By now you will realise, that, like Star Wars the beginning is in the middle, there are sequels and prequels, to keep you on your toes, pay attention questions will be asked later.
As my suits stay in the wardrobe, I still apply for gissajobs I can do that, but as my age increases my opportunities decrease.
It seems to me that what I have achieved in the past counts for little today with prospective employers. I would like to become involved with combating climate change. Unlike Trading Standards and Consumer Protection where I hold a seemingly worthless Government Qualification, I have no pedigree in climate change, only that I have added to it along with the rest of us and I made TV programmes about it almost 20 years ago. A situation that has not changed much since, except worsened hence my desire to get involved once again. Apparently one can get a degree in climate change these days. I guess that qualifies someone to sit behind a desk top and do too little before it’s too late. If only it was never too late.
It was oh so different once. 42 is not only the answer to the universe, I think for me it was my Everest. Circa 42 I was head hunted by Science at the BBC to bring an element of Current Affairs into a new series called Life on 1. Prime Time BBC1, Thursday evenings 8pm. Science made Horizon and Tomorrow’s World, but for a new programme that addressed environment issues, I was asked to transfer from Watchdog to help produce it. My role was in charge of the film team, whilst others produced the live locations each week.
Exciting times. I had my own office in Kensington House. I had and earned the respect of a great Editor David Patterson. One day back in 1991 (those were the days still my friend) I said to him, “do you remember going back to school after the summer holidays?” He was my age, a bit older, and he always smirked when I asked him a question, I guess he did not know what was coming next. It was interesting though being unpredictable, it still is. I said when I was going to Grammar School in September 1960’s I walked through Roundwood Park Willesden (about 5 miles from Kensington House due north west). As a 12 year old I trudged through all the autumn leaves in the park, leaves that had fallen off the trees by September, Plane Trees, Horse Chestnut Trees, Oak Trees, Sycamore Trees. I said to him looking out of the window, “now the trees are in leaf till November, the seasons are changing, shifting.” He said “you are right.” Patterson was a great thinker, a very clever man, we got on well, we spoke the same language and shared the same ideals and principles. He was old guard BBC, a true programme maker, who wanted to make the viewer think to make the viewer realise.
So, he gave me a reporter, a researcher , a production assistant and said prove it. If you prove it we can base one of the series of programmes on it. So I set about my task in the days before the internet, when you had to find written articles and telephone bash the world to find experts.One expert would lead you on to another expert. Then there would be the feasibility of travelling to interview them in their setting.
However it was not the only concept I had to juggle with.......................
At the beginning of the time with Science I still played football for BBC every Saturday. One such afternoon in Tooting the normally strong resilient centre half who took no prisoners as well as the ball in the crunching tackle of the day, tried to do something completely different. As well as Mr Dependable, “they won’t get past Allan”, I liked to think I had a degree of skill when kicking the ball. At least I could kick the ball with either foot, unlike most of today’s professional prima donnas. So when the right winger came bearing down on our penalty area with the goalkeeper at his mercy, I came from his left straight across him and Franz Beckenbauer style took the ball from him with my left as I glided past, only for him to shoot at my trailing right leg, which then spun round like the whizzing hands of a clock. Down I went. I could not believe it. Even the Red Coat referees at Butlins had told me in their football competitions, take it easy these players are on holiday they don’t want to go home with a broken leg. Now after all these years and famous local newspaper back page headlines like the pitch battle of Ruislip Manor 1974, there I was on the grass with my fibula and tibia sticking through my metal shin pads and black woollen socks. “You alright Allan?” Harry said. “No my leg’s broken Harry”, “you’ll be alright, stand up and run it off”. Yes that is what we all did with knocks. “Harry my bones are sticking through my sock”, “oh blimey , yes it does look bad”.
Good old Harry , he brought 4 bottles of beer to my hospital bedside a week later just before I was due to try out crutches for the first time in my life with the physio nurse. I sailed up and down those stairs!!!
HOWEVER. A new role at the Beeb, a new girlfriend Hazel Graham, a beautiful long hair, long legged production assistant on Watchdog, and now a broken leg. So the Beeb hired me a converted Austin Allegro from Hertz in Edgware Road, Marble Arch. As I sat in the car with my right leg out straight in plaster up to my groin, I had an accelerator and brake on my right hand by the steering wheel. Of course I had to undergo the sods law initiative test, as I drove out of their alleyway a white transit van tried to write off the vehicle. But…………….. I managed to swerve and avoid the lunatic, in my first 30 seconds of disabled driving.
So, I would be there on the cliffs of Sunderland in a 70mph gale, on my 2 crutches under my armpits, directing a film crew about the pollution on the otherwise picturesque beaches there, shame about the weather. I looked like a parrot on a perch in a draught swinging backwards and forwards and trying not to go over the cliff.
Yes Life on 1 had to go on like any show and it was life as I knew it. The crutches always fell to the tarmac as I got out of the car. Young girls would run across the road to pick them up for me. Men would slam the door shut in front of me along corridors or at entrances. Yes equal opportunities as a sharp lesson for this Sharpe.
But, by the time I flew to Colorado and California, my plaster was cut down to size. I was still able to get caught by the Highway Patrol (Denver Branch). We had a plane to catch, it was getting there by the skin on our teeth time, once again. Fortunately the Highway Patrolman was one of those that loved our British Accents, I had 3 giggling, friendly , fluttering eyelash, BBC females in the Pontiac. He detained us no longer so we could catch the flight. I guess he finally gave up when my production assistant flung the large unfolded map (yes before sat nav) at him through her window asking for the quickest route to the airport, and he managed to catch the paper missile in the breeze and screw it up to shove back to her and wish us a nice day. Well done Linda!!
Now when I made a programme for the BBC I became a rapid mini expert in whatever subject the film was about. I had to know what I was talking about, have the facts at my fingertips, my finger on the pulse, else you guys the viewers would see there was no substance. And, substance there was. In fact that film in 1991 with interviews and computer projections from the world’s leading climatologist Professor Schneider of Colorado University predicted our weather today almost 20 years later. Extreme weather. Events that when they happen, whether the weather is hot, cold, dry or wet, it is an all time record “since records began”. Even though my brother in law, Mick, is one of the many sceptics, we have borrowed this earth for our children and our children’s children, as the Red Indians believed. Climate change is man made, the evidence is all around us, like the leaves on the trees, or on a park path in Willesden as they used to be.
20 years on. the electric cars, hydrogen cars, natural gas buses I drove then, are still to emerge in the showroom. When have you ever been in a pub with double glazing and the lights are not switched on, even on a sunny day.
I filmed these alternative fuel vehicles in California. They even converted 2nd hand Ford Fiestas in Islington London N1 by taking out the engine and fitting banks of batteries and electric motors to the front wheels 20 years ago.
But where is the infrastructure in “Great” Britain? I drive for miles these days. Yes I have seen a dump of an LPG filling depot for converted cars run by Polish Workers, one of whom speaks English. But, are the Seven Sisters preventing change while there still is oil to drill under our ocean floors? Do all governments lead or follow. California made legislation for change. They still lead the world, because their land suffered from air pollution even when the Spanish Conquistadores first discovered the angel coast line, due to climatic and geographical coincidences.
Amory Lovins was, and probably still is, a leading energy scientist. He lived 10,000 feet up in the Rockies outside Aspen. His house used electricity but even surrounded by snow, his meter tricked round, whereas ours resemble a helicopter rotor blades. He had 10 fold glazing and copper water piping circulating behind the glass and walls oh his home. He used heat extraction when cooking on his Aga, His washing water never went below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They could have called him Mr Fahrenheit, he was travelling at the speed of light as Freddy Mercury would sing . He grew indoor banana plants behind the window panes, 10,000 feet up in the Rockies.
Dennis Weaver, who used to be Chester in Dodge City to Gunsmoke’s Mr Dillon played by James Arness, lived in Malibu. He had a home constructed out of old rubber tyres and empty drinks cans. The rubber kept the heat in and the cold out, helped by the air contained in the aluminium cans. It was also a great use of recycling. His Duel, as in the film he stared in against a crazy lorry driver, was with Climate Change. Now he is dead, alas, like so many great names and great people of nostalgia.Little did the wooden legged Chester who run up the Dodge City Street shouting for help from "Mr Dillon, Mr Dillon" on my black and white TV set in Willesden, realise how much I was glued to his performance as a 10 year old, in the good old days.
And, when I recount these tales of yesteryear. When others ask me, how did you make a programme then, I have to explain about the days, weeks, months phone bashing, planning, organising, researching, then filming the interviews. Filming the scenes, the location, the action scenes that would be needed to voice commentary over when we got back to base and started editing the film. Putting all the best bits and clips together to make sense and compose the argument, in the time we had allocated to us. The story we were telling and the story we believed in.
Those were the days my friend, yes we thought they would never end, but end they did. Patterson and others like him left the BBC as it changed and followed the lesser, cheaper standards of ITV. I would soon leave too. Now I watch little television. Programme schedules that incorporate free talent or free reality offer little to my intellect. Entertainment they might be for some that want to emulate the couch vegetable. Infotainment they are not, and I will always hold the record viewing figures for Watchdog at over 10 million up against Coronation Street, because now we have more channels, more choice, but not better programming.
Yes generations have at first been glued to Top of the Pops then subsequently sat at the back of the room irritated and not recognising any of the so called performers. But, they don’t make them like they used to. They call it progress. Me, I beg to differ.
Until the next time, stay tuned to this channel……..after all one day even this channel will end !!!
Post Script:
Remembering Chester, I even used to hobble as a kid emulating his performance on those wooden sidewalks of Dodge City in the Wild West.
I made a Sport Video for the retail market under the Sharper Image Banner in the mid 90's, my own TV Production Company. It featured Jimmy Greaves and Tommy Docherty with ad lib links to film clips of incidents on the fever pitch. My son Ian was working, learning, with me in those days. In the West End studio whilst I was in the gallery, and Jimmy Greaves was on the studio floor, Ian confessed to him "you were my dad's hero when he was a boy, he saw you play for Spurs every game, and when my brother and I grew up and watched Spurs with him he would tell us about the goals you scored as if he was still there".
What a confession to make huh!! Blush.
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