a five-star luxury spa resort in the borders of Scotland to sample some of their treatments.

The idea was straightforward. He would have a massage, perhaps a facial, and talk to the manager. To the interview he said yes, but to the massage it was NO, (I didn’t even mention the facial!) Whatever I said he refused, point blank, and had that look I knew so well. This was not going happen!

He did however agree to enter the jacuzzi. So, we set up and David ( in borrowed swimwear ) duly entered the bubbling water.

“Turn over” I said, a common phrase to reset, then “Action” and… “Stop!”.

“David, what are you doing?” “Washing mate” he said. For, as the camera turned over up went David’s arm and he vigorously began to rub his armpits. To David, any form of water had to be for washing or swimming. We had to move on…

I blame this episode on my weakness. It was April 30^th in the final week of the shoot, the crew and David were exhausted. The weather had turned foul and the troops were turning just a bit mutinous.

The cameraman approached me with another idea. He suggested that we do all the interviews that we had left today and leave tomorrow, the last day of the shoot, to do ‘pick-up’ shots to cover the interviews. This meant that the last night away would be long, involve copious drink and the final day would be leisurely scenic shots where, to be fair, the cameraman was likely to turn out some of his best work.

I was a touch concerned. Continuity would be an issue as the pick-shots would have to match the interviews but what harm could it do, so I finally agreed. The interviews went well and the night at our hotel was long and let us just say, ‘relaxed’.

The next morning however, slightly worse for wear as I opened the curtains and looked out from my window, I could not believe my eyes. It was the 1^st of May and overnight it had snowed. Not just a little bit, a lot! There was no way I could cut in all the shots with yesterday, and I had run out of filming time. I was stuffed!

As I went down to breakfast, my crew had the decency to look sheepish but it was my decision after all, I only had myself to blame. Another filming day, at a later date, would cost hundreds of pounds and I would never be forgiven by those above me.

I need not have worried however. The crew had met beforehand and agreed amongst themselves that they would return to the area at a weekend when the snow cleared and finish the shoot, without pay.

They could be difficult, they certainly liked a bit of overtime, but in the final analysis, we were a team and could it be they actually felt sorry for me? I had certainly learn’t a big lesson. Don’t put off till tomorrow what you really should do today.

Since that day, more than 30 years ago, every 1^st of May, I look out of the window first thing in the morning and not once, since that day, has it snowed!

The end of another energetic course in Yerevan, Armenia

To this day I am not sure where I was for this expedition. My notes show that it was the early nineties and I had just finished a filming course in Armenia. For the next assignment, I had flown from the UK to Frankfurt, Germany; then on to Almaty in Kazakhstan and finally to Osh in Kyrgyzstan. From there it was distinctly vague. Hours in a very old bus, mile after mile until, as night fell, we arrived at a former soviet complex that had seen better days.

The accommodation might have been basic but the students were keen for our training and we were always given the very best that could be found in the way of food and accommodation.

Alcohol was, however, another matter. In the very early days, a consultant had to be evacuated having drunk local spirits that were so unfiltered he had developed temporary blindness! So, from then on, at the start of each course, we instructors were issued with coke-sized cans coloured bright blue and containing our vodka ration. Under no circumstances if it was available, were we to drink local alcohol. Now, it probably was a myth, but we believed that it was only through the consuming of vast quantities of these cans that we warded off potential food poisoning.

On this occasion, all our food was to be provided on site as we were far from civilisation. Our cook however, was terrifying. Large and imposing, with only one dish, it seemed in her repertoire, horse. Every day this meat was hacked into submission with an axe, then boiled and served in some form, 3 times a day. As a soup for breakfast, with rice or grains for lunch and dinner. And so, it went on and on. We were told it was a speciality in Kyrgyzstan, called ‘Plov’.

It might well have been ‘Plov’ made by another chef but in the hands of our cook it certainly was not.

To me, and most of my team it was just part of the experience and the vodka took the edge off the taste (even at breakfast). But for our French cameraman Jacque it was all too much. As the days progressed he started to waste away. Looking through sunken eye sockets he said to me “It is alright for you, you are English and brought up to eat sh*t but for me, a Frenchman, it is too much.”

I could have been upset by his comments but I had been raised in Northern England in the fifties and, to be fair, he had a point. So, I suggested to the organiser that, to save our cameraman, Jacque be allowed to cook one meal. That was agreed.

So off to the market went a much cheerier Jacque to buy ingredients and we, the remainder of the team looked forward to being saved from “Plov” for one meal.

That night we all gathered in expectation to see what our Parisian friend would serve up. We had even invented a vodka-based cocktail to celebrate the occasion.

Then, from the kitchen, crash! The sound of pots being thrown and over the serving counter Jacque threw himself into the dining room and kept on going.

In the hatchway, clutching her trusty axe, was our cook. The operation had been planned to the last detail, bar one, nobody had told her Jacque was to take over her kitchen for the evening!

After some negotiation, she was placated, but it was too late. Jacque could not be persuaded to re-enter the kitchen, and the cook was too insulted to prepare dinner.

Still, the cocktails were good, thanks to our trusty supply of blue cans.

It was a series I had never in a million years intended to make. Every few years each ITV station was required to bid for a new franchise to keep operating in its area. This was a very serious enterprise as the very future of the station was at stake. As a deputy, it didn’t affect me too much. My job was to keep the day-to-day programmes running and lead teams to make more.

When my boss, the programme controller asked me to be his deputy I asked if I had to wear a suit. “No, he said you keep the programmes running day to day I will do the meetings, you are, let’s say not great in meetings” Fair point however today was different.

Called on the day to his office the controller was tense, to say the least. “The MD is short of creative input and needs some last-minute series for the bid.” “Fine when do you want them?” “Tomorrow.” “WHAT,” I said but of course, I did it, by staying up all night and to be honest, I just made things up.

I was assured that these ideas would never see the light of day. Never did I expect to have to make six programmes. Unfortunately, the body that awarded the franchise loved the idea and I had to turn the series out double quick.

All was not lost. Fiona, my good friend was a brilliant presenter and a real fisher so together we worked out a plan, briefed the crew and set off for the wilds of the borders in” short order.”

The problem was after six weeks of filming; we hadn’t caught any fish. You can fiddle most things but you do need to see a fish in a fishing series.

Our last chance however looked a certainty. On the Solway coast, between the borders of England and Scotland, there were the centuries-old Haaff netters. This was a form of fishing brought to Britain by the Vikings more than a thousand years ago which involves fishermen standing chest-deep in an ebb or flood tide.

It’s important to note that risk assessments didn’t exist and common sense (or lack of it) ruled. So, on a cold winter’s morning, Fiona, myself, Jim our expert haff netter, camera, sound, and electrician donned chest waders and carrying 20 kilos of equipment waded out into the Solway.

Now the Solway has a really strong tide and the cameraman and I thought, as I had to steady him, (and he was attached to the sound recordist by a cord) if we tied ourselves to each other, we would have an extra measure of safety.

Fiona was in her element. She and Jim were enjoying themselves and all was going well. The cameraman then said, “Let’s go a bit further away and we can track around them, it will be a lovely shot.” Excellent, even better they had just caught our first fish. Things were looking up.

We started filming and moved gently around Fiona until I realised my feet were not touching the ground. ” Scottie” (cameraman) are your feet on the ground?” No answer, when Scottie found a good shot, nothing could interrupt, however, the sound recordist (Alan) chipped in “Mine aren’t touching” Scottie said “This is an amazing shot” “Yes but are your feet on the ground? “ “Not exactly” “Not exactly they are or not exactly there not” “Not”

So, there we were, three men not in a boat, drifting out to sea! It’s amazing how quickly the Solway tide can send you out to sea. We were gathering speed at an alarming rate and things were starting to look a bit serious.

It was Jim who saved us, grabbing the rope and pulling hard! It was a bit close though, the Solway is a dangerous place and perhaps it wasn’t my best idea. Still, the shots were fantastic and the series won an award (I think). I swore that was the first and last time I did a fishing series

Being in charge of a two-hour daily radio show was like feeding a giant furnace. No sooner had you finished that day’s programme but the next loomed up, waiting to be filled. Of course, there was always music but two-thirds of the programme had to be speech, and the hunt for new and exciting items was a never-ending challenge.

We were a young, enthusiastic team, pleased to be part of the British Broadcasting Corporation and even more committed to local radio. However, we often looked to national programmes to give us new ideas for our local audience, but without the budget or staff!

“This is a winner” said Lesley our programme secretary. “I watched it last night and it’s fantastic.” Lesley was referring to a brand-new television series called “Antiques Roadshow.” Totally new, it was a simple idea; people would bring their old items which they had found at home, and an expert would tell them if it was an antique and more importantly if it was worth money. Today as I watch this show still running more than 45 years later it is a long-running classic, but then, in 1979, we had never heard of it and more importantly no one knew whether it would be a success.

“Why don’t we do the same thing here?” I said to the team at our morning ideas meeting. It could fill a whole morning and be easy to set up, a winner all around.

Firstly, we set about finding “experts.” We approached local antique dealers and museum staff with local knowledge if they would take part. I explained that I didn’t expect there would be many people to turn up and at least one of the experts would surely know something.

Then we had to find a venue. The Derby assembly rooms (now burnt down) had been opened a couple of years before. Built in the brutalist style, it was huge. At least 600 people could be accommodated in its vast hall. We worked out that we might, with clever advertising, get about 50 people and they would all but disappear in the vast space, but it was the only venue that would work for us, and more importantly, we would get it for nothing which on our budgets was a vital consideration.

Transmitting the programme was easy. The station had its own radio car, the assembly rooms had links to send the material back to base and the whole team could operate the equipment.

So, full of youthful enthusiasm we advertised like mad and within a few days our experts and the team gathered in the assembly rooms.

To be fair we hadn’t actually worked out how we would lay out the venue However the caretaker showed us where to find tables and chairs and in the huge hall we set out six tables with chairs, randomly trying to fill the space. Obviously being local radio, we didn’t have enough microphones for each expert but with two handheld mics we could manage and I would present along with our regular host to help out

The first inkling that all was not well was when one of the team grabbed my arm unable to speak. “What?” No answer. “Have you a problem?” “Outside” they croaked. “Look”

As I looked from the first-floor window my heart stopped and I felt sick with sheer terror. Below me were hundreds of people, and I mean hundreds. Not only that, each person was carrying an item. One person was standing by a desk!  No, No, No this wasn’t happening, it can’t be that popular, but it was.

We had no choice but to let them in just before 10 o’clock. Quickly the experts became isolated desert islands surrounded by a sea of people each clutching their precious objects. We had no crowd control, no line barriers and no way of sorting the people into interesting items or junk.

We fought through the sea and did find some interesting items. The experts took it in good part as did most of the people who turned up. The team were brilliant but to be honest we were so used to “flying by the seat of our pants” and to be honest we had experienced worse.

Today as I watch the modern “Antiques Roadshow” with dozens of staff and orderly, happy, quiet people sitting patiently waiting their turn I think back to those far-off days and wonder what on earth made me think my plan (or lack of it) would work. I suppose we had never seen the power of antiques in broadcasting and more importantly the deeply rooted desire in the British public to know how much their old items were worth.

Hopeful Traveller is taking a break for summer and will “hopefully” be back in the Autumn.

My introduction to the world of regional television was strange, to say the least. On arriving at the television studio, I asked for the head of news, who had invited me to be interviewed. “Not here,” said a member of the newsroom. “It’s after eleven so you will probably find him at the pub.”

One hour later I was standing at the bar of a local hostelry where the head of news was ensconced, quietly sipping a beer. Laid back and very approachable, he had also forgotten I was coming. I must have done something right, however, because barely five minutes later, with hardly a question, I found myself appointed to my dream job as a television news reporter/presenter.

In the beginning, I believed that I would be rushing around the region, unearthing stories, and dashing back breathlessly to the studio to bring them to the screen. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Life then was far more sedate.

For a start, I had a crew to think of. The television unions insisted that all news reports, however short, required a cameraman, sound recordist, and electrician. Then the company had an open account with many hotels in the area for this group to refresh themselves while “on the road.”

So, in between morning coffee and bacon rolls (the favoured crew break food) there would be an interlude when I could film a story before the crew chief (cameraman) would insist on adjourning to a nearby hotel for a three-course lunch! Two stories a day were the “norm,” one in the morning and again one in the afternoon. That was for a feature day if you were on a news story then the reporters’ problems really began.

The first problem was that the item would be on film. This would take a minimum of an hour to process back at base and the region was so big you could take two hours to reach the story. The upshot was, you couldn’t film for very long. All this paled into insignificance, however, when compared to the communications.

From the minute you left base you were on your own. No mobile phone with constant communication. I knew every phone box in the region. Yes, now long gone, the traditional British red phone box was my lifeline. On a fast-moving news story, I would travel for half an hour then find a phone box and call in for an update. Oh and of course no reporter travelled without loose change to make the call. Equally important was knowing where the nearest box was when attending a news conference. A quick call to file the first report, then a car dash to base, hand the film to the processor, and wait nervously for it to be delivered, (still damp) ready to cut with a pair of scissors. Things were however changing!

The invention of the mobile phone was among the first technological change, which together with videotape was to herald a new dawn. Well, sort of. Because, the first mobile phone came in a suitcase, was impractical and totally out of our price range. So, we had to wait until the mid-eighties for the first usable model.

Until then we had pagers. These small devices clipped to your belt and vibrated when you had a message. They were limited to a few characters so the most you would find out would be a cryptic “call in” or worse still “job cancelled, call in.”

Then one day it arrived, my very own mobile phone. With great reverence I screwed in the “rubber duck” (as the whip antenna was called) only to find out it would take 10 hours to charge before I could use it, for a maximum of thirty minutes. Then, who to call? For though we were at the cutting edge of technology there were very few masts in the region and almost no signal! Finding someone to call was an art form!

I did not care. I had a phone. It weighed nearly 800 grams, took hours to charge and I could contact almost no one in the beginning. That did not stop me and other TV reporters from keeping it in the inside pocket of our suits. This created a huge bulge that pulled the inside pocket of my jacket down to a ridiculous level (it was a mobile wasn’t it?). Not only that but the ariel often got stuck in the lining and a fierce struggle took place to extricate from the pocket.

It was, in the beginning, a bit of a status symbol. A story was told at this time about a very senior television executive who was furious when he found out his deputy had a new mobile phone, and he did not. The executive immediately ordered a better mobile phone and duly called from his limousine, his deputy, who was travelling in his company limousine. The deputy’s assistant answered and the executive asked to be put through to his deputy. The assistant calmly informed him this wasn’t possible………….as his deputy was on his other phone!

April Fool’s Day or All Fool’s day which falls on the 1^st of April gives its name to the custom of playing practical jokes on friends or relatives, sending them on a “fool’s errand.” Finding a good April Fool Hoax was also the dream of many television news producers.

The very first television April Fool’s hoax was in 1957 when the BBC current-affairs programme Panorama broadcast an item, purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the family "spaghetti tree”. It was a classic, beautifully put together, became an all-time favourite and the benchmark for all future stories.

My good friend and broadcaster David Bean nearly ended his career in the late sixties transmitting his April Fool television report. With his wicked sense of humour and the ability to “poke fun” at the establishment, David invented a medieval castle. Using archive film footage of many different buildings he edited it all together and told of a new discovery. A previously hidden castle that King Arthur used before he found Camelot.

It was a great idea and totally believable, unfortunately for David, once transmitted it became an overnight success. Thousands of people swamped government departments wanting information on how to visit this undiscovered gem. He was seriously unpopular particularly as the departments also thought it true!

So, in the early eighties, when I got a call from a senior manager of an international woollen mill, based in our region asking if I wanted to be part of an elaborated April Hoax, I knew there were risks.

It was, he said, top secret and he would only divulge it involved sheep. I had to meet him at a remote field if I wanted the “scoop. “My standing with the news desk was good enough to be given a film crew for one day on the strict understanding that I would produce an outstanding, believable story. No pressure then!

On the appointed day my favourite crew, cameraman “Scottie” sound recordist “Tarnie” and electrician Ian arrived at the remote rural location to be met, as promised by the manager, some helpers and 20 sheep!

“What’s the plan?” I said.

With an impish smile, he produced several aerosol cans and pointed to the sheep. He still would not tell me the story, but said that the cans contained harmless vegetable dye that would wash off in the first rain shower and we were going to spray each sheep either, yellow, blue, or red.

I wish I had filmed the next half hour as myself, cameraman, electrician, sound recordist together with the manager and his helpers caught and sprayed each sheep.

What we were left with was a field of gently grazing, multi-coloured sheep The manager had put on a long white coat, strange spectacles, and was carrying a clipboard.

The story was ingenious. The company, so the story went, had genetically modified sheep so they would be born with one of the primary colours. Gone, he said, was the need for the expensive and costly dying process, it could all be done by cross-breeding the sheep. For instance, he said, if you wanted green yarn, you would cross a yellow sheep with a blue one and so on. “Coloured Sheep Technology,” a world-beating invention that would revolutionise the woollen industry. I loved it!

Tight storyline, great pictures and, more importantly, my producer loved it. So, on the morning of April first out it went and I waited to join the ranks of the spaghetti tree pioneers. It didn’t quite work out the way I had planned.

I thought I might have to defend the spraying of sheep with vegetable dye but never in my wildest dreams did I consider the outrage of genetically modifying sheep. Complaints of “tampering with nature” and dire warnings of the consequences to mankind of this ill-judged experiment landed on our desks.

We should, perhaps, have taken more notice of another tradition, that of opening Pandora’s box. For, though false, once released it took quite some time for the whole episode to die down. Still, it was a brilliant, creative idea by the manager, fun to do and you don’t get too worried about “rocking the boat” when you are young.

It should have been the final trip to get the series finished but as I pushed the broken-down coach from behind in the company of other passengers, my legs were feeling decidedly painful. I then tried to make sense of the director’s message on my phone telling me the crew were point blank refusing to visit the campsite for the final few scenes. What on earth was happening?

My legs had started to be painful the previous week and as I was normally fit and well, I decided to visit the doctor before my final trip.

” Been doing anything unusual which involves sitting for prolonged periods?” the Doctor enquired. “Well, where do I begin? “For the last few weeks, I have been on a coach traveling to Spain for approximately 60 hours each trip. The Doctor just stared at me with a slightly open mouth. It transpired that it was possible all this inactivity sitting and lying in a coach could be a sign of a potential deep vein thrombosis and I should cease immediately.

This was not an option, I thought. I have all but died on that coach and I am going on this trip even if it would be my last. With a resigned stare the Doctor gave me strict instructions to keep moving and should I get severe pains at any point report to the nearest hospital.

I had taken his advice, and on my final trip, I was never still. I went up and down the aisle of that coach so often some of the passengers were starting to get annoyed and questioned my sanity.” Can’t you just sit down like the rest of us?” said one. Not a chance, with deep vein thrombosis hanging like a Sword of Damocles I was nervous to sit down at all. Which was why I nearly fell over as the coach suddenly ground to a halt!

I could not believe it; my last trip and the coach had broken down and worse than that it was blocking the road. To be fair to the coach company maintained the vehicles to the highest standard and had a plan for a replacement which could be sent at a moment’s notice. This, however, would take time and we still blocked the road. It was now I found out the true grit and spirit of these brave souls who ventured on these types of holidays. “Don’t you worry mate” said one, to our long-suffering driver,” we’ll push it to the side of the road, it can’t be that hard.” And so it was that passengers and crew went to the back and moved our coach into a safe place. I do not think the company was too happy that I filmed it but it was too good a sequence to pass up on, although I did push as well out of a sense of comradery.

It took a few hours for a replacement coach to arrive. This left me pondering my crew's mutiny. It was indeed a worry. My cameraman and sound recordist had been with me for years and I counted them among my friends as well as work colleagues. They were highly experienced, and professional, refusing to film was totally out of character. Immediately I arrived at the resort I went to see them. To be honest I was baffled and not a little annoyed. “What are you playing at?” I said to them.

As they explained their refusal, I struggled to keep a straight face. One holiday party I had asked them to follow was a huge group of thirteen people who were so overcrowded that the teenagers slept under the caravan. They were led by two fearsome ladies who kept control of the party with an iron fist. Imposing, not only in their character but also stature.

They had, however, unbeknown to the crew taken a shine to my sound recordist and cameraman and had suggested that they might like to join them as they were going to watch the sunset on the beach. Following my instructions, the crew collected film gear and set off.

What they hadn’t bargained for, as they came from the back of the crew van with their kit, was to be met by the ladies who had taken the opportunity to remove all their clothes and suggested they should follow suit! They quickly got back into the crew van and left.

I didn’t ask them to go back to the site, I felt we had all done enough. The shoot was over and the crew (slightly scarred) would move on to the next job. I had weeks of editing ahead of me to bring “Coach Trip” to the screen but at least I didn’t have to go on another coach!

All told it was a success, the ratings were good but it would be a long time, if ever before I would make another series involving coach travel!

I had set off on the next 30-hour trip to Spain and felt I understood more of what was happening. On the first trip I had looked at my small sleeping space under two back seats with trepidation but now, weirdly, it felt like home.

What was different this time was that most of the upper level on the coach was empty. “That’s because we are going to another city to pick up a large group all travelling together” said Jill, the hostess.

Having picked up the first passengers who would occupy the lower deck we travelled 2 hours to collect the holidaymakers for the upper deck. As we pulled into the rendezvous car park I noticed a group of people having what seemed like a quite a serious disagreement. Jill and myself looked at each other. As we drew up, they stopped, as if by magic, and only happy smiling faces greeted us. The rules of the coach were strict, and any form of bad behaviour meant you were not going to travel. However, the alarm bells in my head were deafening, my instincts told me we were in for a bumpy ride.

The first part of the journey to the British coast went without incident. As we got off on the ferry for the crossing to France I had convinced myself I was worrying about nothing.

Night fell, and we started the long overnight journey to the French border and then on to the French motorways..

I started to think about crawling under the two seats to sleep when Jill came to the back and said trouble had started upstairs. Obviously, any sort of fighting is bad, but on a coach, traveling at high speed on a French motorway in the pitch black was scary. Quickly, we told our driver who then pulled over. The driver (with me and Jill as support) went up the stairs.

The disagreement seemed to be with two rival families about who was going to have what bed in the caravans they had booked when they got to Spain. With great calmness our driver explained that this was not they way to behave and any further trouble would lead to the culprits being ejected at the nearest French service station.

Peace lasted all of 5 minutes before two men started pushing each other. What we didn’t know was that after discussing the situation, our two drivers had called base, who then contacted the French gendarmes. As we pulled into the next service station, we stared wide-eyed at what awaited us.

The coach was guided into a cordon of blue lights and a very tough looking group of French police. As we stopped they quickly boarded the coach and before we knew it the two men (who were still pushing each other) turned to argue with the Police. These men had obviously only dealt with British Police not their French equivalent. They never did make it to their holiday caravan.

The remainder of our 30-hour journey passed without incident and we rolled into northern Spain only a little late. For the next two hours, while the coach was unloaded and new passengers checked in, Jill and myself had a little time to ourselves. “Do you drink?” she said. Well it had been known for me to take a drink and it was then that I found out about her side-line. She would take orders for alcohol from friends and family and used her contact in the town to acquire cheap booze.

We took a detour into a back street of the town to a small door in a wall. On knocking we were admitted into a small room. Here was where the alcohol was sold. A large flask of clear liquid was put in front of me. “What do you want, whisky, brandy or gin?” he said. To be honest, the flask of clear liquid didn’t look like any of them. “Whisky” I said. With that, he took a very small phial of dark liquid and snapped off the glass top and poured it into the big flask which immediately turned golden brown. It now did look vaguely like whisky but had never seen the inside of a Scottish distillery. It was, however, very cheap and though it seemed to taste like I imagined rocket fuel to taste like, I think it was safe and at home Jill had had no complaints.

It was on that homeward journey I had a chance to try this latest alcohol. As I mentioned before the drivers never drank and had the highest standards of safety but on the long tiring journey back to the UK the hostesses would occasionally had a “homemade “cocktail. They would half empty a two-litre bottle of Fanta sparkling orange and fill it with the freshly acquired brandy and hey presto “coach cocktails”

We had a great time until many hours later, lying once again under my seats the rocking, bouncing hot atmosphere of the coach, the cocktails took their toll.

My adventures would continue over the coming weeks but I swore I would never ever drink on a coach again.

Next time, breakdowns and crew mutiny

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

It was 3 in the morning and I was lying under a seat of a coach. This was my base and home for the next few weeks. It was here, in this moment, I realised that it was going to be a very long few weeks.

My idea was simple. Follow and film a local travel company offering holidays to Spain by coach. It appealed to those people who didn’t like flying or wanted a family break that was cheaper. Boarding the coach at nine o’clock in the morning the coach would take holidaymakers to Dover for a quick channel crossing then overnight through France, and finally arriving at two o’clock the next day in northern Spain for a holiday in a static caravan. The journey took twenty-nine hours, (all being well) and the company ran two return trips a week.

Here was the issue. The coach would travel to Spain, spend two hours in the resort and travel back. To fully experience the trip the programme maker would have to do the full journey, a sixty hour return trip. On all levels it would be very challenging and I certainly couldn’t ask anyone else to do it, so I would.

The logistics were impressive. The coach would have a senior driver and his number two. They would take the coach right the way through to Montpellier in France where they would get off for sleep and another driver (called bottom end driver) would take the coach to northern Spain, wait two hours and drive back to Montpellier where a suitably rested first driver then took over.

Also on board was a hostess who would provide snacks and drinks and stay on the coach for the full sixty-hours. The coach had a single bed hidden under the stairs for the resting driver and hostess, but I would not be able to use it.

I saw this as a challenge and hired a talented up and coming director to look after the film crew in Spain. They would provide the stories at the campsite; I would be the coach cameraman. Oh, and I forgot to mention, at that point I had never operated a camera before. Due to the utter madness of being on a coach for sixty hours the technical union allowed me a dispensation to film and I quickly had to learn to operate one of the earliest small cameras.

So, one fine Saturday, with severe trepidation, I boarded the coach with the first season’s passengers.

I need, at this point, to make clear how skilled and dedicated the coach crew were. The senior driver, Noel was remarkable. With many years international driving he took his responsibilities for the lives of his passengers very seriously. On our first meeting I made the mistake of calling his vehicle a bus. “BUS! BUS! It’s a coach, he spat looking with distain at this interloper who would be lowering the tone of his pride and joy.

The hostess Jan, on the first trip was fantastic. Happy go lucky she was unbelievably tough, able to withstand the incredible hours and, by selling drinks and snacks, was saving up to buy a house.

Many of the passengers were return customers. Some had been taken this route as children and were now were taking their young families. They often had favourite seats, and would group together with blankets, pillows and board games.

The first part of the journey was great fun. I got to know everyone and by the time we arrived for the ferry to France we were in high spirits. After a short crossing the second driver who had driven through England gave way to Noel who had been having a rest in the small bed hidden beneath the stairs of the coach. His was the real challenge. He would drive through the night eleven hundred kilometres to Montpellier where another driver would take over.

My excitement lasted only until the early hours. It was now three in the morning and Noel was in his element and I had been on the go for nineteen hours. At the back of the coach were two seats for the hostess and her kit and this was my base. Under those two seats I laid out my recording equipment, made up my bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

By eight o’clock the next morning, (I had slept very little and was feeling distinctly car sick) we arrived in Montpellier. It was here that Noel and his second driver would leave the coach and sleep while myself and the hostess continued on to Spain with another driver.

Montpellier was one of the strangest set ups I had ever seen. In a compound of caravans lived a collection of coach drivers, all of whom were employed to service the coaches from France to Spain and return. They were called “bottom end drivers” The rumour was that some of the drivers were “on the run” from either the law or had personal troubles. They were difficult to get to know but with a little patience I learnt from one guy that he had a wife and children in England, got into his campervan one day to get fuel, turned right out of his drive and kept on going, never to return….

So here I was in France, tired, car sick and still with hours to go. Now we picked up our bottom end driver. His background was so disturbing any attempt to find out details was met with mute expressions as much to say, you really don’t want to know. He was, however, surprisingly amenable to television and we got on famously. His nickname however was slightly off-putting and gave an inkling of what was in store for me in the coming weeks, his name………Road Rage Russell!

Next time on the Hopeful Traveller, fights, breakdowns and alcohol.

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

The challenge with making videos about events that took place five hundred years ago was the lack of any moving pictures to illustrate the stories.

We called pictures over speech ‘overlay’.

The videos Fiona and myself were making told the stories of the Border Reivers. These fearsome raiders operated across the English-Scottish Border from the early thirteen hundreds and the clan names lived on throughout the world. Armstrong, Elliot, Scott, Irving and many others were part of a bloody history. Many of their ancestors emigrated to America, hence the interest. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, had visited the Scottish borders and prompted a huge curiosity in the US descendants. Our idea was to make a different video for each of the clans.

Fiona planned and did the writing, I had to visualise the stories, and that was not easy. Still pictures could form part of the plot and interviews another but that still left a great deal to cover. One solution I found was to tap into the many groups who spent their spare time re-enacting the past and how these clans people lived. This would take the form of set piece battles or individual camps for people to visit.

One fine day my cameraman and I headed to a massive weekend battle planned by such a group. To be fair, it wasn’t really the period we needed but it was close enough and, more to the point, had lots of fighting, pretend dying and general mayhem. It worked a treat, was brilliantly organised and in two days we had a huge quantity of video I could use in editing. My mistake was in thinking all re-enactment groups would be the same, how wrong I was.

Warning bells should have sounded at my next chance to pick up overlay. This group were friendly enough but something didn’t quite feel right. They looked too authentic. Their camp was wild and so were the people. As the camp followers cooked over open fires the men appeared to be gearing up for combat. I wasn’t sure if they understood that it was make-believe.

My goodness, they were keen. As I issued my requests for certain shots they set upon each other with wild whoops and clashes with swords and shields. As we finished, and I had said how brilliant the footage was, the leader looked at me and said “we do hangings as well you know, do you fancy a hanging?”

Now, I had seen this before. A clever harness worn around the chest takes the weight of the noose and gives the impression of someone being hanged. I couldn’t see the footage seeing the light of day on the grounds of bad taste but my cameraman was keen so I agreed. What could go wrong?

We set up and started filming as the hapless victim was dragged to the nearest tree with graphic realism. It was then my cameraman croaked “there’s no harness, the ropes around his neck, they are going to hang him!”

“Stop! Stop! What on earth are you doing!” I cried in panic. “Don’t worry” said the leader with a sly smile “we don’t leave him hanging for long...” That was when I called a halt, and learnt a big lesson about re-enactment groups.

My final encounter with historical filming was totally my own stupid fault. On this day, I had been given the opportunity to get potentially superb overlay. Several horses and riders fully-dressed as reivers would charge off on another murderous adventure, behind them, a moody skyline, a perfect shot. As I will explain later, I can’t be sure if we were one rider short or a rider had fallen and a horse became spare but, in any case, a horse was missing a rider…

Harking back to my childhood I remembered a fearsome riding instructor called Miss Hamlin who had taught me the rudiments of horsemanship. I also remembered she said that I would never be any good but, despite that, I heard me say “give me the armour and sword, I’ll ride it.”

I can’t be really sure of the facts as mild concussion followed. As I mounted my steed the sword scabbard poked into its side. The poor beast reared up and took off. I lasted barely 20 seconds before I came off, the crew fell about laughing and I sat dazed but largely unhurt on the ground.

It was stupid. It was dangerous and proved that I couldn’t ride. However, in editing, it became apparent that the crew, far from being overcome with concern regarding my accident, had continued to film everything, and it was just too realistic an overlay to pass up on.

From that day forward, whenever we needed a wild careering reiver or a wounded warrior falling tragically to the ground, my disaster came out time after time, and a demonstration of the risky lives of these fearsome warriors from the past.

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

Puff, Puff “Nope”

“Could we force it a stop?”

Puff, Puff “Nope”

It was an early morning in the depths of winter and I was standing with my cameraman in the middle of a field, freezing and exasperated. In one hand the cameraman clutched his ubiquitous pipe and puffed out clouds of dense acrid smoke. In the other, he held aloft the dreaded light meter.

I had been sent out first thing to grab an interview and pictures with a local farmer regarding an ongoing agricultural crisis. I should then bring it back, and send it to the national news in London for the lunchtime bulletin. The problem was, we were working on film and it was too dark for the camera.

To be fair, the cameraman, while not impressed with his early start was not being difficult. These were the days of film and if the light wasn’t there you didn’t shoot a frame. The farmer thought we were just being difficult as it wasn’t night time but from our point of view it may have well been.

The light was only the beginning of our problems. Our company used a cheaper film stock which already had a reputation of turning things a bit blue and though we shot on fast positive film the results could be a touch grainy. Using negative film, which required further processing, would take too long and would not make the news on time.

When the light got to a certain level you couldn’t work. We could force the film in processing if the cameraman agreed, but the result was far from good and was frowned upon. So, there I was, with the chance to go on national television but I couldn’t do anything until the light levels rose.

Unfortunately, the light didn’t rise sufficiently enough in time and I never made the national lunchtime news.

This was not the only the difficulty for a budding television film reporter. Not only did the light work against you but the crew made you take other critical decisions.

“Tungsten or Daylight?” the crew chief would ask. Hmm, difficult. If you were filming outside you used ‘daylight’, but if inside you’d use Tungsten film stock. Of course, it was never that easy if you wanted to do both. If you decided on Tungsten and then you went outside, forget it, outside shots turned a rather pretty shade of blue, seriously unimpressive and embarrassing.

Then if you were outside and wanted to go inside the electrician (who usually had been asleep in the crew van) was disturbed and asked to light the scene. These were the days of powerful unions. No reporter was allowed out until he had a cameraman, sound recordist and electrician, regardless of whether they were needed or not.

An interview would require the cameraman to set up a lighting rig. Three 500-watt lights called “Red heads” or if the cameraman wanted something a bit more impressive two 1000-watt lights called “Blondes” (the former being painted red, the latter yellow, hence the nicknames). These would be provided by the electrician. Oh, how long did this take! While the crew set the scene with the light you talked gibberish to the guests who were rapidly becoming bored and running out of patience. Then, if you got all that right there was the dreaded “short end.”

Each magazine had 400ft (125 metres) of film. This would last for 11 minutes. If you were really organised and did all your elements in that time then you wouldn’t have to wait for the cameraman to reload another magazine. If you failed, however, then this cameraman (whilst smoking his pipe) would get out a large black bag with two hand-holds and unload and reload the magazine. This took time. Trust me, you learnt not to shoot too much. Cameramen were notoriously mean and without telling you would load a bit of film they had left over from another shoot (perhaps 200 feet, a ‘short end’). This could last only 5 minutes and just when you got to the critical bit of the interview he would shout “Out of film!” NO!!!!!!…………………………..and out came the bag!

The most dangerous challenge often didn’t come from the crew, however, but the creative aspirations of your Head of News.

“I’ve just had this amazing lunch and I’ve got an exciting idea; jumpers” said the Head of News. The lunch was with the chief executive of an international woollen manufacturer (based locally) who had offered to kit each reporter/ presenter out with the latest in jumper fashion. These garments were the must-have on the world golfing circuit, very much in demand, and expensive. These were cashmere, had a unique bold diamond pattern and available in some gaudy colours. They were also a global talking point at the time.

We protested. We were serious journalists. But this wasn’t a democracy. So, out went our suits (luckily for our female colleagues they were excluded from this fashion car crash). While it may have been de rigueur for golfers it was quite frankly bizarre for news reporter/presenters. The Head of News was determined, and shortly thereafter me and my colleague Eric sat presenting the news programme in our diamond jumper finery.

Luckily, it didn’t last long before it was quietly dropped. I wasn’t really concerned to be honest, I had my dream job and would have worn a lot worse but my colleague Eric, his jumper was quite frankly too tight and he looked like the harlequin character from the commedia dell’arte. He was a consummate professional, however, and said not a word of complaint. Sadly, Eric is no longer with us but amongst my many happy memories of him are the two of us, doubled over with laughter in the make up room prior to our debut with our nightly television audience.

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

We had been on the Isle of Man for a week and had just completed another episode of our continuing country series “The Hopeful Traveller”. The Viking longboat was the final shot. David Bean (aka “The Hopeful Traveller”) concluded the episode by standing in the prow of a Viking longboat (manned by Manx volunteers) looking towards England and his next adventure. Actually, in the photo, he was at the stern looking decidedly grumpy. This was because the crew had previously told the manager of the hotel we were staying at it was David’s 70th birthday.

David was very well known on the island, and to celebrate the milestone the hotel threw a party. The problem was that David was actually in his early sixties and not 70, it was the crew’s way of having a joke. He was less than happy having to go along with the celebrations, rather than let down the hotel staff who had put in a lot of hard work. This, however, was not the reason I was about to make history. That had started when I was invited to the edit suite prior to filming the series.

I was greeted by a group of engineers and editors reverentially clustered around seven plastic boxes the size and shape of cereal packets. Stacked on top of each other with wires protruding they looked pretty uninspiring to me but the editors who were crowded around it appeared as if they were witnessing a holy event.

I turned to my editor and asked what the boxes were. “They, my programme-making friend, are 7 gigabytes of computer memory”. “Really, they looked like cereal boxes” I said. He gave me a withering look and explained that each box was one gigabyte of memory bought for £2500 each. The company had bought seven of these and they were now stacked up neatly. We, the editor and myself, had the honour of cutting the first computerised programme together with the new AVID editing system, shipped in straight from America.

Now, at this point I must explain that I had been chosen not for my award-winning directing skills but because I was trained to shoot on film and my ratios (the difference between how much material I shot and the amount that was used in the final programme) were some of the lowest in the company. When I worked on film, a magazine of film was 400 feet in length and I would record 11 minutes of action. At £100 for each magazine when processed you could rack up thousands of pounds of stock if you didn’t know what you wanted to film. I had been trained by a crew tired of inexperienced directors filming anything that moved hoping to be able to cut it in editing. Consequently, my ratio was 2 to 1. This meant that for every 2 minutes I filmed I would have 1 minute to transmit after editing. Some directors shot 7 or even 10 times what was needed which was expensive and inefficient. So, it was felt, I would have less material to put into the computer.

With my tapes from the Isle of Man I looked forward to a historic edit. I’d been told that the material would be put into this massive 7GB memory and I would be able to look at the screen to see all my hard work and, before my very eyes, the programme would be cut before I could blink.

“I can’t see anything” I wailed. “It looks like a snowstorm”. Yes, before me I could see shadowy figures on the screen, moving blurs. “What’s happened to my work, what have you done to it?” The editor had at least the decency to look sheepish. The problem was the memory. The video footage took so much memory we could only edit about 5 minutes in one go. That footage had to go in at the lowest resolution which accounted for the ‘snowstorm’. We would cut it, then, at night and quite mysteriously, the computer would think about it and produce the final cut at full resolution.

And so began my long and frustrating journey. Each day we would try to make out the pictures in the snowstorm, cut them, and each night the computer would render them at full resolution, or not. Some nights, the computer would wait until dawn light and then stop working, and the process would have to start all over again!

Eventually, we did make history though, and we were one of the first in the country to completely make a series using this revolutionary AVID system. The programme was completed on time and was the dawn of a new and exciting era for broadcast television.

The cameraman glanced at me with a slightly nervous look, having just completed the final checks on the special camera we had hired. It was 1984 and we were about to go down one of the last deep coal mines in the UK. It was to be a long and tense journey. The hired camera, I was told, was special as it had been designed to not produce any sparks, sparks that could set off the deadly methane gas, which was always a danger.

As we stepped inside the cage that would take us 390 metres underground, the crew and I were nervous. That couldn’t be said of the miners, they spent their lives in this environment and were at home in this dark world. The cage, suspended from the huge wheels at the top of the mine, was nothing like your average hotel elevator. It descended at a speed that took your breath away. Down we went, deeper and deeper into another world.

Coal mining had been in decline for a number of years and I had reported on many occasions from the gates of the pit, but this was different. For the first time I had a glimpse into the world of a miner. As the cage stopped at the bottom of the shaft we then boarded a small train to the coal face nearly six kilometres under the sea. I finally began to understand something of the lives of these unique men.

This was a dark, dangerous world where you relied completely on your fellow miners. It was an unforgiving place where carelessness could cost you your life. Indeed, accidents had happened in this mine, and somewhere down here there were miners who had died and sadly couldn’t be recovered.

Coal dust was everywhere. Working in these conditions was dangerous and exhausting. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind that hundreds of metres above me was the sea. At no point during that day did I feel comfortable, but around me the miners could not have been more helpful, and I felt they were happy to have had their world filmed.

It was not long after this experience that the miners went on strike. It was one of the most bitter and fraught industrial actions the UK had experienced. It was also difficult to report. The miners and the media had a taut relationship, but at Haig Pit being local mattered, and they knew me from local television so we understood each other.

It was dangerous however. One morning the crew and myself were outside the gates of the pit when miners from another area arrived on a bus. They were called “flying pickets” and definitely did not like the media. Surrounding us the situation quickly became difficult, and I could see me and the crew were in trouble. Without warning our miners surrounded us and pushed the other miners back. They, the miners from away, became very angry. “They’re the enemy, why defend them?” said one. “Ay Marra (Marra was a term West Cumbrians used to describe most people) they’re media alright but they’re ours, back off!”

In those days you could tell a deep coal miner. Even though they had pit head baths to wash the coal dust out of their blackened bodies the inside of their eyelids were tattooed with a thin black line caused by the ingrained coal dust. They were determined, proud and had a sense of community. I knew miners as a television reporter, in the reserve army as fellow soldiers and later, some became magistrates alongside me. Their sense of right and wrong, and their humour taught me a great deal.

What brought all these memories flooding back? Thirty years since Haig Pit closed the UK government has just granted permission for the first deep coal mine to be ‘sunk’, which will provide coal for the steel industry. It’s sighted within a few miles of Haig Pit. With the debate surrounding global warming this is a hugely controversial decision which continues to rage. It will, say its advocates, provide up to 500 jobs.

It’s strange to think that if the new mine goes ahead the grandchildren of those long-gone miners could well find themselves following in their footsteps. How, I wonder, will today’s generation take to this way of life? It will, of course, be different but I suspect that deep down the mining tradition will still be there.

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

The idea was simple. We would emulate network TV with our own regional late-night show at Border TV. It would be produced and presented by me and Liz Howell with Liam Hamilton producing. We would cleverly integrate controversial topics with a bit of light entertainment. This was our first attempt at such a show.

That week we were stuck for our ‘light entertainment’ segment, until one of us, I forget who, remembered seeing some Morris dancers on the streets of Carlisle. They would be perfect! (Morris Dancing is an old English type of dance from the Middle Ages performed by a group of travelling dancers who would move from village to village).

Border TV’s ‘BIG’ studio was the size of a large living room. To get the feeling of space our set designer has squeezed in 50 people and, in front of them (hiding the fact that they could hardly breath), we put a ‘modesty board’. This was, in fact, just a hardboard wall painted by our handyman a curious colour of grey. What was left of the floor space was taken up by 3 enormous studio cameras, a floor manager, me and Liz.

“How” our technical staff cried out “are you going to fit in a Morris dancing team?”

At this time, ideas that today would have been quickly consigned to the waste bin were seen as a creative attempt to do something different, any dissent was seen as blocking the creative juices. Looking back, I can see lots of attempts by what we jokingly called the PPD (Programme Prevention Department) to stop us, however, I can also see that sometimes they were just stating the obvious, this was a dangerous and foolhardy plan.

So, undaunted, the live programme “Borderlive” was set in stone. We didn’t even have a real rehearsal, we just contacted the team and said can you dance for us? “Yes, we can” said Carlisle Sword and Morris.

I had not even asked what they wore. I had imagined a few bells and a hanky in each hand (the more common Morris dancing look). I thought they would be sedate, quintessentially British and on the up and up, which would be the point of the story. But boy, was I wrong!

Boots, bells, feathers and huge great sticks. These were Cumbrian Morris dancers, the urban terrorists of the Morris world and famed for their aggression and spirited performance much sought after by national festivals. They were big, all eight of them, bulked up further by their heavy rag jackets.

The music started and, to our dismay, on live television the first clash of sticks showed the full horror of what was going to unfold. The first few clashes were frightening but as they swirled for the high clash the lead dancer stepped back into the modesty board and fell hard, right into the lap of one of the ladies in the audience.

They kept on going, cameras then cut to Liz who introduced the commercial break, during which the guest was attended to. Amazingly, she was unhurt and unfazed (we paid for a new dress). The modesty board was put back, we returned from the break and we carried on as though it was a carefully planned and choreographed element to a well thought-out programme.

I have to say “Borderlive” was one of the highest rated shows in the UK at the time. People came home from the pub to watch it. What we didn’t know was that they watched to see what carnage would unfold each week from the increasingly outrageous and sometimes dangerous show.

Well, to be fair, we learnt a lot and both Liz and Liam became very senior executives in network television and Liz a professor of journalism in London.

I was so taken with the Morris team I joined up! I was never any good but it was some of the best fun I ever had!

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

Now, there were two types of ‘talkback’. Open and closed. Closed required a switch in the gallery to activate and, until it was, you didn’t hear anything. This is the ideal situation, you know when the director is explicitly telling you something. Open, now that was something else! Every sound in the gallery and every microphone was simultaneously fed into your ear while you were presenting. And we had open! Countdowns, instructions to both the cameramen and the vision mixers, as well as directions for me were all fed relentlessly into my ear.

I quickly learnt that those in the gallery had little concern for the presenter. To some we were just the “turn” with massive egos and high salaries (to be fair this was sometimes true). In fact, if when filming, we did addressed the camera directly (called a piece to camera) the editors called it a “Hello Mother.”

Early in my career, with my new earpiece firmly connected, I discovered how distracting open talkback could be. I was interviewing a senior politician when I suddenly heard the word ‘Tenerife’. Panicking I thought, Tenerife? What’s that got to do with the employment figures? It was quickly followed by a snort of derision. “Tenerife, I wouldn’t go there if you paid me. Now Majorca, there’s somewhere I can recommend.” It turned out that the vision mixer had recently returned from Tenerife and the director was not impressed. And, as my interview dragged on, every member of the gallery joined in on the discussion sharing the best place to go on holiday! In fact, it continued until the programme assistant interrupted with “wind up Paul”, a simple command to end the interview.

Another director, when faced with a traumatic breakdown of communication on another programme took to standing up in the gallery and shouting “Chaos, Chaos!” down my earpiece, interesting…

One of the worst experiences I had was only resolved recently during a discussion with an old colleague. At that time, I was the “Anchor” (or lead presenter) on a live late-night results show that followed a tightly-fought local council election. As the results were expected to be spread out it was decided that only a small staff was needed.

The show began well, results and analysis were fed by Digi prompt (rolling scripts shown just below the camera) and notes were quickly passed to me by the floor manager and, of course, open talkback was delivered through my earpiece. However, it soon became apparent that the various counts wanted to be the first so the results started flooding in. The producer rapidly became overwhelmed and I found notes and scripts coming in from all angles. I could have coped with that but in my ear all I could hear was discussions between Director and Producer. “Tell him to read this” said the producer. “No we’ve read that” said the director, you need to concentrate. “Should we go to the interview?”

Then, nothing…the producer went quiet…

My good friend Andy Leitch, who had just started at ITV had been given the task of minding the ‘graphic artist’ who was in charge of creating the visuals for the election results. An artist he may have been, but speller he was not. Several local towns had been rendered unrecognisable, appearing more like Himalayan Mountain villages. Andy was tasked with stopping the worst of it. When the graphic artist excused himself Andy became spare and thought he’d take a quick trip to the canteen to examine the trays of sandwiches laid out by the cooks. He was about to make his choice when the producer, who had disappeared from my earpiece moments before, walked in. Even after all these years the expression on the producer’s face could still be recalled. As Andy put it “blank, no one at home.” It seemed like the graphic artist was back at it and doing his worst!

“Are you ok boss?” he asked the producer. No answer. Then brushing past Andy, he took the large tray of sandwiches placed them on the floor and began jumping on them and then walked out.

Ah! So that’s where the producer went, I thought. It was odd that he had just disappeared, but trust me, live Television can do that to a person.

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

My first bad experience of risk-taking came on the biggest lake in the Lake District, Windermere. The crew and myself were covering the water speed world record attempt that was held there every year. Today, the speed limit on Windermere is a respectable 10mph but back then powerboats were only limited by the size of their engine. The organisers had given me exclusive access and a power boat to follow the action, so it was all looking good…

The crew were content as they liked these events, mainly because of the free food and drink, but more than happy in the interim to have a short cruise down the lake.

My warning bells should have sounded when I met the powerboat driver. “So, you’re the TV crew, eh?” The large boom mic and camera must have given it away.

“This, he smirked, is not for the faint-hearted. Are you faint-hearted?” Whatever that meant goodness only knew but I didn’t want trouble so diffidently asked if he could take us to follow the next race. The evil grin still didn’t warn me, and as we took our places in his enormous boat with me holding the cameraman’s belt, he opened up.

We took off like the devil himself was on our tail. The speed was unbelievable. By the time we were at 40mph I knew it could end badly. Now, 40mph doesn’t seem fast on dry land, but trust me, it’s scary on water. At that speed, hitting even a small wave was like smacking into concrete. And we did just that. As we hit a wave I went in the air; the cameraman went in the air and dragged the sound recordist (who was attached to the camera by a cable) with us.

I was bruised and the cameraman was bruised, but the sound recordist cracked the base of his spine. Luckily, he suffered no permanent damage but I learnt a big lesson, trust your instincts and ask more questions!

That experience should have been a life lesson so I can’t really explain why my next adventure with David Bean, the original Hopeful Traveller, didn’t end badly. David was a journalist of the old school, even back then. A man trained on the London newspapers from a boy. He was a wonderful writer, produced some of the best scripts I have ever read and was the most cantankerous, grumpy, scruffy broadcaster I ever worked with. He was so scruffy my bosses made me take him to a clothes shop at the start of every series and buy him a complete outfit, which he would then wear for the whole shoot, without washing it.

David was also a beer drinker, pipe smoker and utterly unconcerned about my youthful often outlandish filming ideas. The following was a prime example.

“Hang gliding, wots that mate?” “Well David, we strap you to this guy and you run off a cliff in the Lake District with a parachute, while at the same time explaining your feelings.” “Will we be in time for the pub opening?” was his only response. It turned out David wasn’t the main problem. My cameraman, who would do most of the crazy things I came up with, was terrified of heights and point blank refused to go on the second parachute to film David as he flew through the air.

“How about you set the level on the camera and I’ll go?” I said. This broke every union rule in the book, but was preferable in his eyes to hanging under a parachute above Lake Derwentwater.

So, on that autumn afternoon, David Bean The Hopeful Traveller (and pensioner in his mid-sixties) and yours truly stood side by side on the edge of a cliff. I had the camera and David lit his pipe! He wasn’t the most coordinated and a bit stiff in his joints but that wasn’t going to stop him…

We ran off the cliff, and to give him his due David gave it his all and we took off. David and I soared over the Lake with the instructors swooping and swirling in a heart stopping arial ballet.

I will never forget that flight. We probably shouldn’t have exposed David to the rigours of paragliding but his happy unconcerned face and commentary made more evocative by his London cockney accent still echoes in my head.

“Not so much an eagle soaring high above mankind, more an old black crow just looking for a safe place to land.”

When I said to David, who is sadly no longer with us, that I could write a book he quipped (through an enormous cloud of pipe smoke) “no mate you can’t, you’re illiterate. Not your fault, just a fact.”

Together, we made 37 programmes for Border TV, Independent Television and Channel 4. Now I’m the Hopeful Traveller and I hope he’ll forgive me for taking up his title.

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

The first thing you realise when you take your first crew out is that, even though they were paid large sums of money and lived well on the expenses when filming away, a streak of extreme meanness would come out whenever accommodation was mentioned. In order to maximise pay, and hold on to as much of the expenses as possible, they wanted to minimise the cost wherever possible. No bed and breakfast was too horrible as long as it was cheap!

I have stayed in places where one room was divided into three and you could put your hand around the division. I have seen rats and mice sharing my room and, on one occasion, bare electric wire above my head proved lethal if touched. Their favourite in London was once owned by famous London gangsters the Kray twins and one bathroom was shared by numerous contractors, enough said.

Meanness didn’t just stop at accommodation however. One morning, when I went to the crew room, I found that the cameraman (one of the best I ever worked with) shuffling out of the door mumbling good morning. Concerned, I asked his sound recordist if he had a back injury (worried as we were due out). “No, said the Sound guy, his uncle has just died and left him his clothes.” He had taken to wearing the dead man’s shoes which were three sizes too big, hence the shuffle. That day was torture, he refused to take them off as they were, he said, of high quality and the whole day was just bizarre.

Then there was the cameraman who was the nicest man you could meet but oh was he accident prone. He had no awareness of where he was, and carrying a 15-kilo camera attached to a long tripod he was, quite frankly, dangerous. I can still remember the day I went to film a delightful elderly lady in her immaculate small living room. She had on the wall two shelves each full of her treasured ceramic figures. As the cameraman went in with the camera on his shoulder a slight movement right and the handle of the tripod neatly swept every figure on the shelf crashing to the floor. “Be careful” I shouted, with that he jumped and turned to look at me. As he turned back, he took every figure off the second shelf, disaster!

And how could I forget “The Prince of Darkness”. This small peculiar cameraman was a dreadful character and an awful cameraman. He once sat cross-legged in the middle of a go-kart stadium and refused to let the race start until he had meditated. (He was very lucky as the drivers had to be stopped from running him over).

He was called the “The Prince of Darkness” because he could never get his exposures right. He hated bright sunshine and put interviewees right by a high wall to keep them in shadow. Mind you, if you forced him into the sunshine, it was worse.

But the prize for the most embarrassing has to go the cameraman I took to a major event specially staged for us.

I was filming at one of the biggest limestone quarries in the country and at huge expense they had organised a massive explosion which would take down the whole of the quarry wall for the next rock collection. It had never, they said, ever been filmed, and had took a week to set the explosive charges. Hundreds of pounds of dynamite had to be drilled into the rock face, a mammoth undertaking.

The blast controller explained in intricate detail where the explosion would take place. The blast was truly amazing and the highlight of the documentary. As this was on film, we had to send the footage off to be processed. I can’t explain my horror, consternation and downright disbelief when we played the film. Yes, the sound was perfect but in one corner of the film all I saw was a small puff of smoke where a monster explosion reducing an entire rock face to rubble was meant to be.

He had the camera totally in the wrong place to capture the event and missed it completely! Such was the varied life of a television director!

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.

I know why I had been offered this presenting role. ITV had a charity programme called Telethon and my mad idea was to rush around the Border region finding and filming one item every hour, for hours…madness. However, a really nice network director had seen this mad attempt. Looking on it favourably(!) asked if I wanted to be one of four presenters on the “Help Squad.” This was to be a pilot for a national television programme to be broadcast on British television during a bank holiday weekend. The idea was that the ‘Squad’ would undertake worthy tasks aided by different people.

To be honest, if I really thought about it, I wasn’t network presenting material but the pay was huge and what was there to lose? I wasn’t used to big network budgets and when the programme planners rang me to say that a limousine would take me down to the first shoot at Buckfastleigh in Devon it was all too much.

“Thank you, terribly kind, but if you just pay my second-class train fare that would be good.” After an attack of the vapours – basically, this wasn’t something they heard, ever – I was informed that presenters only travelled First Class. Fine, I thought.

As it happened, I had recently joined a Mountain Rescue Team in the lake district. I was on a trial period and really needed to boost my fitness. I thought, I could kill two birds with one stone. I would take the sleeper train from Carlisle, get off at Newton Abbot, and bash the 10 miles with full rescue kit, and arrive just in time for the shoot. Brilliant! Cash, presenting and fitness training. What could be better?!

Once at South Devon heritage railway at Buckfastleigh I, the other presenter and whatever ‘Help Squad’ had been assembled, would paint one of the bridges on the platform and make a feature of it. Well, it turned out, the Help Squad for this little job would be the Hells Angels!

Yep, the local chapter of the ‘outlaw’ motorcycle club were on board, and so was I, on a sleeper! Perhaps I should have read the script before-hand.

The trip down went like a dream. I got a good nights sleep and around five in the morning I was off and yomping. Nice place Devon. I’d never been before.

When I arrived, it was organised chaos. I had never seen so many television people. First problem was security. They refused to believe I was a network TV presenter. The director (really nice lad) looked for my car and after I told him I had run from Newton Abbot I could see panic in his eyes. Second problem was my fellow presenters. Two were really nice but the third was a seasoned professional and visibly unimpressed by the scruff who had just ran 10 miles with a heavy rucksack. Fate would later put us together on the bridge.

First though, into costume. I was appalled. The designers had made shapeless pillar box red jerkins (a man's short close-fitting jacket) that looked as if they were fresh off the set of Robin Hood. This. I thought. will go down really badly with the mountain rescue team. Worse was to come when I met the head of scripting. Even though I had written scripts for countless programmes he was going to write my words, and God help me if I, the presenter, changed it.

So, this was the plan, the other presenter and myself would stand on the bridge and they would say “we need some help to paint this bridge.” Then I was to look into the distance and say the carefully constructed words “Look, there’s some rough lads arriving.”

Brilliant, dressed like an extra from Sherwood forest standing with a presenter who didn’t rate me and six words to project to dozens of Hairy Hells Angels…perfect.

Well, I did it, right on queue. I looked out towards the horizon and with a dramatic pause (so I thought) I delivered the six lines that still live me today. “Look, there’s some rough lads arriving.” “Cut”.

Then a pause, and my fellow presenter looked at me and said “Darling, there’s a dramatic pause and then there’s waiting for Christmas” and walked off.

The pilot duly went out and a series was commissioned. Sadly, I wasn’t in it. The other presenter was. I was replaced by a well-known actor. I couldn’t really complain. I just hoped he liked the Robin Hood look.

Hopeful Traveller is a weekly newsletter and archive of stories about broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s. It is written by former-newsreader and programme maker Paul Baird. For new stories each week, subscribe.