PROSPEROThe newspaper for retired BBC Pension Scheme members • October 2019 • Issue 5

TVC VS OUTSIDE BROADCASTING

PAGE 10

PENSION SCHEME

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Mystery Sudoku

R O ND

I L O D

L A O RB J

B J R A

D B N LD

R N A

Complete the grid so that every row, column and 3x3 box contains the letters ABDIJLONR in some order. One row or column contains a five or more letter word, title or name with a BBC connection. Solve the Sudoku to discover what it is and send your answer to: The Editor, Prospero, BBC Pension and Benefits Centre, Broadcasting House, Cardiff CF5 2YQ by Monday, 4 November 2019.

The winner gets a £10 voucher. Many thanks to Neil Somerville for providing this puzzle.

The Sudoku winner in August was Ms Beryl Miller who correctly identified the BBC connection was ‘News Quiz’.

WIN£10

| BBC PENSIONS

BBC VOLUNTEER VISITING SCHEME CELEBRATES ITS 25TH ANNIVERSARYThe annual BBC Volunteer Visiting Scheme (VVS) Conference took place at the start of August, when 90 ‘visitors’ gathered in Cardiff.

The visitors are retired BBC employees who provide friendship to BBC pensioners aged 70 and above, those recently bereaved or anyone

in poor health.

The aim of the conference is to enhance the visitors’ understanding of the issues that affect the BBC’s pensioners, so that they can provide a better ‘service’ to the people they meet. The conference also gives the visitors an opportunity to network with others and share tips and ideas.

This year was a special one for the Scheme – being 25 years since it was first set up. The VVS looks forward to many more years of providing friendship and support to its pensioners. So far this year, almost 1,000 visits have been carried out, and the Scheme covers 83% of the UK.

Cheryl Miles, the Volunteer Visiting Scheme co-ordinator, opened the conference and was pleased to report that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), much discussed at last year’s conference, had not had the

much-feared impact. Cheryl explained: ‘Since the last conference, we’ve recruited 12 new visitors and sent out around 200 letters to pensioners living in the areas covered by the new visitors. We’ve had a 10% response rate, which is around the same level we enjoyed before GDPR.’

The first speaker of Day 1 was a regular, Roger Hatherell, an independent financial adviser, who gave a very informative talk about financial planning in later life, covering retirement planning, estate planning and later life planning.

Roger stressed how important it is to have an up-to-date Will and reminded the visitors that many legal firms participate in Free Wills Month campaign, a charity fundraiser that takes place in March and September. This idea behind this event is that those taking up the offer will leave a gift in their Wills to one of the selected charities – although they are under no obligation to do so. Find out more at: www.freewillsmonth.org.uk

If you’re thinking of drawing up a Lasting Power of Attorney to keep with your Will, he recommended you complete the forms online and potentially save yourself hundreds of pounds. ‘A solicitor might charge up to £1,800 for a married couple, but if you do it yourself it’s less than £100 per person.’ This website has lots of guidance on how to complete the forms: https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney

Chair of the TrusteesThe second speaker of the day was Catherine Claydon, the new Chair of the BBC Pension Trust Ltd. This was the first time Catherine had spoken to members of the Scheme since she took over the role from Bill Matthews in January 2019.

Catherine explained how changes to the structure of the Trustee Board have resulted in three independent trustees being appointed to the Board. ‘It’s useful to have trustees on a board who are genuinely independent with no association to the Scheme,’ she said.

Catherine’s first impressions of the Scheme were very favourable. ‘Usually when I join a scheme I look at how bad the complaints are, but the feedback I was shown was phenomenal.’ She also rated the executive team as ‘first rate’ and said that while the financial and operational aspects of the Scheme were excellent, it was important not to get complacent. She also commended the Scheme on its member communications, produced in-house by the BBC Pensions Team.

Crospero devised and compiled by Jim PalmComplete the square by using the clues; these apply only to words running across. Then take these words in numerical order and extract the letters indicated by a dot. If your answers are correct, these letters will give you a song which was popular in the late 1940s.

CLUES1. Divide (5); 2. Operational support equipment (3); 3. Not at home (4); 4. Wanders (6); 5. Town in France (5); 6. Day before (3); 7. Suitable (3); 8. Chicken (3); 9. Biblical character (3); 10. Sun colouring (3); 11. Move faster (3); 12. Cruel marquis (4); 13. Preposition (4); 14. Canine friend (3); 15. Pipe cover (3); 16. Auction item (3); 17. Nervous twitch (3); 18. Ruminant (3); 19. Moved fast (3); 20. Measurer (5); 21. On your way! (6); 22. Region (4); 23. South Eastern Railway (3); 24. Wise ones (5)

Please send your answers in an envelope marked ‘Crospero’ to The Editor, Prospero, BBC Pension and Benefits Centre, Broadcasting House, Cardiff CF5 2YQ, by Monday, 4 November 2019. The winner will receive a £10 voucher.

Mr Robert Cox was the winner from August and the answer was ‘Cruising down the river’.

WIN£10

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3PROSPERO OCTOBER 2019 |

Letters 4-5

Prospero is provided free of charge to retired Scheme members, or to their spouses and dependants.

Prospero provides a source of news on former colleagues, developments at the BBC and pension issues, plus classified adverts. It is available online at bbc.co.uk/mypension

To advertise in Prospero, please see page 12.

Please send your editorial contributions, or comments/feedback, to: Prospero, BBC Pension and Benefits Centre, Broadcasting House, Cardiff CF5 2YQ

Email: prospero@bbc.co.uk

Please make sure that any digital pictures you send are scanned at 300dpi. Please also note that the maximum word count for obituaries is 350 words.

PROSPERO

Odds & ends 12- Northern Ireland Light Orchestra- Classifieds- Caption competition

Prospero October 2019

The next issue of Prospero will appear in December 2019. The copy deadline is Monday, 4 November 2019.

Contents

Back at the BBC 6-7- BBC launches audio trial- BBC secures rights to UEFA Women's

Euro 2021- BBC monitoring 80th anniversary- BBC public service voice assistant

VVS celebrates 25 years 2

Obituaries 11

VOLUNTEER VISITINGSCHEME

COFFEE SHOP

Would you welcome occasional contact with

former colleagues?

Available throughout the UK to BBC pensioners over age 70

Visitors are also BBC pensioners

Operates from the Pension and Benefits

Centre

Visitors carry ID cards with them for your

security

Meet at home for a chat or somewhere public like a

coffee shop

We can also offer support during

difficult times such as bereavement

Want to know more about what the VVS has to offer?Call the pension service line on 029 2032 2811 or

email myPension@bbc.co.uk

Over 2,000 pensioners already use the scheme

Memories 8-10- Bulgarian autocue- The Radio Museum- Nationwide 50th anniversary- A most tricky move- A feud between TVC and Outside Broadcasts

Independent livingOn Day Two, Neil Williams from Care & Repair Wales told the visitors about the charity’s role in helping older people manage life’s transitions – ‘those little changes that, if not addressed, could lead to longer-term problems’.

He cited ‘the rug’ as a case in point: how many falls are caused by a rug and lead to long-term hospital admissions and eventually to people being unable to live independently at home.

Care & Repair provide a free front-end service, where they visit older people in their homes and point out where they could make improvements to help them stay in their homes for longer.

Care & RepairThere are equivalent services across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, although they might work in slightly different ways.

Wales: 0300 111 3333

England: 0300 124 0315

Scotland: 0141 221 9879

Northern Ireland: 03448 920 900

A life less lonelyDr Debra Morgan, from the Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research, Swansea University, has been carrying out research into loneliness and how it impacts mental and physical health. Her presentation to the visitors aimed to ‘lift the lid’ on people’s pathways into loneliness and what can be learned from them.

It’s a complex issue, and the paths that lead people to experience loneliness and social isolation can be very different from one person to another. It could be the result of a single event, such as a bereavement, while for others it happens over a period of time.

‘You can be lonely even if you have a large network, because it’s not the quantity but the quality of connections that is important,’ she said.

Dementia FriendsThe final session of the conference was a workshop run by Dementia Friends. This is an Alzheimer’s Society initiative, which aims to create dementia-friendly communities where people are more aware of what life is like for someone with dementia. You can find out more at: www.dementiafriends.org.uk

The conference was closed by the BBC Pension Scheme Operations & Communications Manager Jeff Webley, who gave a special word of thanks to Cheryl Miles for organising this year’s conference as well as all her hard work in her role as the Volunteer Visiting Scheme co-ordinator.

BBC Volunteer Visiting SchemeThe BBC Volunteer Visiting Scheme was set up to provide companionship and friendship to BBC pensioners aged 70 and over, those recently bereaved, and anyone in poor health. The BBC currently has 12,843 pensioners who qualify for a visit. You may prefer to meet up for a coffee somewhere local.

Even if you have previously declined a visit, you can always contact your visitor through Cheryl Miles to arrange a meeting, especially if you feel lonely. Or you can call 029 2032 2811 to find out more.

Central SquareNeil was followed by Alun Jones, BBC programme director, who gave the visitors a virtual tour of Central Square, the new Foster & Partners-designed headquarters for BBC Wales.

The last time Alun stood in front of the audience was four years ago, when the building was only a blueprint, but now it’s almost ready to open, with cutting-edge technology fit for a 21st-century broadcaster.

One of the first teams to move in will be the BBC Pensions Team in October, followed by other non-broadcast teams before Christmas and then production staff after Christmas.

According to Alun, many other tenants have moved into other buildings in the area as a result of the BBC taking up a prime spot. These include Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, HMRC and several legal firms. An independent consultant has estimated that the BBC deal has created £1bn in value for the Welsh economy.

| LETTERS

4

The end of intrusive music? I don't think so Following yet more correspondence on music levels, I read a pertinent article in an August edition of the Radio Times on this controversial subject.

Under the heading, ‘The beginning of the end for mumbling’, apparently the BBC has developed some new technology that will allow viewers to adjust the sound balance to suit themselves. The RT piece adds: It’s only in the experimental stage and is not yet close to being introduced on iPlayer or our TVs at home.

I fear this device is the way ahead, but will this gadget solve issues in other, equally important areas? For too long producers have peddled irrelevant music to drown the pictures and cover their lack of expertise. Do current producers not realise they are ruining programmes by using wall-to-wall music which regularly fails to match the beautifully-shot visuals?

I’m proud of my 15 years on the staff as film editor which led me into directing documentaries freelance. In both categories I worked on many programmes that had no music on their soundtracks. Modern producers seem to give little thought to their choice of music, thus the output looks the same regardless of the subject and location.

This new gizmo may help with the excessive volume of the music and I’m sure the BBC are delighted with their new invention. But doesn’t this format let them off the hook? If we are to become dubbing mixers at home, this surely is the case. The person leading the trials seems to offer a warning when she says: ‘One blanket solution – say, turning the music down – is not going to work for everyone, and certainly it’s not going to work creatively’.

Paul Foxall

COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE music in TV documentaries always seem to be met with the same reply. Music, the producers say, adds to the experience. Opponents disagree – music, they say, interferes with and subtracts from it. I suggest that we pause for a moment to consider not only the volume, but the quality of this music. There is an art in putting music to film, with many fine examples. They follow well tried principles, and it is failure to follow these principles which, I believe, has led to present impasse.

The sounds complained about usually fall into one of two categories. The first are akin to effect – the sudden ‘whoosh’, the few bars of an orchestral climax, the

explosion, etc. Some of these contain a bar or two of music, but never with any musical coherence.

The other category, and the most distracting, is a series of arpeggios and other sound patterns, usually with a synthesized keyboard quality. The material can vary, but is always repetitive, and is cut to length as required. It is most usually found under the voice-over or narrative of a documentary, then silenced for the personal interviews. It is neutral and bears no relation to the subject.

What both of these categories have in common as that they are devoid of any original created music, and those responsible for the soundtracks would seem to be musical technologists rather than musicians. Played at any volume they can be an irritant.

Consider, in contrast, the production of genuine film music. The producer commissions a composer, whose first job is to view the film. The producer then indicates which sequences require music, and what the music should do. The composer is given the timings and goes away to create a score. Thus far the needs of the multi-million-pound feature filmmaker and those of the producer of a one-off TV documentary are the same. From then on money obviously takes over. Star Wars uses the London Symphony Orchestra for a multitude of expensive sessions. The documentary producer takes the score to a musician who realises it on a synthesizer. But whether we are talking about the feature film or the documentary, we enjoy a tailormade product, using the work of real musicians (in the case of the documentary only two of them) as much as it uses talented actors, cameramen and producers. The extra costs, if any, would surely be a fraction of the total budget. Much more importantly, the film would be genuinely enhanced by the freshness of the music, rather than being dragged down by its banality.

Colin Bradbury

THE COMMENTS ON music in the August edition of Prospero are thoroughly justified. The sight of hippos paddling through the Okavango Delta was not enhanced by playing the Blue Danube. May I add that the cash-strapped BBC could possibly save a substantial sum in music copyright by ending the practice?

Rodney Mantle

Heard the one about the kangaroo stuck in a lift?I was intrigued to read Brian Hawkins’ article on the catastrophic opening night of BBC2, when much of London was plunged into darkness. Brian was often the genial and reassuring TM2 when I was a fledgling studio director of Choice, the pioneering consumer programme of the 1960s.

The night the power failed, 20 April 1964, I was in Lime Grove Studios, in our ramshackle offices at the far end of the 6th floor. Walking down the back staircase I found myself staring at the large scenic lift, which was stuck between floors. In it was a kangaroo. There may even have been two, but I can only remember one. Presumably it was on its way to a studio, with a keeper.

BBC2 marketing had been centred on a pair of graphic kangaroos called Hullabaloo and Custard, and I suppose their real-life counterparts were to make an appearance on opening night.

It is such a bizarre memory that I sometimes wonder if I dreamed it. Does anyone else remember a kangaroo stuck in the lift at Lime Grove?

Edward Mirzoeff

Paul Foxall is correct – the BBC has been trialling technology that would allow viewers to adjust sound levels. Turn to page 6 to find out more.

Revising old haunts at Televison CentreI was delighted to read the articles about TVC in the recent edition of Prospero. Quite by chance I recently visited TVC, the first time since it was sold by the BBC. My granddaughter and her boyfriend decided I needed cheering up following the recent loss of my dear wife so offered to take me out to lunch at TVC. What a delightful experience and what a change since I started out there as a young engineer in 1969.

All the grounds are now landscaped and open to the public. Even the fountain is working, which I recall was stopped when it started leaking into the VT area. Everything above the ground floor studio level now appears to be apartments, and the ring road where the scenery areas were has now been rebuilt as an outer ring of very posh (and expensive) apartments.

Would you believe, whilst walking round I bumped into a lady called Zena who many will remember as the senior receptionist at White City for many years.

After much reminiscing it was time for drinks and lunch. What was the Spur is now a hive of activity offering a very upmarket cocktail bar and an assortment of restaurants. We chose the Indian cuisine which was quite excellent. So if any retired colleagues fancy a bit of nostalgia I can thoroughly recommend a visit to the old haunts.

Tim Burrell

Nigel HolmesNigel’s enthusiasm for local radio was indeed deep and goes back to the earliest days of the 1970s and the ‘local radio experiment’. He was knocking at the door of BBC Radio Durham even as its studios were being created and he was finishing postgraduate work. His instigation of a student radio programme provided first steps for many who went on to have significant broadcasting careers. I was fortunate to be one of them. His love for the medium never faltered and after retirement he enthusiastically joined the BBC visitor scheme where he was able to share stories and friendships.

John Forrest

Out of focus shotsWe are fortunate to live in an age of High Definition Television giving us superb quality.

Maybe it’s just me, but why is every other shot on many programmes out of focus? Can someone explain this as I find it distracting and a strain on the eyes, and add to this the ridiculous background music drowning out the conversation I am trying to follow.

Brian Tapp

5PROSPERO OCTOBER 2019 |

BBC war memorialsI was interested to see the letter from Martin Briscoe about BBC war memorials in the August 2019 edition of Prospero.

I must, however, clarify a misunderstanding about the memorials to BBC staff at Caversham Park mentioned in Martin’s letter.

These were not war related, but were memorials to deceased members of staff, and in some cases their family members, who had worked at Caversham. There were dozens of such memorials across the estate.

Before BBC Monitoring and BBC Berkshire left Caversham Park last year, there was an extensive effort by my colleague Jan Campbell to document all of the memorials and, where possible, contact any surviving relatives to see if they would like to take ownership of them.

As a result, the great majority of the memorials were collected by relatives.

A dozen memorials remained and were removed to the garden of the BBC Written Archives Centre, which is in a part of Caversham Park that is not being sold by the BBC.

Chris Greenway

Dinky OB vehicles

I was interested in the item by Geoff Dawe in the recent issue of Prospero. Geoff was a member of the OB Section of Planning and Installation Department at the time of the production of the first colour OB vehicle.

I was a member of the Section when the Department was dissolved as part of the great cull of BBC Engineering in 1987. When clearing my desk I came across a photograph of CMCR12, taken in 1955 (top left). My second photo is of a model of the same vehicle, part of a set of three Dinky Toys made at about that time.

The other two Dinky Toy models are a Roving Eye car (complete with camera and cameraman (person?) on the roof) and a communications truck with an extending mast operated by a small winding handle and a length of BBC waxed twine, the latter purloined by me when the original cord broke.

Bill Rhodes

History of BBC TVI read with interest your report in the August 2019 issue of Prospero and regret I cannot offer any memories of Mr Jewell.

I was one of the producers in BBC TV, mainly in OBs for Peter Dimock (I produced the first Come Dancing programmes, for example) but also for Light Entertainment. For a while I was based in Lime Grove.

I was one of the first producers to work out of Television Centre. (I had a caravan as my office, among the builders’ trucks, as the centre was being built.)

I left the BBC in 1973 (heading a team of 28 producers at Aeolian Hall) after planning the introduction of R1 and R2, for a commercial career mainly in the US with EMI, retiring (as Deputy Chairman) in the mid-seventies.

Donald MacLean(age 93)

Alan KerridgeGeoffrey Hawkes’ piece on Alan Kerridge rekindled some very vivid memories and inspired me to add a few of my own…

Al was a one-off, a true individual and one of those characters who gave Tech Ops its unique, quirky flavour. Geoff’s photograph perfectly captures the personality of the man: quizzical, humorous, sidelong. Al was slow of speech but quick of reflex – and brought his own very personal approach to everything he did. As a cameraman he cultivated a practical, sleeves-rolled-up style, brown thick-soled walking shoes grounding his spare frame, pencil stub tucked behind his left ear, little tin sandwich box on standby for the next break.

Alongside his humour – and despite the prevailing culture of the time – his nature had a contrary streak of the puritan. He never drank, he never swore – although he did smoke. Thin, evil-smelling, hand-rolled cigarettes – did he keep one ready behind his right ear? On his solitary walking and cycling trips, he was accompanied by his portable tape machine and camera, on which he recorded at length the sights and sounds around him.

Al loved music and had a particular passion for jazz. He once gave me a cassette tape of favourite songs that he had compiled. Interspersed with Eddie Condon, Fats Waller and Stan Kenton I was surprised to find the theme song from M.A.S.H. ‘Suicide Is Painless’. Maybe I had stumbled upon a sign of a hidden, darker side to the character of a complex, fascinating man. Alan Kerridge was someone who, for a few years, truly lit up my life. I was very sad to hear of his passing.

Steve Cockayne

The time Doctor Who zapped my liftReading of Dick McCarthy’s strange events (August 2019) reminded me of what happened when Doctor Who zapped the lift I was in.

I don’t remember the date but it was during Jon Pertwee’s stint as the Doctor. My job as a film traffic supervisor was (among other things) to make sure films got to TK (Telecine) for their bookings, transmissions, transfers or studio inserts. For information on which films were required and when meant a trip each weekday lunchtime to Programme Planning on the 6th floor of the main block of TV Centre, to collect final and revised TK booking sheets.

On this particular day I did just that, returning to the South Hall lifts where I called and entered the lift, pressing ‘G’ to return to the ground level. The lift travelled down and stopped at the 2nd floor, where Jon Pertwee (aka Doctor Who) stepped in and pressed 4.

‘Going down’ I said. The doors closed and the lift went UP to the 4th floor. As Jon got out, I said, ‘Look, I know you’re a time lord – you don’t have to prove it!’

He replied, ‘I know but it does have its advantages.’

The explanation: Jon obviously called the lift a moment before I pressed ‘G’, therefore on reaching the 2nd floor the lift was waiting for its next instruction.

Neville Withers

6

| BACK AT THE BBC

THE BBC LAUNCHES ACCESSIBLE AND ENHANCED AUDIO TRIALThe BBC has been testing technology that will allow viewers to tune out background noise while boosting characters’ voices, making programmes easier to follow.

BBC Monitoring celebrates its 80th anniversaryBBC Monitoring is a unique institution which grew out of a partnership between the BBC, and the UK and US Governments in a very different media age, during the Second World War, where people chosen for their languages skills listened into foreign media to track what was broadcast during the conflict, by both enemies and allies. It proved such a fount of information that Winston Churchill himself requested a copy be sent directly to him every morning during the war years, with a special teleprinter link established in 10 Downing Street to speed up reporting.

It has continued to re-invent itself for each successive generation, but the analysis and understanding the teams give us has never been more relevant than it is now.

Since the war, Monitoring has continued to serve a vital and specialised purpose picking up on breaking international stories before anyone else, such as the crashing of flight MH17 in 2014, and lending the kind of in-depth insight to developing stories that can only be accrued through constant watching and listening.

In the last 80 years, Monitoring have moved from headquarters in Eversham, to Caversham, and now to London, with 12 international bureaux, including in Kiev, Delhi, Jerusalem and Kabul. They work in more than 100 languages with an archive stretching back to 1939.

As technology has evolved over the years, it has transformed everyone’s lives as media organisations can communicate with their audiences more quickly than ever before. This change in the way we communicate has also transformed BBC Monitoring from a small operation of 30 people to a much larger, much more sophisticated global organisation with international partnerships and operations.

A recent episode of the BBC One medical drama Casualty was the first to be produced with

the new feature. We caught up with Lauren Ward, the brains (and ears) behind this project.

Can you sum up the project?In Casualty A&E Audio the A&E actually stands for ‘Accessible and Enhanced’ audio. In this project we are trialling a new feature that allows you to change the audio mix of the episode to best suit your own needs and preferences.

At the right-hand side of the slider, you get the same mix as heard on TV. At the left, the dialogue is enhanced and some of the other sounds are quieter. You can adjust between these two extremes to get the right balance of dialogue, important sounds and atmosphere for you.

Why have you made this?Our hearing is very personal and we know that not everyone wants the same thing out of TV audio. The perfect cinematic mix for one viewer might be too loud, or too busy, for another. For many people, the level of background sound in a TV programme can make understanding the dialogue difficult, particularly for viewers who have a hearing impairment. We designed this feature to allow viewers to personalise their listening experience: enhancing some aspects of the audio mix and reducing others so that they can get the most out of TV dramas, tailored to their hearing needs.

What’s new?Our technology adds two things to the process of making and watching a TV programme. The first occurs after filming, when the audio mixing takes place. At this point each sound, or group of sounds, has an importance level attached to it (stored in metadata) by the dubbing mixer or producer.

The other part is the new slider, added to the online media player, called the Narrative Balancer. This is what’s used to personalise the mix. At one end of the slider all the objects are the same level as they are in the original broadcast mix. At the other end is a simplified mix with louder speech and only the most important sounds to the narrative. The viewer is then able to adjust between these two mixes to find the balance of dialogue and other sounds that they prefer.

Behind the scenes, the player is looking at where you have set the slider and for every group of sounds, either turning their volume up or down based on its importance. But for the user, it’s as simple as changing the volume.

Can you tell us a bit more about the technology?At BBC R&D we’re researching the next generation of audio for broadcasting – we call it object-based audio, and that’s what this new feature is based on.

Currently, we transmit our programmes as a single pre-mixed stream. This includes vision, speech, sound effects,

background music and all the other sounds. However, this makes trying to change the volume of the individual elements, like dialogue, nearly impossible. It’d be like trying to take the eggs out of an already baked cake.

Object-based audio sends all of the elements separately, with instructions on how to play the separate elements, known as ‘metadata’. In our cake analogy, this would be like sending you the ingredients and the recipe rather than the finished cake. This means that when your device reassembles the soundtrack, what you hear can be tailored to you.

What were the challenges?Not all sounds in a TV or film soundtrack are created equal. In almost all programmes, the dialogue conveys much of the story, so we knew any

accessible audio solution we developed needed to enhance the dialogue. However, there is also some core information that’s carried in non-speech sounds: consider the gunshot in a ‘whodunnit’ or the music in the film Jaws. Without these important sounds, the story wouldn’t make sense. From this we start to build a hierarchy of sounds. Speech is at the top, followed by non-speech sounds that convey core elements of the story, and finally atmospheric elements. Our technology uses this idea of how important a sound is to the story to make personalising audio simple, whilst ensuring that the story always makes sense.

The Casualty trial ended on 31 August but we’ll keep you updated on future developments.

BBC secures rights to UEFA Women's Euro 2021

The BBC announced that is has secured the broadcast rights to the UEFA Women’s Euro 2021. We’ll be bringing extensive coverage of every game from grounds throughout England across TV, radio and online. The announcement follows on from our coverage of the record-breaking FIFA World Cup 2019 in France, which saw England reach the semi-finals.

A massive peak TV audience of 11.7 million tuned in to watch the Lionesses take on USA in the semi-final – making it the highest TV audience of 2019 so far. The tournament reached more than 28.1 million people on TV alone, eclipsing the 12.4 million record set in 2015.

Barbara Slater, Director of BBC Sport, says: ‘At the start of this summer, we wanted to shift the dial on women’s football and I feel the phenomenal coverage from France has done just that. The BBC’s sport portfolio continues to go from strength to strength and we’re thrilled to add the 2021 Euros to that.’

This year, our audiences will have continued access to women’s football TV coverage with a match streamed from each round of the Women’s Super League and the Women’s Football Show. There will also be live women’s FA Cup football from the semi-finals and final as well as major international fixtures.

7PROSPERO OCTOBER 2019 |

Jeremy: Ok Beeb, I’ve got to go to Cardiff for work, can you help set me up with some podcasts and a playlist for the train?

Beeb: Absolutely, we’ve got the Brexitcast episode you wanted to listen to a couple of weeks ago, the rest of ‘Test Match Special at the Ashes’ you were listening to and there’s a new ‘Power Down’ playlist from Annie Mac if that’s interesting? What’s happening in Cardiff?

Jeremy: Playlist sounds good, let’s stick with that lot.The trip to Cardiff is to kick off the next phase of the product development work we’re doing around the BBC’s voice experiences. We’re finally getting close to a place where people will be able to talk directly to the BBC and we’ll be able to understand what they’re saying.

Beeb: Ok, but why would you want to do that? Doesn’t the BBC just make TV programmes and stuff?

Jeremy: Of course it does, but it also does so much more. It also makes world-leading radio programmes.

It creates and curates live events, music festivals, and major films. It also makes all of that online content. As well as fascinating programming around issues and topics ranging from The Blues to Blue Planet, from top Grime acts to Top Gear. Not to mention up to the minute news and weather right around the world. And Killing Eve and Strictly and, and, and…

That’s a hell of a lot of stuff to work your way through. And if you’re a licence fee payer you should get the best out of the full breadth of the BBC right? I know I struggle to keep up. We want to help everyone get the most they can out of the BBC.

That means giving them a little assistance. It means giving them a voice assistant.

DEVELOPING A NEW PUBLIC SERVICE VOICE ASSISTANT FROM THE BBC

Beeb: Wait, that does sound interesting. So the BBC is building its own voice assistant?

Jeremy: Ah, yeah. How else would I be talking to you?

Beeb: But I don’t get it, how would this voice assistant work? How different is that from talking to Alexa now? I can already ask Alexa to play BBC programmes and I can stream BBC radio on Google Assistant.

Jeremy: That’s right, over the last two years the team have built out experiences on Amazon’s Alexa and Google, and they’re really good. They’ve even won a bunch of awards for their children’s experiences.

The BBC has a long history of tech innovation in the UK, but in this area we’re at the behest of huge US-based tech companies. We pioneered TV in the UK, as the world started to embrace it. At the advent of the Internet, we made sure there was a trustworthy, quality website where the public could access news. And now – as a fifth of UK adults have voice-enabled smart speakers and it becomes the next technology that could change how people find and consume content – we are innovating in this space, too

We also know that people who use voice assistants are concerned with how their data is being used – especially around things like targeted advertising.

By building a BBC assistant, we can build an assistant that is trusted and puts audiences at its very heart. It will serve up what people want to watch or listen to – from across the BBC – from iPlayer to BBC Sounds, News to Sport – on smart speakers, our website, apps and TVs – and free of commercial interests. It will allow us to have the creative freedom to experiment and try out new ways of connecting with people through conversation. We move quickly in rather than

needing someone else’s permission to build in a certain way. It’ll allow us to be much more ambitious and more experimental in the content that teams can create and the ways in which we help people to find the best bits of the BBC for them.

Beeb: So where would I find it? Is there a new device people will need to get?

Jeremy: No, we’re not creating any devices of our own. Right now the focus is on building it and piecing together the first experiences while we figure out the best ways to provide it to people. We’ll know more on that soon. It’s being built to work on any voice-assisted device (smart speaker, mobile, TV or anything else) so ultimately we’d like to make it as widely available as possible. However, we would need the device manufacturers to let people have access to it.

Beeb: Ok, sounds like you have a lot to do… when is this thing meant to be ready?

Jeremy: Yeah, there’s a lot to do – but we’re aiming to make a first version available next year. It won’t be the finished product – we’ll constantly improve it.

Beeb: It does sound pretty exciting but it also doesn’t sound like what people think the BBC does?

Jeremy: Yeah, it’s funny that. Because this is exactly what the BBC does. The BBC helps all of us better engage with the world around us. It helps to inform, educate and entertain each of us. And it’s always done this by pushing hard to pioneer new ways of doing those things. At the beginning the best way to do that was to produce the nation’s only reliable radio content, then TV. Then BBC News Online. Then the BBC led the way in on-demand video with iPlayer and BBC Sounds is starting to reinvent what we do for music, radio and podcast fans in the UK.Earlier this year we reached a point where 21% of UK adults claim to have a smart speaker in their home. That’s one in five people with a voice assistant in their house. And I’d wager near enough 99% have one in their pocket on their phone…

We are entering into an assistant-enabled age.

Whenever there have been marked shifts in the way that we consume content or understand the world around us, the BBC has been at the forefront of figuring out what those shifts mean for public service values and for how we should enable everyone, not just the ‘techies’ to explore their world in new ways.

That’s what the BBC does and that’s what we’re doing by building a BBC assistant.

Beeb: Alright, alright, but you never answered my question though, why are you going to Cardiff? The teams are in Salford, Glasgow and London but not Cardiff?

Jeremy: Oh right, sorry. I’m going to Cardiff to help with the audio collection.For this thing to work for everyone the assistant will have to recognise everyone’s accent to accurately understand what each of us is saying. So a few of us are off to help gather different audio samples from different parts of the country and from people with different accents all over the UK. We’ll start in BBC offices and then build a basic model that way. Assuming that works, we’ll continue to refine it.

Beeb: So what’s this assistant thing going to be called then?

Jeremy: Urm…isn’t your name a potential giveaway?

Beeb: Ok…Beeb.

In a conversation with the BBC’s new voice assistant ‘Beeb’ (a working title), Jeremy Walker, one of the team building it, explains a bit more about what it is and why the BBC’s doing it.

| MEMORIES

Back in 1987 I was working in Presentation at TVC and had answered a request for studio directors to help with the general election.

The actual job in question was on the day after the election, when various countries from around

Europe wanted to report back on the results, and the BBC had offered Presentation Studio B as a resource.

The International Control Room at TVC would feed the report directly back to the relevant country, via the Eurovision circuits, where it could be recorded for a later broadcast, or in a few cases go live.

The BBC would provide all the staff and resources needed for what should be fairly straightforward sequences – mostly one person to camera, plus a few graphics and short video inserts.

The main BBC graphics for that election were the computerised fly-around the Houses of Parliament, which I am sure many of you will remember. Quite a few people wanted to use these as part of their report, plus captions and sometimes extra video clips of their own.

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BULGARIAN AUTOCUE

Some days beforehand, there had been a big briefing session in the Bridge Lounge, where representatives from the various countries had been assembled.

At the briefing it had been explained, among other things, that autocue facilities would be available, and scripts could be typed up on the day if required. However, if the script was in a non-western alphabet, the BBC would not have facilities at TVC for typing this up, and that therefore they needed to bring their script already typed up on the narrow strip of paper that would fit the autocue machine, and the required dimensions of this strip were explained.

On the day the turnaround in the studio was pretty quick. As I recall, each country had a total allocation of 45 minutes in Pres B, including set-up.

I am no linguist, and so I had invited my brother – who worked as a translator and spoke quite a few languages – to come into TVC for the day, just in case I found myself in deep linguistic waters.

Well, we had a number of western European countries that did their bit, and everything went smoothly. They all spoke perfect English as well. Then came the Bulgarians.

There were two of them, a presenter and a producer, and they had planned quite an ambitious piece, including a couple of VT inserts. Moreover, they would be going live on Bulgarian TV.

They produced their script. Helpfully, they had brought a number of copies. Less helpfully, there were four A4 pages, densely typed in the Cyrillic script. Apart from the fact that no-one could read it, clearly the A4 sheets would not fit on the autocue. It appeared that the presenter would simply have to read from the script placed on the desk in front of him, which would have been, well, less than ideal. They both looked rather downcast.

Luckily, given the limited time to come up with a solution, an alternative idea presented itself.

We pinned the four sheets of script vertically on the wall of the studio. There was a spare studio camera, which was given the job of pointing at the script, and we fed that camera into a big Prowest monitor, which was positioned immediately below the lens of the main camera. The presenter would now be able to see the script, albeit just below the camera lens. But that was a whole lot lot better than the script being down on the desk, and certainly the resulting eyeline was pretty good.

I guess we might have been able to feed the script camera directly into the autocue monitor, but time was tight, and also the normal autocue system only has three or four words on a line. We needed a wider image, since

...if the script was in a non-western alphabet, the BBC would not have facilities at TVC for typing this up

A visit to The Radio Museum, WatchetA couple of us oldies had a terrific time spotting things at The Radio Museum Watchet that we had actually used.

It is open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays (except by special arrangement), from 10am to 5pm.

Many of the items on display are early BBC equipment and ephemera, some rescued from the Washford station before its re-engineering in the late 1970s, along with a collection of radios, televisions and related artefacts and literature.

Perhaps Prospero readers might look through their ‘stuff’ and see if any should be safeguarded for the future in the museum? You can find out more at www.orbem.co.uk/misc/washford.htm

Robin Hicks

Nationwide – 50th anniversaryHalf a century ago, at 6pm on 9 September 1969, the red lights were switched on in Studio E, Lime Grove and Michael Barratt announced, ‘It’s time to go Nationwide.’

For 14 years the programme became a BBC1 early evening rock, often attracting more than 10 million viewers.

To celebrate the 50 years since that first edition, 60 of the original team gathered at a Thameside restaurant to raise a glass to the programme that was as much loved behind the camera as it was to the millions at home.

Michael Barratt, now 91, led the celebrations as presenters, producers and the film team recalled the days that were such an important part of their professional BBC lives.

Ronald Neil

we had full-size A4 sheets with longer lines of text on them. I am sure the text would have been too small to read even if we had managed to feed it into the autocue.

The producer had to be in the gallery with us, in order to tell us when to run the video inserts or cut to one of the captions, since we of course had no idea where we were in the programme. So far so good. Just one problem remained.

The cameraman operating the camera that was pointing at the script pinned on the wall had absolutely no idea how the written script he could see in the viewfinder corresponded to what the presenter was saying, since – like the rest of us – he couldn’t read Cyrillic script. So he would not be able to tilt down to follow the presenter’s words.

Luckily my brother piped up at this point and said that he could read Cyrillic script; so he got the job of standing in the studio, and as the presenter read the script from the Prowest monitor, my brother ran his finger down the script on the wall, and the cameraman followed my brother’s finger, thus keeping ‘Bulgarian autocue’ in perfect sync.

Maybe some Prospero readers were in Pres B that day and remember it?

Hendrik Ball

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There was the time when the camera crew and myself were eating at one of Ernest Hemingway’s old

favourites, La Bodeguita del Medio, in Havana, Cuba. It’s where he drank his mojitos – the rum-and-mint tipple he loved. His daiquiries he drank at the Floridita, as we all know.

This was a celebration dinner as we were wrapping and moving on the next day, so there was an air of fiesta and good food.

Tucking into a lamb stew, the sound recordist picked out a superb piece of spinach. ‘Nice,’ he said, trying to cut the juicy stalk.

But no knife penetrated, for this was not what it seemed.

I held the steaming morsel up, and you know, the shock of seeing writing, with the restaurant’s name upon it on the unfurled ‘leaf’, gave myself and the crew of five a tremendous start.

It was a green-coloured thick paper menu that had fallen into the lovely stew and become macerated and soggy – just like spinach. The waiter said he wondered if the cook had just got fed up with life and threw in the menu as a makeweight for being underpaid.

About a year after the Cuban episode, in late 1974, I was with a camera crew in the small town of Most in then-Czechoslovakia. Most is found in the northwest part of the Czech Republic between the Krušné Mountains and the Czech central highlands.

The camera crew had not really believed that their supper the previous evening was to be a fish dish of carp, after a long and needling day trying to achieve an overview of the country’s medical achievements. But reluctantly they ate that carp. (They like their red meat, the ravening camera crews do.)

A surreal sightEarly in the morning, as we were getting booted up to go filming, we looked out of the window of the hotel and saw the lovely local golden church across the road set off and start moving.

Yes – some of the camera crew were quite certain this was indeed so while others doubted their senses, quite rightly.

Slowly, slowly the church seemed to be inching forward, defying the laws of physics, engineering, and the real world in general. People were still walking by on the pavement taking no notice.

Maybe all our sins had caught up with us, and this was the sign that should pour repentance into our craggy hearts.

Could it be the carp taking its revenge?

Again, as over the menu in our stew in Cuba, we were startled and discombobulated (the only word that will really do).

The church of the 16th century Kostel Nanebevzetí Panny Marie, or Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, really was on the move.

The hole storyEngineers of Most had plotted this shift for seven years, I discovered later. The whole thing is now recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the heaviest building ever moved on rails, at nearly 13,000 tons deadweight.

The preparation work for moving the church lasted seven years, as it was also necessary to demolish all houses in the transfer path and fill in a great hole in the ground that was originally an opencast mine.

There are incredible things you learn and stumble across, on a TV filming shoot. History comes into it all right, as you shall see.

A MOST TRICKY MOVE

The church had to be carefully melded onto a huge concrete collar at the base then supported from there up to the vaulted ceiling. Once stable, the whole structure had 53 metal trucks slipped underneath, and it set off along sturdy rails.

As the church went over one set of rails they were taken up and bolted onto the pathway in the front of the church’s progress, saving money in terms of buying more trackway!

The whole moving enterprise took six months, inch by inch.

That is what we were goggling at – the great golden edifice on the move.

What an undertaking!

No real wonder that we found it hard to see if the church was actually moving since its speed was just a few centimetres an hour. Snails travel faster.

But we were all agreed, the camera crew and myself. The question was: why on earth in Most’s name would you do this?

Why?It’s true that over the years planners and builders have found that sometimes, whatever the cost and time, there just are no sensible alternatives to moving a complete structure.

Engineers, plotting the future shapes and movements of the planet’s objects, have come up with dozens of answers to altering their position.

Even the huge statues of the Pharoahs at Abu Simbel on the river Nile in Egypt were sliced into great blocks, transported to a site away from the rising waters of the river after a dam was put in place, and then reconstituted.

There is even one recorded case in the USA where an enormous office building was moved – with all the people inside it.

by Richard Mayhew-Smith

So, to answer the question in this case of ‘Why?’ we have to look back to the great industrial achievements of the land, going back many centuries well before the church was built.

In what I believe romantic writers call ‘the mists of time’, great swathes of trees grew up and then fell down or were cut down.

It is a region of great wetness, with three bridges over the river Bilina linking the earliest populations. Consequently, you had the perfect conditions for the formation of peat, which later was compressed into a young form of coal – lignite.

This is where the foundation of much of Czechoslovakia’s industrial might has come from and from more mature coal fields, too, it can be said.

Once the mining for lignite began in Most around the church, it meant many buildings had to be pulled down to make way for the mines. Not the church, however, since it was and still is one of the marvels of the region.

However, as the mining engineers crept up on Most, taking away the lignite to the factories, they thought about taking the church apart, stone by stone and numbering the pieces and putting the whole lot back together in a new spot, like a Brobdignagian jigsaw puzzle.

The engineers decided that despite the huge problems it was easier to pick the whole jolly lot up and transport the church as one piece.

So eventually, after many months of planning, the church made its teetering way across town and was plonked down half a mile away (or rather, inched down, everyone trying not to sneeze, one supposes).

Years of repairs and fitting out followed, and the church is now once again the pride of Most, being used for not just church services but also, in the basement, an exhibition area for a north Bohemian gallery and public space.

Very brave and very impressive, we all decided, looking through the windows in that hotel in Most in 1975.

What could the clever engineers of the country come up with next? Of course there’s always the statue of King Wenceslas, maybe, wanting a quick move away from the hubbub of central Prague and off to the peace of the hills…

Richard Mayhew-Smith was a producer/director with BBC News TV at Ally Pally and then White City, from 1964-1976.

020 8752 6666

BBC.CLUB@BBC.CO.UK

BBC Club Broadcast Centre, BC2 B3, 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TP

EventsWe have had some fantastic events already this year, with by far and away the most popular being the September trip to the Supreme Court with 55 spaces being filled! In this instance BBC Club was able to increase the amount of spaces available to accommodate all those interested. Although such trips are available to all retired BBC Club members (and their guests), those who are members of the Prospero Society do get a week’s priority booking as well as discounted rates. This means that on trips with limited availability such as the October visit to the Royal Chelsea Hospital, those who are not members of Prospero may well miss out. BBC Club’s Prospero Society is totally separate from this newspaper and is available for retired BBC Club members to join at a cost of £15 per year.

In early November there is a guided tour of Parliament planned, followed by a matinee to see a musical version of the Ealing Comedy classic, ‘The Man in the White Suit', starring Stephen Mangan and Kara Tointon.

December sees the popular Christmas lunch at BBC Club W1, where we open the Club exclusively for our retired members. Why not reminisce over lunch and catch up with old friends – or make some new? The Regent Street Christmas lights have been far superior to those on Oxford Street of late – here’s your opportunity to see what you think! This even must be pre-booked and details are available in the Prospero newsletter, via email or on the BBC Club website.

If you would like more details about any of our trips, including how to book, the BBC Club Retired Members and Prospero Society newsletter is available to download at bbcclub.com/connect/prospero/newsletters

BBC Club members will have a copy emailed to them and Prospero Society members can receive the newsletter via post; please call 0208 752 6666 or email bbc.club@bbc.co.uk to update your email address or to join the Prospero Society.

Retired members’ lunch at Wogan HouseThis is now available EVERY DAY from 12 noon to 2.30pm at BBC Club W1 adjacent to New Broadcasting House. You can pick up your complimentary copy of the Radio Times here too. One course £6.00, two courses £7.50. (BBC Club members only, excludes Christmas menu.)

Photography Club The Photography Club has a new committee and lots of new ideas! Featuring photo-walks and workshops every month, preparing for the Annual Exhibition is very much the focus in the coming months so why not visit their website to see what is on offer? bbcclub.com/connect/photography

Film Screening ClubWith a new home in a private screening theatre in central London and a new screening time of 7pm, the Film Screening Club has bought some exciting titles to its members in 2019. Still to come in October is ‘The Woman in the Window’, with ‘Ad Astra’ and ‘Terminator – Dark Fate’ following in November and December. FREE to Film Screening members. bbcclub.com/connect/film-screenings

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| MEMORIES

A FEUD BETWEEN TVC AND TVOBSThe article about MCR21 in the last issue of Prospero reminded Roy Bradshaw of occasional disputes between Television Centre and TVOBs.

Around 1960 I was the sound supervisor of MCR15 (for the technically minded, a 3-camera Outside Broadcast unit using 3-inch image

orthicons, with a 2-group, 10-channel sound desk plus an auxiliary 4-channel sub-mixer).

There was a current affairs programme that went out live at 7pm from Television Centre, and the production team thought it would be a good idea to do the programme from the restaurant area at the top of the Post Office Tower.

I am guessing MCR15 was chosen to do this as we had a de-rig kit that would allow us to take all the equipment out of the vehicle and reconstruct it at the top of the tower, which was still under construction.

This meant carrying the equipment in and sharing a very small lift with bags of cement etc, up to the floor below the restaurant area. This was to be the control room, while the cameras were on restaurant level above and acted as the studio.

Both levels were like a doughnut made of brick and glass – there were no soft furnishings to absorb sound, but more about that later.

We got everything rigged and ready for the OB director to arrive at 11am just to check the facilities for an afternoon rehearsal. He arrived late at about 2pm, as there had been a dispute over whether the programme should be directed by a studio or OB director.

OBs had won the debate, but when the director arrived he still didn’t know what was in the programme. This situation was still there at 4pm when we were sent away to find somewhere to eat and be back by 5pm to set up and be ready for a rehearsal at 6pm.

When we got back there were dozens of people around, mostly having no practical input into the programme and generally getting in the way.

The idea behind the programme was that the presenter would stand with his back to the window with London at night as a backdrop behind him. As anyone will know who has looked out of a window at night from a well-lit room, all you see are your own lights.

The lighting engineer was having real problems. One suggestion was that we paint the names of the buildings on the windows to show where they were if we could see them. Patience was being stretched for everyone. The presenters quite naturally wanted to have the same facilities as they had in TVC, and one asked where he could see VT. He was told to go down in the lift, walk to Oxford Street and catch the number 87 bus back to Lime Grove.

Eventually we were getting somewhere but there was still the problem of setting up communications between TVC and the Post Office Tower. Telephones and talkback had to be checked as well as microphones, as slowly the format of the programme emerged.

I was busy at the desk dealing with these problems when I was asked to pass the message to the crew that the food and drink being supplied was for the production staff and their guests, not the engineers. Diplomatically I explained I was too busy to do that.

Eventually the production staff and their guests descended from the ‘studio’ to gather around the refreshments table set up just behind the control desk. Now remember we are in what is basically a circular brick and glass tunnel where every sound that was made reverberated around the loop. So while we were trying to line up with TVC and check talkback and microphones etc, we were basically in the middle of a cocktail party.

A complaint to the senior engineer brought a sergeant-major-type shout for quiet which was respected by all but a small party around a rather senior member of staff, so the demand for silence was put more forcibly. I don’t know of any major outcome from this approach.

We got the programme out somehow, and with luck the studio staff went home realising that outside broadcasts weren’t quite so easy as studio productions.

As an aside, MCR15 was also used for Come Dancing, the forerunner of Strictly Come Dancing. Where it was a competition between two dance halls in two separate towns, with the judges based in the studio, it was a complicated job to ensure everyone could see and hear everyone else.

The sound crew was myself and my assistant, and we would rig the PA, TB for the floor manager and spot operators, and mics for the presenters, audience and, of course, the band. This has little to do with the dispute situation, but it amuses me slightly when I hear the sound supervisor on Strictly has 10 microphones for the drum kit alone.

| OBITUARIES

From country girl to West End girl Norah Curtis, who died on 20 June

2019 aged 91, enjoyed a long and varied career at the BBC, followed by more than 30 years of active and rewarding retirement.

Born in rural Oxfordshire in 1927, Norah began her 43 years with the corporation in 1944 with a series of

secretarial jobs in the local area (the BBC had offices at Woodeaton Manor) that contributed to the war effort. In the late 1940s, she moved to the capital – quite a change for a country girl – and occupied similar posts at many central London premises.

Her hard work and commitment to the BBC meant that by the 1960s she was managing a secretarial pool at BBC Publications in Marylebone High Street, where she remained for the rest of her career. She then supervised the Data Preparation Unit and Control Section, supplying daily updates to systems handling the huge volume of schools publications, the emerging BBC Books market and associated accounts and advertising departments. As technology moved from paper tape to magnetic tape, then online, Norah’s department was at the forefront of some major changes in data processing.

Meanwhile she still found time for voluntary and recreational pursuits. In the early 1980s she offered her services to the Westminster GLAD Club for the local disabled, only to find she was running the club after just a few weeks due to the organisers’ departure. For the next 30 years she baked cakes, organised outings and bingo sessions, also helping the local allotment group, all with great success. In addition, Norah regularly played tennis and badminton and was extremely active in the ABS broadcasting union until her retirement in late 1987.

In recent years, Norah continued to support her local church, the Prospero Society and the BBC Pensioners’ Association. She remained fond of a glass of gin or a half of Hook Norton bitter until the end. Norah died after complications allied to Parkinson’s following a fall at her care home near Victoria. She’ll be greatly missed by all her old colleagues.

Don Smith & friends

BBC producer of films The filmmaker Ann Turner, who

has died aged 91, was likened by Kenneth Clark to the ‘senior tutor at a ladies college’. They met in the 1960s while making Civilisation, the first colour series for the BBC in which Ann Turner directed the

fourth film, ‘Art, The Measure of All Things’, on the Florentine Renaissance. In addition to that one film she was responsible for all the stills in the series, having learnt how best to use close ups and camera movement.

Clark said that ‘Ann may have been patronised by the series producer Michael Gill but she was the person on whose knowledge and organisation the series most depended’.

It cannot have been easy for her to direct and take charge of an all-male film unit but she did so with quiet authority.

The daughter of Dr Terence and Audrey Turner, a gifted amateur artist and pianist, Ann was involved for most of her life in BBC documentary films on the arts. After taking a degree in History and English at St Andrews, she worked at first in Bath for the costume historian, Doris Langley Moore. Moving to the BBC she worked for Huw Wheldon, who edited and presented Monitor, the first television arts programme in the late 1950s and early 1960s and for which she contributed to items on British art at the Venice Biennale and the photographer Don McCullin.

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In the 1970s she was a director on the America series with Alistair Cooke and on Royal Heritage, for which her films were on Victoria and Albert and their contribution to the Royal Collection.

Ann Turner always showed kindness and sensitivity to those with whom she worked and took delight in their happiness and reasons for celebration.

In retirement she lived at South Cerney in Gloucestershire where she raised funds for the National Art Fund, travelled and made a short film about the village in which she lived.

David Heycock

OB organiser Friends and colleagues will be

sorry to hear of the death of Jean Gilbert at the age of 94 years. She had moved from ‘The Bush’ to a nursing home in Devon a couple of years ago to be close to her daughter, Marian,

but had lived around the comer from Kensington House where she worked most of her BBC time in TelOBs Programme Department.

Jean started in the mid 1960s in the OB Group Organiser’s office. In the late 1960s the system changed and a new post of Organiser Resources was created by Peter Dimmock, the Group Organiser post being dropped. Jean became Secretary and then Assistant to the Resources Organiser. She bought into his new flowchart system really large boards which covered the office walls. They covered the current month’s deployment of OB facilities, as well as the next two months, thus providing efficient and economic use. She liaised with OB Engineering at Acton and the regions to keep the information up to date. Her office became a must-view place for Sports producers, with their need for short notice commitments, especially for football. Head of Sport, Brian Cowgill, was a regular visitor.

In 1979, however, the system was reorganised again. Again Central Planning had taken OB Planning and OB Group was divided into two separate departments. The post of OB Resources Organiser was scrapped and Jean moved back to the Sports Department. She was, however, a vital part of what became known as the golden age of TelOBs.

Jean was very popular at Kensington House and she had the knack of knowing how to find her Resources Organiser wherever he had disappeared to!

Her move to the West Country enabled her to be close to her growing family. She had two grandchildren, six greatgrandchildren and even three great-greatgrandchildren.

She died with the knowledge that she was much loved and will be greatly missed.

John Jones

Remembering Mona AdamsI knew Mona Adams, an outstanding TV researcher who has died aged 78, for over 40 years, having worked with her husband Bernard on Whistle Blowers in 1979. I first got to know Mona from her frequent phone calls to the office, giving me my first exposure to her forceful personality. I remember Bernard once patiently guiding her by phone at her insistence to locate some sellotape at home.

Mona was born in Belfast in 1940 and always had a strong Northern Ireland accent. Having worked on the Belfast Telegraph, where she met Bernard, she joined the BBC in the 1960s and worked on many flagship series, including The Sky at Night, Doctor Who and Only Fools and Horses, for which she famously devised the sequence that ended the final episode.

Mona was always very active in the local community in East Sheen in SW London and she was able to give her time and energies as a Liberal Democrat councillor until near the end. Hers was a stunning victory in 2018 in the Richmond Council elections, winning a seat in a ward that had always been solidly Tory.

I will never forget the sympathy and support Mona gave us when she was a school governor with our local comprehensive. Our daughter was subjected to nightmarish harassment and bullying in the school, including an assault by a mob of girls hurling homophobic abuse, plus numerous phone calls threatening sexual violence (necessitating a police phone tap). Mona’s handling of this tricky situation was exemplary, giving a human face to the school while others hid behind rules and regulations. It spoke volumes to see how sad my daughter was when I told her Mona had died.

Mona was always good company, with strong opinions, forcefully expressed, and it was always a pleasure to see her socially. She exuded positivity and can-do optimism along with great integrity, qualities that she consistently brought to her work in the BBC. Bernard gave extraordinary support to Mona in her final, cancer-afflicted months, also helped by their much-loved children Polly and Amy and their five grandchildren.

Giles Oakley

Brilliant linguist Efim Slavinsky was born in the

USSR in 1936 and grew up in Kiev. He studied English at Leningrad University and as recognised as a highly gifted linguist.

After he graduated, he made friends with many poets,

novelists and musicians, some of whom became leading dissidents. Among these he is still a legend. He also befriended visitors from the West.

His lifestyle and his friendships led to his arrest and imprisonment. Even after over a year and a half in prison, his movements were restricted. He was, in spite of his Jewish heritage, refused permission to emigrate.

Eventually, in 1974, he left the USSR. After more than a year in Rome, he came to London to join the BBC in 1976. In Bush House, Efim’s colleagues soon recognised that his Russian language was outstanding. His knowledge of Russian – and English – literature was phenomenal.

He got great satisfaction from translating scripts into excellent Russian, and from reading these, without artifice, at the microphone. With his devotion to Russian writers and poets, he made exceptionally creative literary programmes. He wrote and narrated features about numerous authors. In his features on contemporary poets, of which he was very proud, some read their own poetry. He was often given Russian scripts to check. He would unerringly excise what was superfluous, shorten lengthy passages, and correct punctuation.

With many of his colleagues Efim had good and close relations, and would never speak ill of anybody. He had unquestioned authority and could not have been more highly respected. He was, says one, a pleasure to meet at work, the very best of people.

After he retired, he often spoke of those years as ‘the Golden Age’. What he never said – with typical modesty – was that, in creating this golden age, he had himself played an important role.

For his wife, Alina, for his sons, Michael and Daniel, and for his many friends, he was the most intellectually brilliant, most widely knowledgeable, most deeply civilised, most openly hospitable, most wickedly humorous of individuals.

Efim Slavinsky died on 13 August at the age of 82.

Peter Udell

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| ODDS & ENDS

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Prospero Society is supported by BBC Club funds so as to make events affordable. If you would like an application form, please contact:

Gayner Leach, BBC Club, BC2 B3 Broadcast Centre, 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TP

Tel: 020 8752 6666

Email: bbc.club@bbc.co.uk.

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CONTACTS

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Since no recordings of this great orchestra existed in the public domain, the NDO project decided that they would try to remedy that.They have produced a double album with 56 excellent tracks, available to the public.

The BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra was formed in the 1920s as the Belfast Wireless Symphony Orchestra and renamed the N.I.O. in the mid-thirties.

This 35-piece orchestra gave at least one broadcast every day. While its repertoire was essentially of classical works, it was sufficiently versatile to play whatever was required, and so sometimes played light music and show selections too. The orchestra was disbanded upon the outbreak of war in 1939.

With the disbandment of the orchestra, David Curry, a leading authority in Irish folk music, set about forming his own ensemble, which he called The Irish Rhythms Orchestra. This was in effect an augmented ceilidhe band and therefore played predominantly Irish music – much of it arranged by Curry himself, and is featured in the new CD set.

In 1949, the BBC decided to re-establish a staff orchestra in Belfast, this time to specialise in light music. It was decided that the Irish Rhythms Orchestra should

become the nucleus of the new BBC Northern Ireland Light Orchestra, initially comprising 16 players but increased to 21 in the early 1950s.

It would be an understatement to say that the orchestra experienced teething troubles, as its standard of playing apparently fell well short of what the BBC expected of one of their staff orchestras. According to the BBC files, it was compared to a ‘third-rate pit orchestra’.

It was decided to send senior conductor, Vilem Tausky to Belfast to help resolve the problems. He did just that and the orchestra built a fine repertoire of quality light music.

David Curry retired in 1965 and Arthur Anton was invited to conduct the orchestra for three months whilst a new permanent appointment was made, and despite having to do several broadcasts per week in Belfast, he still managed to fit in programmes with his own orchestra in London. During this period he used his own repertoire for much of the time, using an accordion instead of a brass section.

The new conductor of the orchestra was Terence Lovett, a classically orientated musical sophisticate. Some changes were inevitable; the size of the orchestra was increased from 21 to 30, with a view to the orchestra playing more classical music. Lovett eventually dropped the word ‘light’ from the orchestra’s title; despite this change, the orchestra still participated in some light music programmes, regularly contributing to Radio Three, and did twice weekly concerts on Radio Four (formerly the Home Service) of mostly light classical music.

When Terence Lovett left the orchestra in 1968, his place was taken by Stanley Black. Sadly film and recording commitments forced him to resign after a year

Prospero Classifieds, BBC Pension and Benefits Centre, Broadcasting House, Cardiff CF5 2YQ.

Please enclose a cheque made payable to: BBC Central Directorate. Rate: £6 for 20 words. In a covering letter, please include your pension number.

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North-West Spain. Well equipped 2-bed, 2-bath furnished flat with sea views in unspoilt Galicia. £70,000 o.n.o. Contact 0117 9622790.

Collection of books about BBC history for sale including 30 guidebooks from 1928 onwards. Details: simontana50@gmail.com

Caption competitionThe winner of a £10 shopping voucher is Colin Prior with the caption ‘Do you think anyone will notice if I nick his wallet?’

Post your entry to Prospero by Monday, 4 November 2019.

Or, you can email your entry to prospero@bbc.co.uk, with ‘caption competition 5’ in the subject line. Please include your BBC pension number. Good luck!

WIN£10

The picture shows Hugh Bonneville as Ian Fletcher and Sarah Parish as Anna Rampton from the BBC-based comedy series W1A.

‘Flowers of Antrim’ – a tribute to the Northern Ireland Light Orchestra

and the baton passed to Kenneth Alwyn in 1969. Eric Wetherell became the final conductor of the orchestra in 1976.

Within a few years, the BBC had decided that the regional orchestras were an expensive luxury. The BBC felt that their style of music was ‘not in keeping with the requirements of the early eighties’ and a move was made to disband this and other regional orchestras. The Northern Ireland Orchestra was eventually absorbed by the Ulster Orchestra.

We visited Belfast in August 2019 and presented BBC Belfast with its own unique copy of the CD set, and attended a recording of the Ulster Orchestra – so the music has come full circle!

More information can be found at: www.northerndanceorchestra.org.uk.