Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 24
Part 2 continued
1956–1966
Taking on odd jobs, canoeing in France or hitchhiking around other parts of Europe was great fun but it did not point me in any specific direction. The only real constant was my love of sport, and rugby in particular. As it was still an amateur sport during my playing days, I could hardly count on it to secure my future. At some point a friend offered to arrange a trial for me at one of the top Rugby League clubs. This variation of rugby was formed by a number of northern English clubs in Yorkshire and Lancashire in 1895. Most of the players were working class as opposed to the players in the south of England who were more middle class. Rugby League, as it became known in 1922, began to pay its players. I decided not to try for the League as I did not want to live in the North and besides which I was not impressed with the different rules such as the one that reduced the teams to thirteen players, unlike the fifteen that play for the Rugby Union version.
So when I kind of fell into the television industry, I was ready to take work seriously. Furthermore, BBC Television was a fascinating place with a constant flow of many of the top performing artists in the world. “The Beeb” as it was affectionately known was rated as the top television station in the world in the 1950s. In my second year there I decided that my future career lay in either television or film. When a vice president of one of the top American TV channels (CBC or CBS, I’m not sure) spent the day at the Beeb, I had the opportunity to speak to him. I asked whether he could recommend a good film or television school in the States as I wanted to develop my skills in the industry. He looked at me as though I was completely mad and said, “But you’re with the BBC! There isn’t a better place in the world to learn the business. Stay where you are, son, your position here is priceless!” I thanked him, embarrassed, and put my attention and energy into observing, not only my own job, but those of my seniors.
This paid off a short while later as I was assigned to a small but very popular program called “The Brain’s Trust” hosted by actor James Robinson Justice. As we gathered in the studio for the show, the floor manager was missing.
The floor manager (also known as the studio manager in the commercial TV channels) is the person that controls the studio and liaises through microphone and headphones with the TV director. He sits in a control room usually one level up from the studio, where he watches everything from picture monitors, one for each camera, with a main transmission screen showing what is being broadcast. He makes sure that all artists/actors are in their correct positions and during rehearsals that the combination of camera, sound and lighting are working together to create the pictures and sound to be broadcast. He is the senior man in the studio and on instructions from the director will cue the performers to start their performance.
After waiting a few minutes for the floor manager and trying in vain to contact him by phone, the director turned to me and told me to take the headphones. I would be floor manager for that night. It was pretty intimidating, but it was a very small show consisting of the presenter and a panel of three or four “Brains” who were invited to answer questions sent in by the public on any subject under the sun. They were all super bright and a bit of a handful but one way or another, we got the show on air and on time. There were no glitches. Both the director and presenter congratulated me on my effort and a few days later I received a glowing commendation from the director for stepping into the breech and making it all go right.
A week or so later, I was told that I was to work on a new show called “Six-Five Special.” It was the first Rock ‘n Roll music show in Britain. Of course, I was back to being a Call Boy but I was delighted to be chosen for this major show. My enthusiasm was suddenly soured when I heard it was to be broadcast on a Saturday afternoon. I was still playing rugby and nearly all games took place on Saturday afternoons. I went to the Senior Call Boy who allocated the twelve of us to the various shows and told him that as I had a rugby match on that Saturday, could I be re-assigned to another show. He looked at me for a long time, then said, “Chris, you’ve got a decision to make. Do you want to work here or would you rather play rugby?” I was shattered. Rugby had been my life but equally I now loved the TV business.
I think at that moment I grew up. I looked at him and replied. “Got it. I’ll do the show.” He grinned and moved away. That moment effectively put paid to any realistic chances of my playing international rugby or even to continue playing for a top club as I had been doing. Rugby required me every Saturday and apparently TV was making the same demand.
“Six-Five Special” took BBC’s Light Entertainment programming in a number of new directions. First of all, the singers and entertainers appearing on the show were mostly either Rock ’n Rollers or Skiffle bands. Skiffle which originated in the US in the 1920s was a mix of folk music, blues, country, bluegrass and jazz. However, it was also unique in that most of the musical instruments were homemade, using such things as a washboard, jugs, a washtub bass, a cigar-box fiddle, a musical saw or a comb and paper kazoo. The word skiffle referred to rent parties in the US where parties were formed to raise enough money for rent during the Depression years. Skiffle moved across the Atlantic and was revived in the 1950s by singers such as Lonnie Donegan, Chas McDevitt and Chris Barber.
“Six-Five Special” also spawned a number of British Rock ‘n Rollers such as Marty Wilde, Adam Faith, Cliff Richard, The Shadows, and Billy Fury. Another rocker who was a regular on the show was my pal Tommy Steele whom I had protected from the claws of teenage girls in the Cat’s Whisker when I was a bouncer. He was amazed but delighted to see me working on the show. I recall spending a fun evening in a pub in Leeds with Lonnie Donegan after the show, which also pioneered British TV Outside Broadcasts and travelled around the country. Lonnie became famous for his version of US star Lead Belly’s “Rock Island Line” which also became the theme over the opening titles of “Six-Five Special.” He later produced his own songs such as “My Old Man’s a Dustman” and so on.
When I returned to Britain in 2013, I had the good fortune to meet Peter Donegan, Lonnie’s son, who is an established singer in his own right. He was pleased to hear I knew his Old Man. Apart from the local Rockers we even had the famous US band “Bill Haley and the Comets” perform on one show. Later the Dave Brubeck Five, Duke Ellington and even Ella Fitzgerald appeared. An innovative feature of the show was that on transmission, the audience was allowed onto the studio floor and to crowd around the performers. It was a bit of nightmare for the camera crew, particularly the huge, motorized camera dollies that dashed around the studio at speed. Part of my job was to herd the audience away as the cameras approached.
The former childhood star Petula Clark, a big hit during World War II, was now grown up and making a successful new career for herself. She was both beautiful and a lovely friendly lady. I was seriously smitten by her but kept my distance. I think she sensed this. One day we rehearsed a love song. She would sing walking down an aisle with the audience on both sides of her. On rehearsal we had no audience, so I was told to walk on the outside of the aisle to represent the audience whilst she sang to me. I nearly died from embarrassment. I blushed bright red and almost tripped over my own feet as she looked into my eyes and sang the love song to me. After she finished, she giggled, put her hand on my arm and said, “That was fun.” A short while later, she married a Frenchman and went to live in Paris.
A trio called the Mudlarks (two boys and a girl) sang an American hit “Lollipop” with great success in Britain. They arrived to sing on “Six-Five” but one of the boys was late, I forget why. As it got closer and closer to transmission, the director came to me and said, “You look a lot like our missing Mudlark. Go and rehearse with them. You don’t have to sing. Just mime the words with the other two. We’ll use a soundtrack of their recording. He had to be kidding. The group danced to the music and I’m famous for my two left feet. Fortunately, the missing Mudlark arrived with minutes to spare!
In the ‘50s a wild comedy radio show called “The Goon Show” set a new standard in absurdist but also hilarious comedy in Britain. They never did the show on “Telly” but individually they often appeared on TV as celebrity guests. The main group consisted of Peter Sellars, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. They had met doing comedy at London’s Windmill Theatre just after WWII. A fourth member, Michael Bentine, left the radio show early on and pursued a solo career. I was to meet him later.
Anyway, Spike Milligan was considered to be mentally unbalanced but personally I felt it was a bit of an act. He was highly intelligent but enjoyed causing chaos wherever he went. The first time he appeared on “Six-Five,” we were rehearsing his segment of the show, when he abruptly said, “I want a cuppa tea!” The floor manager told him that we were breaking for tea in half an hour, please would he wait. Spike said no and stormed out of the studio. The floor manager looked at me and said, “Find him and bring him back right away.” I dashed off in pursuit, but Spike had disappeared, I searched all over the studio building, a big place, and was about to give up. While dashing past the foot of some stairs, I heard laughter but could see no one. I looked closer and saw a small door to the right of the staircase. I opened it to discover Spike sitting with a couple of uniformed commissionaires (attendants) around a primus stove with a large tea pot on it. Spike had a mug of tea which he raised to me in a “cheers” gesture. I asked him to come back to the studio and if necessary bring his tea with him. He meekly nodded, handed one of the commissionaires a ten-pound note and left with me. As he entered the studio he yelled “I did it. I got my tea. Cost me a tenner it did but I got it, so let’s get to work!”
A few weeks later Spike was on the show again. An hour or so before the show a distraught make-up lady appeared and said that Spike had locked his dressing room door and refused to have make-up. The floor manager rolled his eyes and looked at me. “See if you can perform your magic again. Find out what his problem is.” I went to his dressing room and tapped on the door, calling out “Spike, it’s Chris here. What’s the problem?”
This provoked an amazing tirade that lasted about an hour. His immediate complaint was that he had been put at the top of the make-up list as they wanted to do him first. This, according to him, broke the protocol of booking the main stars of a show last so that they would suffer the irritation of make-up on their faces for the shortest amount of time. I told him I would sort that out and have him made up as late as possible. “Not good enough,” he shouted. He went on a rant about the BBC being a fascist organization and many other things besides. Considering that he probably earned more from appearing on BBC than any other establishment, I felt he was being an idiot – but kept my mouth shut. The whole idea was to get him into the studio before transmission with or without make-up. I tried to make him right without completely slandering my own bosses. Five minutes before transmission, he once again appeared meekly and followed me through to the studio – without make-up!
One more Spike story. He had quite a good singing voice and although not known as a singer, he recorded a few songs which were quite successful. He was not in the same class as one of the other Goons, Harry Secombe, who had a superb operatic voice. Nevertheless, he was invited to sing one of his songs on “Six-Five.” It had a rural theme so that the set designer had built a small farmyard in the studio. Spike arrived, looked around the “farmyard,” then turned to the floor manager and said, “Where’s the cow?” This was a typical Spike tactic to throw some confusion into the proceedings. As usual the floor manager turned to me.
So on a Saturday morning in the heart of London, I set out to find a cow. Starting on the phone, I tried the abattoir, various markets, a children’s farmyard, etc. No luck. In desperation I went to the BBC props department. Returning to the studio I found Spike practicing his moves around the farmyard. I spoke to him. “Spike, you know me by now and I think you realize that I’ll always do what I can for you, but I have to tell you that there aren’t any cows available in London. What I have got is a cow’s prop head. The best I could do.” He looked at me and nodded. “OK but you wear it!” So there I was behind a picket fence wearing a cow’s head on transmission. Spike moved around as he sang and finally stopped opposite me. He reached down and pulled the cow’s head off me and asked, “How are you down there?” He then replaced the head on me, brought out a knife, fork and napkin from his jacket and proceeded to “eat” me!!!
The Beeb was great fun and full of surprises.
Some ways I’m getting a similar vibe from ExoBrain in that as the working model fast approaches completion, the techies are coming up with some wonderful innovations way beyond anything they already expected. We’re a fabulous team and are having great fun as ExoTech evolves. The techies are our stars. Jeff Burht may not be as funny as Spike Milligan, but he certainly has our attention!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.