I remember sitting behind the Dalek-like cameras watching a live afternoon programme called Women Only being recorded at HTV Bristol. I would often travel down with my mother to be shown around various studios. Please not the producer’s cigarette and plastic cups. My mother working in a radio studio in the 1970’s. ‘Oh, the rope was attached to a pulley on the studio lighting rig and lowered by three prop men.’ Having become an expert on how long script bites took to read in different accents she would ‘whizz down to Bristol’ to read the letters on Any Answersfor the producer Carol Stone.
Even though this was replaced she went part-time. On top of this she would drive 72 miles to the Cardiff studios in a rusty Mini van. ‘I was paid the same amount as a short-hand typist.’ The men were paid more than the women and her schedule was gruelling. She worked at the Harlech Television Studios in Cardiff, alongside Martyn Lewis and Liz Carse. She would also descend in an oval wicker basket chair from which she would present a one-woman Children’s programme on called It’s Time For Me. This looked liked magic, and I wanted to know how it was achieved. The reason was that in 1969, when I was about eight years old, my mother became an in-vision announcer, reading the regional News and appearing on our crackly black and white set to brightly declare what would be shown that evening. I once described myself in an application for a job as a television director as a ‘Child of the studio floor’. The reason was that I had rather a peculiar upbringing. ‘What a peculiar girl!’ I hear my friend Nac saying. I was interested in how films were made from the age of about nine. The set designer Bruce Macadie said that such items were produced when the editor of Blue Peter was unexpectedly let down by a guest or couldn’t think of anything more newsworthy. I didn’t care a hoot.
It was only later, whilst working for the BBC as a researcher, that I was told the terrible truth.
My favorite items would be profiles that were run from time to time about life behind the scenes at Television Centre. When I was a little girl, I was an avid viewer of Blue Peter, BBC Television’s flagship series for children.
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