Fools on the Hill

[ppppenguin]

It's now 30 years since this programme was made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the BBC TV service. I was at Television Centre for a few hours while it was being recorded and have a rather poor photocopy of the script. I've attached the title page. The whole programme can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCtijZAQJEY

The original of the script is held at the University of Sheffield: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/special/rosen

[Yorkie]

Thanks for that Jeffrey.

So funny, and in some respects, probably rather too close to reality for comfort.

From the 29 minute point, it's amusing when the white coated-engineer Mr Lambert - who take his job just a little too seriously - is being wood by the winsome Miss Pygott Smythe,  doesn't pick up the vibes she's emitting. Getting exasperated, she cuts to the chase and says 'Do you fancy a dirty weekend in Bognor?'. His response is 'Sorry - no can do - I've got a lens change over the weekend. To use a radio analogy, not quite on the same frequency. But then without the Mr Lambert's of this world, I guess we'd all still be watching magic lanterns!

[ppppenguin]

I would hesitate to call Lambert an engineer. He's a dolly tracker, working under instructions from Mr Bliss, the cameraman.

There's a lot of exasperation with the Baird system in FoTH. I think that reasonably reflected the attitudes of the production people at the time. Apart from the telecine the Baird system was horrible for actually making programmes. By comparison the M-EMI system was recognisably modern. Its multicamera studio techniques are still used to this day. The M-EMI telecine was mediocre.

The sabotage stories in FoTH are artistic licence. In my opinion well justified as part of the plot.

[peter scott]

Mr Lambert - who take his job just a little too seriously - is being wood by the winsome Miss Pygott Smythe,  doesn't pick up the vibes she's emitting.

Or if you are an American.... Not being wood!

Peter

[Yorkie]

Oops - a typo of course. It's true that Lambert is wooden,  but he was being wooed by Miss Pygott Smythe.

Ah, men in white coats!

Well of topic, but some 25 years or so ago, when our eldest son had graduated, among other firms he visited on 'the milk round' was ICI, who weren't holding their own in international markets, but Harvey Jones had just been appointed to try to lick them into shape.  Our son asked the young guy who was conducting a tour whether Harvey Jones had had any impact. He said on the first day he'd called the directors and senior managers into the board room, half of whom wore white lab coats and had thermometers in their top pockets. Harvey Jones said "look, you're behaving like a bunch of bottle shakers [chemists] - not businessmen. Forget chemistry - all you need to know about our products is whether or not you can put your hand in it. If it's hydrochloric acid, the answer  is 'no' - now get out, find new markets and double the sales. We'll have a chat about this again in a couple of weeks when you can update me on the progress you're making".

[Brianc]

I would hesitate to call Lambert an engineer. He's a dolly tracker, working under instructions from Mr Bliss, the cameraman.

The M-EMI telecine was mediocre.

He would be classed as a technical assistant, allocated to "tracking"! When I first started in the BBC, that was exactly what I was doing - pushing  a Vinten Pathfinder with a Marconi MKlll camera aboard around the studio in Birmingham. We did hour-long plays, variety shows and had the MLO (Midland Light Orchestra) in several times a month, all live. Working in a studio with a full-blown orchestra and all the other paraphernalia was, to say the least, very exciting for a callow 19 year old!

As to the telelcine, even DR Eric White, a member of the EMI team agreed that the M-EMI telecine was not as good as the Baird except for flicker and resolution. As a matter of interest, 2 of the 6 cameras at AP were originally tied to modified projectors which pulled the film down at frame rate, not field, because the pull-down was too slow. Later, Mechaus were used and these had continuous motion transports so there was no problem with pull-down and, incidentally, film could be scanned at any frame rate. There was an ex-AP Mechau telecine at Lime Grove studios in London to allow films (eg classical music films or archive 16fps films), to be scanned at the correct frame rate. The big difference was that, at Lime Grove, there was an electron multiplier in place or the Emitron camera and a scanning tube in place of the light source!

[ppppenguin]

I hadn't realised that Mechaus were modified to flying spot operation. I'd always thought it was camera pointing at projector. Surely in a flying spot conversion the CRT would have been in place of the camera while the photomultiplier replaced the light source.

My understanding is that the light and resolution loss through a Mechau were far from ideal. Due to far too many optical surfaces in the light path.

[Cardigan]

I watched this in 1986, and in November 2011 when it was repeated on BBC4 to coincide with the 75th anniversary.

I'm afraid time hasn't altered my perception that this was a very poor effort in many respects.

[peter scott]

Just watched it again. In some ways it was quite well presented but I was rather surprised to see a T5 being used in the EMI studio. Especially so given that a 702 was also used in a domestic scene and it was unlikely that viewers would have recognised the same set (due to veneering patterns) being used at AP.

Peter