Peter Dimmock

SIDE 1

VOICE FILE NAME:  Peter Dimmock - Interview

Interviewer Norman Swallow with Alan Lawson

  

 

Key:-

I:   Interviewer

M:   Norman Swallow

P:   Peter Dimmock

S.l - sounds like

I:   First of all, Peter, when and where were you born?

P:   I was born in London in 1920.

I:   1920.

 

P:   December.

I:   What about schooling?

 

P:   Well, I went to a preparatory school in Pearly to begin with, and then I moved from there to Dulwich College Preparatory School and then from there I went to Dulwich College, and then before going to university I took a year off, I went to France, but while I was there – this was 1939 – the war clouds gathered and I was back home and I was actually on holiday in Cornwall.  I joined the Territorial Army and, well, a gang of us had done it about a year before thinking we ought to make ourselves available to the Forces if war broke out.  And I really forgot about it because I went off to France and then when I came back I spent quite a bit of time learning to fly in the Civil Air Guard because my Aunt during my school holidays, at the age of 12 as a matter of fact, had taught me to fly and I used to go up with the chief engineer there and then he had to test fly an aircraft after maintenance and he used to take me up, so he added a lot of polish to what my aunt had taught me.  But, of course, the war arrived, I was on the beach in Cornwall and a policeman stood over me and said, “Are you Mr Dimmock?” I said, “Yes,” he said, “I have a telegram for you.”  So, in those days, you used to have telegrams with boys on bicycles but the telegraph boy had given it to the local policeman because he couldn’t find me and the policeman had tracked me down and said, “You are required to attend your unit at the White City.”  So I said to the policeman, “Well it’s a lovely day, you still can’t find me let’s sort of think about it tomorrow.”  And he said, “Very good.” He was a nice policeman and off he went, because I had a girlfriend with and we’d only been there two days.  

         So, I then finally had to go and it then took me – what – about six months to get out of the Army into – and I was never a very good soldier anyway and did a lot of square bashing around at the Guards Barracks near East Grinstead, and I’m sure I was very bad soldier, because all I wanted to do was get into the Air Force.  And eventually I got into the Air Force and had to go through all the usual flying training to become a pilot, like every would be pilot, and particularly as I did know how to fly basically very amateurish but I had an idea about it, I wanted to be a fighter pilot.  I was lucky but I knew I didn’t particularly want to be a bomber pilot because I just thought that would be boring, and so I was awfully lucky I got into Army Cooperation, which meant that I was on close support bombers which were Blenheims in those days and later became Bostons which was a much faster aircraft it’s rather like going from a Blenheim to a Boston was rather like going from a propeller driven aircraft to a jet aircraft. 

         But, then I bust my eardrum and funnily enough on a training flight over Wales, I had a new air gunner and we were doing some manoeuvres and I suddenly found blood all running down my face and I was, “What on earth’s happened?”  And I landed back and I felt alright but there was blood still pouring out of the ear, I went off to the old Doc and he said, “Oh, you’ve bust you ear drum, no more flying for you my boy.”  So, my God that really put into a frightful state of depression.  But after about six months of arguing they finally said, “Alright, we’ll let you fly again but only as an instructor and you mustn’t fly above 10,000 feet.”  So I then became an instructor and I don’t know I did thousands and thousands of hours an instructor so starting at eight o’clock in the morning and going on till practically dark, because by that time the war the situation had changed that we had plenty of aircraft and not enough pilots, so we were churning them out like mad. 

         You must stop me if you think I’m babbling to much is that alright?

         And one of the tragedies about it was that the pilots came to use the would-be pilots and they were what we called graded there was a grading system, and you gave them all 12 hours and at the end of the 12 hours you graded them.  And then obviously you put your best pupils recommended them as a pilots, because the knife went in as so many pilots, so many observes, so many air gunners and they were all going to be air crew.  But, of course, it depended upon two factors and one was the weather changing because some chaps who could have been very good pilots were very put off by bad weather because their training was a bit disjointed and it’s always difficult to teach pilots ammunition training in very bad weather, they come to get used it that afterwards and cope with it very well, but when they’re learning the basic flying that they’d never done before and then being thrown about the sky by the weather it is very difficult for them to concentrate.  The other factor that was very tiresome was a lot depended upon the shipping situation across the Atlantic, because a lot of the trainees were going on for their next stage of training - elementary flying training – to Canada under the Empire Training Scheme or to the United States quite a lot of them went to, and others went down to Rhodesia, but it all meant they had to go in those days by ship and so it really depended upon the ship availability as to how many they wanted, and this depended what kind of aircrew because they were going to be observers or air gunners and mostly they were trained in the UK, so it depended on a lot of factors.  And some chaps who would have made marvellous pilots never game to be pilots and, equally, one or two chaps who perhaps shouldn’t have been pilots became pilots [laughs] because that time they had to fill the ship.

         Another little interesting aside there was that perhaps a bit of light relief being an instructor was that we had to train the ex-policemen and Lieutenants E, that’s the engineering officers in the Navy, because they had applied to become Fleet Airline pilots and we gave them their ammunition training, and I always swore that I’d swear if I’d been blindfolded I could have told you either a policeman or a Lieutenant E’s in the Navy they were the clumsiest ham fisted big booted chaps you’ve ever come across [laughs] and very few of them made very good pilots, but they were awfully nice chaps just the same, and the Lieutenant E’s were great to have in the mess because they introduced us to a game called Fiery Cross Poker, which is the most dangerous game ever.  You begin at about 10 o’clock after dinner and you were lucky if you get up by 2 o’clock in the morning and they invented rules as they went along, which always seemed to make sure that they won, but we got our own back eventually with a game of our own that we invented and we managed to get most of our money back.

I:   Then what happened at the end of the war?

P:   Well, because I’d been an instructor and I’d done the advanced instructors course and all that, they then said to me there was a vacancy at the Air Ministry for a Staff Officer to help wind up the Empire Air Training Scheme – this was virtually towards the end of the European War, and so I was posted to Alexandra House in Kingsway.  And I think this was the most dangerous part, my most dangerous part of my war because I arrived there just as the Doodlebugs began.  And I was Duty Officer and I refused to go and sleep in the basement because I think there was a leakage from the sewerage system and the stink was terrible so I used to say, “I’m sorry, I’d rather sleep up on the sixth floor,” which was where my office was and I had a camp bed in the office.  And I thought my last moment had come because this damn doodlebug stopped and the whistle got louder and louder and louder until I thought it was coming into the room and then there was the almighty crash of glass broke all round and my office window shattered the lot.  But actually it wasn’t funny at all because what had happened was they’d hit the Carey Street Bankruptcy Court which was just crossed the road off Kingsway and, unfortunately, killed the ten cleaning women in the building at the time, which was awful because it was very early in the morning this came about I think it was about quarter past six/half past six.  But it was quite a frightening experience because I thought my building was going to fall down.  And then, of course, we had the V2’s which came later. 

         But, another thing happened to me though which was rather extraordinary that I as part of winding up the scheme I went up to Blackpool because we were closing down the Fleet Air Arm side and by then we developed a separate elementary flying training scheme for Fleet Air Arm pilots and I was going up to discuss with them when they would close down and everything, and about a month before that I got very excited because my Air Martial asked me – I was an acting unpaid unwanted Squadron Leader – he said would I like to go as his aide across to Canada to – his name was Drummond – discuss closing down Canada.  And I said, “Yes, I’ve never been across the Atlantic in my life,” so it was very exciting.  And then, well about two weeks after he’d after me and I said I’d loved to go, he called me back in and said, “Dimmock, look, if you still want to go of course you must go, but I’ve had a telephone call from a Squadron Leader Trout who has a sister in Canada who he hasn’t seen for 11 years, would you mind terribly if he came instead of you?”  So I said, “Well, no, obviously not,” I’d got the message and I would have been very unpopular if I’d said no.  And I said, “It was very nice of you to invite me in the first place because I would have enjoyed it.” 

         I’d landed at Blackpool at Squire’s Gate and I was sitting in the mess there and the evening paper came in, “Air Martial’s Plane Missing” was the banner headline, and what had happened was and poor old Trout, Drummond and Trout and all of the crew of the Lancaster - they were stopping on the Azores in the way - and had obviously been caught by one of the Focke Wulf Condors and operated a lot of people suspected that they were operating either out of Portugal or Spain and shot them down, so that was a lucky escape. 

         And then the end of the war came and I was due to be demobilised and I reckoned I knew the date that I should come out and nothing happened.  So I went across to see a Wing Commander Channel 9 in personnel in the air Ministry and I said, “Oi, what’s happened?” He said, “You’re a PDO in the regular Air Force,” and I said, “I’m not in the regular Air Force.”  “Oh yes,” he said, “You transferred from the regular Army,” I said, “No, I was a Territorial in the Army.”  “Oh.  Oh,” he said, “This is very confusing because you transferred with a lot of regular Army officers, you all came as a batch and obviously nobody noticed that you were a Territorial and not a regular.  So,” he said, “Do you want to stay in?”  And I said, “Not on your nelly [laughs] I want to get out, I’ve had enough of the Air Force, thank you.”  So he said, “Right.  Well, okay, I’ll arrange it,” so it was all arranged. 

         And then I thought well, now what am I going to do as a job?  And I had a feeling I wanted to be a journalist so I went down and saw Reuters and the Press Association and had written to them and they gave me an interview.  Reuters hadn’t got a vacancy but Reuters said, “Look, well I think you’ll find there’s a vacancy in the Racing Department of the Press Association,” and he said, “My advice to you is get in and do anything.  What do you know about racing?”  I said, “Well not a lot, I’ve been a racing a bit but not a great deal.”  “Well,” he said, “you know, don’t tell them that, tell them that you’re frightfully keen on racing and you’re really a bit of an expert” and all this, that and the other.  So, of course, I went with trepidation and saw this man Harrison a wonderful chap.  He said, “Well, young man, don’t think that when you come here it’s going to be as easy as it was in the war,” so that was a great start.  “But” he said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a fortnight’s trial.”  I said, “Yeah.”  And the face sitting opposite me was a feller called Peter O’Sullivan [laughs] and he looked at me and I think he thought, “Here’s a right one here.”  [Laughs]

          Anyway, after about a fortnight I thought I was doing rather well and I’d written a paragraph which I was rather proud of.  Harrison put his little finger up and called me to his desk and said, “Dimmock, we’re going to have to have a few changes around here if you can’t do better than this.”  I was, “Oh, God.”  And, of course, he rewrote the paragraph and wonderfully, I could see exactly where I thought I was right but I wasn’t.  I mean, the facts were right but I hadn’t expressed them very well.  And we became very firm friends.  And he then put me he sent me out to racecourses which was great fun because you lived on your expenses and your salary just stayed in your bank account, which, for a young chap of my age was great fun because it meant I had more money to spend going out to nightclubs and things which was great fun.

         And I stayed with the PA for about nearly a year, but I’d seen this advertisement in the papers for a television outside broadcast producer.  So I thought, well, television is the coming thing I’d read about in magazines and how well it was doing in America and I [unclear 15:03] before the war so I applied.  And on the appointments board was one called Group Captain Doughty, Philip Doughty who had been in television before the war, one another fellow called Ian Orr-Ewing who’s now Lord Orr-Ewing who had been a Wing Commander in radar during the war, and some faceless wonder from the appointments department of the BBC, I can’t even remember who it was, I think it might have been Jack Nott but I can’t remember.  Anyway, there were two vacancies and I think there were about seven or eight of us being interviewed and guess who got the job?  Keith Rogers who had been in a Squadron Leader in Radar and one Dimmock who had been a pilot in the Air Force [laughs] because all the questions they asked us I couldn’t answer at all, they sort of said, “Well, now, would you use a 2 inch lens or a 12 inch lens if the light was bad?”  I just sort of thought, well, now it must be 12 inch lens because obviously the stronger the lens if the light is weak, which, of course, was totally the wrong answer, but they very kindly overlooked all that [laughs] and I got the job with Keith Rogers.  And it was enormous fun.

I:   In 1946, am I right?

 

P:   In 1946, the end of 1946, before the television reopened.  When did the television service reopen?

I:   Yeah, mid-46 I think it was the summer – spring June/July?

 

P:   46?

I:   Yes.

 

M:   yes, because I worked on the [over speech].

P:   I must have been demobbed in 45 then, you see. 

M:   Yeah.

P:   one forgets you see.  Yeah, I got the thing wrong.

M:   My notes say you joined the PA in 45.

P:   That’s right, I’m sorry, I was demobbed in 45.

M:   [Over speech] 46.  Forgive me, Peter, for interrupting.  I was interested when you said you always had an interest in journalism.

P:   Yes.

M:   To go back, was that [over speech]?

P:   Well, no.  No, I’ll tell you what it really was it was when I was at school, well when I was a school I contributed to – my mother wrote for a magazine called the Windsor Magazine before she was an actress with the Old Vic, and then she turned to writing short stories for the Windsor Magazine.  And so I’d always, I don’t know, I suppose inherited from her a certain ability for writing, and I used to write articles even when I was at school for various magazines and submit them and mostly got rejections, but some of them got published.  And then - you know where I carried cameras later one because I started to drive. I think you were sixteen and half you were allowed to drive a little car = I always carried a camera with it and whenever I saw an accident or anything I always used to ring, and they pay used to pay something like 25 shillings in those days if you rang them up and put them onto a good story, and if you gave the film as well they would sometimes give you as much two guineas which was a fortune!  And I think that is what really triggered me into wanting to become a journalist.  I don’t know.

I:   Had you, well, you joined television let’s say, yeah in 46, had you seen any television…

 

P:   No.

I:   …in the war, for example?

 

P:   Yes.  Yes, I had seen a bit pre-war but it was very sort of makeshift.

I:   So in 46, you were a producer/commentator?

P:   Well I joined television as an OB, the advertisement was what they called Assistant OB Manager.  Now what that really meant was that you were jack of all trades.  We were producer, presenter, commentator, stage manager – I’ve actually lay on the roadway I remember queuing Jasmine Blight on the steps of Ally Pally when we reopened the television service.  And in those days you used to have microphones on the end of long bamboo sticks – Allen will remember this, because Philip Doughty having been originally way back a film man couldn’t bear to think of a microphone ever being in shot.  Whether he thought the sound came from heaven or not I don’t know but [laughs] he would never let us have a microphone.  It took years to get that out of the system and say to people, ‘Look, why can’t we have a microphone in shot?  It’s quite obvious that [laughs] there must be one around somewhere.’  But…sorry, now I’ve lost my train of thought.

I:   What you did in [over speech]?

 

P:   In OB’s.  So in OB’s there were about six of us, Keith Rogers, myself – initially, Harold Cox who had an ancient old Rolls Royce we always used to laugh about parked outside the hut, and Bob Dougal who then subsequently became an announcer and Ian Orr-Ewing was our boss.  He had a great deal to do with outside broadcast before the war and he was very keen to restart but he was much more keen on his political career.  And that’s really what gave me a wonderful opportunity because he used to let me do a lot of his work and he’d supervise me, but I was very much for a long time his assistant as well as doing all my other work, which taught me a very great deal.  And then eventually when he left to go into politics and become an MP there was a board and I got the job, or I think they called it then Assistant Head with outside broadcast (television) because Broadcasting House was still holding the purse strings and television wasn’t very respectable, those damn sort of pseudo TV film boys up at Ally Pally, so they are part of the BBC but they didn’t really like us in those early days.

I:   Yes that was recent it had been happening.

 

P:   That’s right.

I:   And all these include all kinds of programs, of course.

P:   Well that was what it made so interesting because we learned from our mistakes.  For examples, one of our earlier commentators was Richard Dimbleby and I used Dimbleby a lot on factory visits and things, I remember we went to Kodak’s and I’d never realised that a cat can turn in the air in a trice and land on its feet – if you drop a cat from anything above four feet up, drop it upside down it always lands on its feet and it’s an ability a cat’s got, and Richard demonstrated this, I remember.  But I used to get Richard for 5 guineas and 10 guineas, and I said, “Richard, but you can earn 40 guineas” because he was very well established in radio.  “Ah, my boy” he said, “Television is the medium of the future and I am going to be the best commentator in television.” And he was very far sighted because he was and he said, “I’m going to make all mistakes, my major ones, while the audience is small,” he was very far sighted, you see, because it was exactly what he did.  I mean if you can get hold of some recordings or some of those earlier programmes, Richard did make quite a few mistakes, but he was learning all the time and because he had such a good command of the English language and was very intelligent and he ran his own newspapers down at Richmond, he had the ability to shut up and to do the translation from radio into television which somebody, for example, like the late Winifred Vaughn Thomas who was a lovely man, wonderful man, but no way could you shut him up.  We had the same problem with John Snag, we tried John Snag.  You see, they’d been trained years and years of being told in radio “keep talking at all costs.”

M:   [Unclear speech 22:43].

 

P:   that’s’ right.  But, Richard was able to do it and I think it was a tragedy that he didn’t get his K, because Robin Day was – was Robin Day the first one I think, so the first media K and I think [over speech]…

M:   [Over speech].

 

P:   …came afterwards didn’t he?

 

M:   He did.

P:   He came afterwards.  But yeah, wasn’t he already with the BBC when he got his K?  I think he got that when he was a news reader.  I think he had become managing director of radio before he became managing director of television?  I don’t know, one’s memory is a bit hazy.  But I think Robin Day was the first, I could be wrong.  But I’m glad to see they’re doing a commemorative tablet to Richard in West Minster Abbey I think some time in November.

M:   A great man.

 

I:   What about actual programmes?  Can we name a few, as they say?   [Laughs].

 

P:   We did golf lessons with Archie Compston in the grounds of Alexandra Palace.  The units, by the way, those made by units were pre-war units and they stood out in the open and we had to produce from them standing up, so we had tall engineers like Vick Hawkswood comes to mind, I was always screaming, “Vick, get your bloody head out of the way,” because I couldn’t see the preview screen.  We only had one preview screen, one transmission screen so we had three cameras but we had to decide which one we wanted on preview.  So, in fact, producing with that old antiquated equipment was much more difficult than when the more modern equipment came in.  We also had the old Emitron tubes which were very insensitive replaced by the CPS tube which was more sensitive but had this awful peeling off thing.  And it took us, oh, years and years before we finally persuaded our engineers to adopt the American image orthicon tube which was so much better.  I remember eventually persuading them to bring one over and we did a demonstration at the polytechnic in Regent’s Street and we started with the full television lighting and we had the Emitron and the CPS I believe beside the new image orthicon tube.  And then we gradually started to turn the lights off, and eventually, fairly quickly, the Emitron went, then the CPS went and the image orthicon we finally turned all the television lights out and just had the house lights on and where the picture, because the tubes were never as sensitive as they became subsequently, a perfectly acceptable picture, and the engineers complained like hell about the noise, but, in fact, as we pointed out as programme people, that while they were quite right to want to maintain high standards – I never quarrel with this – they swung the pendulum too far the other way.  Because the view would rather have had a picture than no picture at all, which was they were really saying to us, you can’t do that OB because there’s not enough light.   And so we did farming programmes out from that farm, and then we weren’t allowed – this was another – we weren’t allowed by the Post Office, the Post Office were very powerful in the post-war days – we weren’t allowed to use a microwave dish from Fantan’s farm up at – I can’t remember – somewhere just north of London, the outskirts of north London.

M:   Enfield wasn’t it?

 

P:   Enfield.  Lower Enfield, that’s right.  And they made us put I think it was 15 poles to carry a cable to get onto a cable network a Post Office cable network.  It was really quite ridiculous, but it was a rule, and in those days, the Post Office rules were Post Office rules.   And there were so many things we weren’t allowed to do, but gradually we broke the barriers down.  We did church services.

I:   Theatres, wasn’t there?

P:   We did theatre excerpts, which were great fun.  Vick Hawkswood, I mentioned earlier, used to love those because once we did the music hall down at Bethnal Green and I’d forgotten I’d left a marked up script in the van and we’d broken for our meal break, and I remember this after about 10 minutes, I went back to the van and opened the door and there was Vick Hawkswood with quite the most delicious of the chorus girls [laughs] in the MCR and so I shut the door very hurriedly again [laughs].  And Vick was extremely nice to me and very cooperative for quite some time after that.

[Laughter]

I:   What about sport in those days?

 

P:   Ah, well, of course, sport you see, Wimbledon had been done before the war, some boxing had been done so we did Wimbledon, we did a lot of things Haringey because the Haringey Arena was still up there; we did the Horse of the Year Show from there; we did the International show from White City, we really made show jumping.  There was a fellow called Mike Ansell who was boss of the British Horse Society and he realised straightaway that it was a sprat to catch a mackerel, he was no fool.  Because “Lobby” who had been boss of radio OB’s, and for a time was overall boss of radio and television OB’s that he never really liked or understood totally what television was all about, he was basically a radio man and a lawyer, but a lovely man.  Because “Lobby” his name was Seymour J de Lotbiniere and he’d run radio OB’s during the war as well and he was an ex-lawyer, he was very averse – he’s the old school – to paying any kind of facility fee for television rights if he could possibly avoid it.  And so he was frightfully pleased when I told him that Mike Ansell was willing to let us cover the horse shows at White City and Haringey for very low fees.  And what Ansell realised was that the more television exposure he got the more he could expand the pony clubs, the more he could expand the pony clubs he was getting at the young people to make them the people who would be interested in show jumping when they grew up.  And so he was building an audience for his shows via television and it was a sort of a chicken and egg situation because we got it for low fees to begin with but as the ratings climbed and climbed and climbed and fellow called Bob Dean who ran the Pearl & Dean advertising agency came in as Mike Ansell’s sort of number two, he said to me, “Peter, you’re not going to be able go on getting away for this much longer.”  And, of course, we didn’t, the fees went up and up and up and then even one year we took show jumping away from us and gave it to ITV – this is jumping ahead a long way – but, fortunately, ITV made a booboo because just as they came to jumping the wall in the Puissance - which was the major competition and which was the most exciting competition on television in those days is the days of Harry Llewellyn and Pat Smythe - they were just coming to the last competitors and they cut off to go to the News, which, of course, the thing with BBC television we’d always been able to have an understanding that for events like that we could get what we called an overrun and dispensation and so we didn’t annoy the viewers, but all that ITV did hundreds and hundreds of letters came to the British Horse Society saying the BBC would never have done that, which was marvellous so we got the contract back at the end of that year.

I:   [Unclear speech 30:49] the 1948 Olympics, we probably had two years.

 

P:   Yes, I was going to say.  Perhaps the first major test of every piece of OB equipment that we had post-war was the 1948 Olympics.  I had struck up a very good personal relationship with Arthur Elvyn and all the overseas radio was coordinated from the Palace of Arts, which subsequently became our OB base for the 1948 Olympics.  We had the CPS cameras they would have just arrived which were more sensitive than the Emitron, and so we put cameras into the Empire pool, which was the swimming stadium, and we put cameras into the main Empire Stadium at Wembley.  Richard Dimbleby was the commentator and we covered all the events in the stadium including, of course, the opening ceremony.  And there again, I remember I did water polo, some of the swimming as a commentator; I produced some of the swimming and I produced quite a lot of the events out of the stadium, but we were all very much – Berkeley Smith was both producer and a commentator; Michael Henderson, producer and commentator; Alan Chivers never did any camera work but he was a very important member of the team; Dennis Mungar, both, incidentally are ex-RAF chaps, ex-RAF flyers – Chivers was a fight pilot, Dennis Mungar was a bomber pilot.  I think there was something about OB’s that for a lot of us who had flown in the war because I think without sounding big-headed about it, I think that outside broadcasts production work demanded the same kind of quick thinking that flying aeroplane does, I think it’s something to do with reactions that you must have a quick reaction, because things were always going wrong after the war, the equipment was always breaking down so you had to anticipate and react very quickly.  And so maybe that’s why people who had flown took to OB work.  We were always called by other people in television as “That damn panzer division” because we were always being so awkward and bloody minded about everything and never respected the BBC rules and regulations. 

         But, the Olympic Games was quite a success, but again we’re talking about a very small television audience, because television didn’t really take off until 53.  We did it a lot at first, we did Royal Ascot that had never been televised before, we did the State Opening of Parliament, you’ve got to remember the Order he came later.  The really big event was the Coronation because this was a watershed was what caused…

I:   What, 1953?

P:   1953, we’re up to now.  1953, we brought in every piece of equipment and, by that time, television had expanded to the regions and so we had a lot of regional units based out in the regions and we brought the all to London, plus borrowed some equipment from the studio, and we did it really like a military exercise.  And, Seymour Lotbiniere, whom I referred to earlier, was wonderful, because he masterminded the commentary side of it.  He and Richard Dimbleby sat down for hours on end writing and re-writing his commentary for the Abbey.

I:   [Over speech]?

 

P:   Yes, I produced the Coronation service from the Abbey.  But up till then, the television service had been regarded – certainly by Broadcasting House, but also by the public and particularly the establishment as really a peeping Tom.  Nobody ever talked about it at dinner parties and things, didn’t talk about television at all, and you never admitted that you watched television even if you did, and a lot of people hadn’t got sets.  But, of course, the moment it was announced, and there’s a whole story about how we came to televise the Coronation, but once it was announced that we were going to televise it, everybody wanted a set, it was the biggest bonanza for the manufacturers that could ever have happened.  It did mark the respectability of television and suddenly everybody sat up and took notice of it because it all turned out to be so successful, but the battle that we had to get it was really incredible.  “Lobby” was well named “Lobby” we had to lobby everybody.  “Lobby” and I were put in charge of the whole day as far as everything outside of the studios went, so it was mammoth thing and we planned it like a military operation.  I was sort of a Commander-in-Chief and “Lobby” was the Commander-in-Chief and I was the General, and literally I think we got about an average of four to four and a half hours sleep in the six or nine months leading up to it.  Because, initially, we were told by Churchill and the Government, and it was suggested that this was also the wish of the Queen-to-be and the Royal Family, but I never believed that, and I’ve always forgotten to ask Her Majesty whether that was true or not, and I must remember do it if ever I get the opportunity again.  Because I don’t believe that they were, I think they were guided by Churchill and the Cabinet and I think they were really the people stick-in-the-muds.  And I think they were trying to protect the Establishment’s privilege.  They said, “Well, why should the hoi-polloi be allowed to see the Queen crowned?” which was pretty selfish of them really, but, anyway.  We lobbied and lobbied and lobbied everybody from any Member of Parliament, the Government, the Cabinet and the Queen’s Private Secretary literally anybody, and we enlisted a fellow who subsequently became a Press Officer for the BBC a fellow called George Campy at that time was writing the television column for the Evening Standard, and he was extremely helpful because once or twice we managed to leak things to him which although they knew it would annoy the Government we thought well at least it would make the Government continue to address their minds to the problem, which was to get permission to go into Westminster Abbey. 

         Well, eventually, the Government relented and said, “Alright, you can go into Westminster Abbey but you can’t go beyond the Choir Screen,” which is where everything happened between the Choir Screen and the Altar.  “No, no, you can’t possibly go there.”  So at least, well, we felt we’d got to stage one, but still we battled away and battled away.  Eventually, they said, “Alright, well…” – because by that time, as I said, George Campy and other journalists had helped to stir the pot and public opinion was really beginning to come round on our side saying, “Well, this is ridiculous.”  So, they said, “Alright, you can have a trial the cameras.”  So we took a camera into Westminster Abbey, put it on the floor in front of the Choir Screen and we had, if I remember rightly, we had the Queen’s Dress Secretary, Commander Colville, the Archbishop of Canterbury, several people from the Home Office, myself and two of our senior engineers.  And I put a 2 inch lens in the camera because there was a rule at that time that we couldn’t have a newsreel camera or a television camera closer than 30 feet to the Queen, it was a sort of archaic rule that still existed and was very much enforced.  When we did sort of [unclear speech 38:57] at Victoria Station that camera had to be 30 feet from where the Queen was going to be.  So I put this strange lens in which, of course, made the altar look a long way away, and then we asked one of the Secretaries I think was there we asked if she would go and walk where the Queen would walk, and, of course, looked quite small and was great.  [Unclear 39:15] he never asked me to put a 12 inch lens or an 8 inch lens or anything [laughs] in fact, which would have changed the whole thing.  But the basic [unclear 39:24] didn’t seem to be too bad.  “Well, think about it.”  And so we were actually biting our nails for days after that, I think it was about four or five days and we kept hearing rumours that no, they still weren’t going to give us permission.  But, suddenly, we got a message from Downing Street, “Okay, you can go ahead.”  So then, of course, it was wonderful because I actually used a 12 inch lens from the Choir Screen which gave one of the most wonderful close-ups of the Queen that we’d seen on television up till that time.

         And then we began the planning in the Abbey, we had five cameras, and the tricky thing was to where to put them and there were a lot of restrictions and we had to hide them, but there were some obvious places like over the west door from the procession out.  We finally settled on the other positions and we had one problem, I obviously wanted to be absolutely in the centre of the Choir Screen so that I could look at what they called “the theatre” which was a space in front of the altar where the Queen is crowned and everything happens, and the orchestra were there and…he became Sir William McKay and he was Dr McKay then, and they said, “Well, no, because you’ll be between him and everyone will see this ugly camera and the cameraman, and I said, “We’ll put him in tails,” I said, because the audience were all going to be white tie in tails, “No, no, no.”  Then, Dr McKay, bless his heart, turned the Ministry of Works’ official who was there helping me find these camera positions and said, “Well how difficult would it be to cut a hole in the floor?”  So I said, “Well that’s a marvellous idea.”  The Ministry of Works said, “Well, we’ll look at it,” and a message came back to me, yes, they could do it and that gave us an extra 3 feet which was wonderful. 

         So then we also the bright idea he said, “Well, we’ve got one cameraman called Bud Flanagan, a wonderful cameraman but he was only about 4 foot 6/4 foot 7, so we said, “Bud, whether you like it or not boy [laughs] you’re on that camera for the Coronation.  So, we hid the camera behind the balustrade, stood Flanagan in this hole behind the camera and you could only just see the top of his head above the camera and he didn’t interfere with the orchestra at all, and we put him in white tie and tails as we promised.  Now the snag was that being so close to the action he couldn’t use his talk-back.  Every cameraman had a microphone to talk back to the producer and so I could talk to him from the control van and talk to any cameraman and say sell now go this lens or that lens, and then I might say to him, ‘Now what do you think, can you see this or can you see that?’ and he would talk back.  But, he couldn’t use his microphone so we devised a system whereby if he scratched his nose that meant “no” and if he tapped the top of his head that meant “yes,” and so I think all the peers and peeresses ranged up in the transepts couldn’t understand this funny little chap in front of the orchestra continually either scratching or nose or tapping the top of his head [laughs].

I:   Very good.

 

P:   But, oh it was really quite a saga.  I still think that there was still some divine presence helping us that day because absolutely not one piece of equipment went wrong.  And I know that everybody were on their toes obviously to the nth degree but then at the rehearsal quite a lot of things had broken down, and it wasn’t the engineers fault  it was old equipment and some of it had been in use pre-war and yet it didn’t breakdown on that day, which was absolutely incredible.  When you think that a lot of the equipment had valves in, you could never tell when a valve was going to go it could go just like that, but nothing went on the day of the Coronation.

I:   What we used to call the bon Dieu.

P:   The bon Dieu, that’s absolutely right, it was very much the bon Dieu that day.  Let’s have a rest now for a minute.

I:   Okay.

 Side 2

I:   Side 2.  Right.

P:     Well, but so much for the Coronation and perhaps I’ve ever emphasised that because it was such an outstanding event.  But if we’re really talking about post-war television maybe I should go back one or two things that I haven’t mentioned up to date which was when the television service began again after the war, Maurice Gorham was Director of Television, and then eventually Norman Collins who had written that book “London Calling” I think it was called, he came over from I think it was the Overseas Services at Bridge House and was made Director of Television.  And he was like a breath of fresh air because he was obviously prepared much more than Morris had been to fight Broadcasting House and this sort of overwhelming omnipotence I suppose you’d call it of Broadcasting House against those silly television and film boys up in Alexandra Palace.  Norman wanted very early on to say, “Look, why couldn’t television separate from radio, still under a BBC Board of Governors and a BBC Supremo and the Director of General but then let television have its own – what today we’d call a managing director and radio have its own managing director.  And, in fact, those titles came in much later when McKenzie did that report on the BBC.  But, Norman had this idea but he got absolutely nowhere and all he did was to get in just like Broadcasting House and the hierarchy there.  But he was a great man and I always insist that I once had entertained somebody I think to the extent of four and sixpence and also somebody else for about eight and sixpence at one of our outside broadcast events, and entertaining was very much frowned upon those days any unnecessary expenditure, and Jack Nott who was Administrative Office in television called me into office and said, “You know, this won’t do.  I’m really getting a bit fed up.  You can’t spend money like this, you know, we’re not millionaires in the BBC,” so I said, “It was really very important, because we wanted this chap to whatever it was to help us and this was a way of getting him on our side.”  “Well I understand that, but me more careful.”  And later on, I put in another expense claim and I was sent for by Norman Collins.  And I said, “Oh God, now I really am for the high jump.”  And I went in and he said, “Oh, good morning.  Now, not a word of this is to go outside this office because I’ve sent for you because Jack Nott wants me to give you a real dressing down about your expenses.   But, privately, I’ll say to you if you aren’t doing this sort of thing then we’re not getting good outside broadcasts and good programmes, but that’s just between you and me.  Good morning.”

[Laughter]

         And I went out and next door Jack Nott, he said – I don’t think I looked crestfallen enough for him – so I said, “Well, Jack, I’m going to be very careful about expenses in future.” 

[Laughter]

         But another thing about Norman I remember, Norman wanted to take the studios at Lime Grove, which, in those days, I think belonged to Gainsborough or God or somebody.  And why I was – I don’t quite know, but obviously OB’s was sort of considered fairly important in television, which was lucky for us.  Anyway, I was invited to go to a meeting with Ian Jacob who was Director-General of the BBC at the time, Norman Collins, myself, a couple of people from the BBC Works department and I think a couple of engineers, and we stood on the pavement, and after a great deal of discussion, Ian Jacob turned to Norman Collins and said, “Very well, Norman, you may have Lime Grove but only as an interim measure remember just for a couple of years while we build a new television centre.”  Well how many years ago is that and [laughs] Lime Grove is still going!  That’s where Norman, Norman was very go ahead and it was a great tragedy that, in the end, he was defeated by Broadcasting House and felt that he should go across to commercial television.  Where, funnily enough, he wasn’t, I don’t think, all that successful.

I:   ATV wasn’t it?

 

P:   Mm, he went to ATV.

I:   Talking about the individuals, how about Cecil McGivern.

P:   Well, Cecil McGivern was a paradox.  Cecil McGivern, I had a great admiration for him.

I:   Me too.

 

P:   And he was literally wedded to the job, he was an absolute workaholic.  And the only trouble was that he did perhaps have rather a large number of whiskies in the evening, but mainly because he was tired.  And I think he always worked himself into the ground and by the end of the evening he needed a drink, the trouble was that he’d have one or two more drinks and I always tried to avoid going and seeing him in the evening because he would ramble on a bit with his ideas of telling me over and over again that I should think about some OB’s with a camera on a gutter and then get somebody to tell stories when a matchstick floated by this meant that…and I said but that’s not television, Cecil, that’s radio.  “Well, you can make into television, “ he used to say [laughs].  But, nevertheless he was a great programme man, encouraged programme makers, was always very quick to send you a congratulatory note – I’ve got masses of memos from him saying, “Well done to your department, Peter, and everybody in it.  They did great a job last night.”  Equally, he was quite good at getting out the stick and saying, “Well, look, you jolly well ought to do better than that,” but always in a constructive way.  So, yes, I had great admiration for Cecil McGivern.  And it was a pity really when Kenneth Adam came across over him, I don’t think they really ever got on all that much.

         But, now, talking about those early days, there were other some OB’s before the Coronation that I haven’t mentioned.  Calais, of course, was a great adventure.  We asked the French, rather tentatively…

I:   Was it 1950?

 

P:   …- 1950 this was – whether they would allow us to send a unit into Calais.  We had put a unit onto a cross channel ferry and we had done that as an outside broadcast, we’d been onto a trawler – and this is all live, it was all live programmes in those days none of this sort of tape vending being heard of then and there was a thing called tele-recording which was pretty unreliable and not really good quality – but everything had to be produced live, and we’d been down on a submarine, but we hadn’t actually taken any of our cameras internationally, and we reckoned Calais counted as being international.  And the French, much to our surprise, the French said, “Yes, go ahead.  Fine, do it,” because you see they hadn’t got their own television wasn’t in Calais by that time. 

         So, we went across and saw the mayor and all the town council and so on, and said, “Well, look, could we arrange a fete?”  So, we thought up a fete “Calais en Fete,” and I had a fellow alongside me as my liaison called [unclear 54:24] Biggin-Watts who had been a film man and been on a lot of these Cecil B DeMille spectaculars.  So this was absolutely brilliant, he said, “How much money have I got, Peter?”  I said, “None at all, you know the BBC Television Service, Broadcasting House never gives any money,” and I mentioned some very small budget to him and he said, “Oh, God.  Well, we’ll do our best.” 

         We put together this Calais en Fete, we got circus artistes, we got mannequins from Paris – and I’ll tell you a story about that a minute – we had Richard Dimbleby as our commentator and obviously there was a great deal of folklore about Calais and it had been so much concerned with the war and was just beginning to be reconstructed.  So there was a tremendous amount to talk about and interesting people to interview and to talk about what had happened during the war and so on.  So, altogether, it was a programme it was meant to last 50 minutes and I think went on for nearly two hours, but no-one complained.  We put the transmitter, because it was a long way to go the 22 miles across the Straits of Dover, we put a microwave transmitter up in the clock tower of Calais town hall and it was picked up on the cliffs at Dover, and I couldn’t understanding during the rehearsal why one of our engineers who was a bit of womanizer, kept on saying to me, “Well, I think I’d better just go up and tweak the transmitter and tell me they’re receiving the other side of the channel, it’s not absolutely 100%, so I had better go up,” and I said, “Off you go,” and then he came back again.  It was only afterwards that I discovered that the only way you could get to the transmitter at the top of the clock tower was to go through the mannequins changing room.

[Laughter]

I:   And, which he did.

P:   [Laughs] Which, he did.

I:   On the subject of international outside broadcasts Peter, around about that time, I don’t remember the year, you will, there was a kind of international week?

 

P:   From Paris.

I:   From Paris, was it?

 

P:   Yes.

I:   Which Jean d’Arcy did?

P:   That’s right, Jean d’Arcy.  Well that came later, this was Cecil McGivern idea.  Cecil McGivern thought that we should go to Paris for a week, and so we used the French outside broadcast equipment and we took our own production team over and commentators.  And we did I think it was five days of transmissions of all sorts of things.  Of course, we went to the Lido, we went to…I think we went to the museum, I can’t remember.  Do you know, without looking up the programmes we did, but we did quite a lot, and we did one from the British Embassy garden, I remember, did a programme from there.  I think we also went to the French Embassy to keep the entente cordiale going.  We went to a circus, I think, if I remember.  And, all in all, well, Cecil McGivern was very pleased with it so it couldn’t have been bad [laughs].  I know we had to stay at the Hotel Clery on the Avenue St Germaine, I think it was.  And my God, it was in August and it was just like a pressure cooker, you couldn’t see and at night we’d try to jimmying the windows opens and we got bitten to death by mosquitoes, and we operated out of a suite offices in Cognac Gare and I had no air conditioning or like that either.  And the French, of course, thought we were quite made.  We realised why they allowed us to do in August because nobody in their right mind eve stays in Paris in august, so we were real suckers there, but.

[Laughter]

I:   Slightly, going back to the UK, but, obviously it must have been before the Coronation was it George 6th?

 

P:   Yes, we did that from Windsor.

M:   And the boat race is it?

 

I:   And the 1959 [over speech].

P:   There were so many things you see.  With the boat race we did, we persuaded the engineers that we should experiment with a camera in the launch.  And we tried it out and it worked, because to try and do the boat race from the banks with the sparse amount of equipment that we had it really wouldn’t have meant a great deal there would have been such gaps, and we hadn’t, up till that time, we hadn’t got helicopter coverage and, anyway, the boat race crews I think were rather against a helicopter because of the noise factor, and so we tried the boat and the boat worked an absolute treat, and became established practice.  And, of course, absolutely paid hand over fist when the Oxford boat sank, and we had an absolute close up of the [laughs] men in the water, which was really quite incredible.

I:   [Over speech].

P:   Quite incredible, yes.  But there were lots of things like that in television that one wonders if they will ever be repeated.  And, of course, we took to the air too, we went into a Bristol freighter; we also went up to Marham, because I remember it very well being in the aircraft and I really couldn’t…this was ILS it was called in those days, but it was quite advanced the new – I’ve forgotten what it stood for, but it’s something Landing System, Instrument Landing System - and we had an Anson and we had a camera in the Anson.  And we came down and actually did the landing in about 65 yard visibility, it was really quite something. 

         So we did a lot of exciting first time programmes then.  But, of course, one must remember that if you had little breakdowns and things it didn’t matter the audience enjoyed it because they were pioneers too and breaking this new ground was as exciting for them as it was for us doing it.

         We did a thing from Harwich I remember on showing the embarkation of soldiers to go abroad.  And Ginger Cargill, he was Assistant Producer I think then, and he was stage managing this show and he’d done his National Service I think in the marines or something and so he was used to ordering men about, and we suddenly found that one squad was standing in front of the camera obstructing the view of the gangway of the ship.  So the OB producer said, “Ginger, can you get those soldiers moved?”  So, Ginger just said, “Squad attention.  Right turn, quick march,” and as far as anybody ever knew nobody ever told them to stop.

[Laughter]

         But we were a bunch of brigands but we really loved it and we were very lucky – we were all very badly paid as everybody was in television in those days, but we didn’t care because you felt it was a privilege and you were lucky to have the job because you really were taking part in pioneering.

I:   And you were given a lot of freedom editorially, of course.

 

P:   Oh, total.  We had total freedom then.  Because, you see, that was where we were lucky we weren’t concerned with politics only peripherally.  We did the Eisenhower and McMillan meeting in Downing Street live, and we did the Suez crisis with Eden, I remember sitting on the sofa with Charles Hill who was Minister of Information I think at that time, and Clarissa – was that her name, Clarissa?

I:   [Over speech].

 

P:   Clarissa Eden, she was knitting sitting there knitting rather nervously, and we had the whole thing going, we had the prompter done everything done for Eden, and suddenly he came back into the room white as a sheet and everything had to be changed.  And, of course, I didn’t know what it was because we hadn’t been allowed to see the script of the prompter which was reasonable because it was highly secret until it was delivered, and it all had to be changed.  And I suddenly quickly think what happened was that that was when he’d had the call from the Americans that the Americans wouldn’t support us at the Suez, and so he had to completely change his message to the nation. 

         For the McMillan thing, I think Grace Windham Goldie came down as well, because really that was current affairs and we were mainly doing events as they happened.  We did quite a lot of built OB’s but not politically.

I:   No, I remember the…

P:   Sensitive.

I:   …yes, I used to be with Grace on the 1951 General Election.  We had, I remember, OB because I think one was Salford and [over speech]…

 

P:   That’s right, that’s right.

I:   …from somewhere else.

 

P:   That’s right.  We did elections we put all our equipment out do you remember and had reports everywhere.  But we worked into a studio that was under current affairs masterminded by really service OB’s there.

         Well I think Grace would like to have taken over OB’s and Grace would like to have taken over everything.

[Laughter]

         But I always used to say, “You keep your pseudo intellectualisms to yourself, Grace,” because she used me like mad.  I said, “We’re down to earth television people, you [laughs] stay away from us.”  And we had a lot of fun.  And, of course, sport, she couldn’t stand sport and when we started the programme 54 Sports View…

I:   Ah yes, that’s right.  My next point [laughs] yes.

P:   …Paul Fox, he was moonlighting on the sports columns of the People and also writing the commentary for Television Newsreel and he came to me and said he had an idea for a sports programme and journalism.  And I’d seen the autocue in America one of the trips I’d made to America before the Coronation, and I tried to get the rights to the autocue for Britain but they wouldn’t let them go because they wanted astronomical amount of money, which was totally out of the question on television budgets in those days, and when Paul came to me with the idea of Sports Review, I said, “Well, it’s pity we can’t have a teleprompter.”  And then one of the engineers, I think his name might have been Parrot said, “Oh, Peter, I used to work on the Masculine and Divan theatre show/magic shows before the war in St George’s Hall, and we used a thing called Pepper’s Ghost, which was the illusion whereby we’d have a pretty young on the lawn and just make them disappear in front of your eyes, and it’s all done by two sheets of glass.”  So, he said, “I don’t see why we couldn’t if you can’t get the autocue from American why can’t we do our own autocue?”” So we went up to the studio and we got two panes of glass and a mangle and a long role of paper and we just wrote a few things on the paper, and then I sat at the desk where we were going to Sports Review from, and I can see the piece of paper in front of the lens and to everybody’s astonishment you couldn’t see it on the screen, and that’s how we started the prompter and that’s why everybody said, “My God, this fellow Dimmock, he must come and speak to us, he’s wonderful.  He goes at 100 miles an hour and never makes a mistake [laughs].”  But they didn’t know that I’m an absolute idiot if I stand on two feet after dinner, I couldn’t do that at all.  It was very difficult to convince people I think until the autocue was better understood, or the teleprompter as we called it in those days.

         But this worked very efficiently and so we tried this programme and we’d been doing a programme called Sports Magazine once a fortnight, so we dropped that and started Sports View instead.  And, as luck would have it, on one of the very first editions, Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile and Ronnie Noble, who was sort of Paul Fox and Ronnie Noble were a great team, and Ronnie drove Bannister and got him into the studio before the end of the programme after he’d broken the four minute mile at Oxford.  And that got us an enormous amount of publicity and the programme really never looked back after that and we had lots of lots of scoops because Paul very much had the journalist’s nose and so we were able to beat Fleet Street.  And so the story we get our aim was to always to get a story into Sports View that the newspapers would have to follow the following morning.  So we got quite a bit amount of brush off material because very often they either had to take a picture from the screen and say it came from BBC’s Sports View or refer to in their articles, so this all helped.  And I know Grace got very fed up because we were preceded a lot by Tonight and, of course, Cliff hadn’t got an autocue in those days and so the pace of Tonight was much slower than Sports View, and we really put a pace on television which now has absolutely become the norm, but it was a very exciting programme and Paul and Ronnie got up to all sorts of mischievousness.  Paul was the forerunner of today’s normal journalist which I think people are complaining about even if there wasn’t a story Paul would jolly soon make one, he was absolutely wonderful.  We were in Budapest once doing a coverage of the European swimming championships and he’d heard in a restaurant somebody said, “You know on television these swimming costumes of these girls they don’t leave much to the imagination,” and Paul immediately got that translated into, “ASA home full inquiry into the girls’ swimming costumes in the British team.  They may be forced to change them.”  It was all absolute fabrication but it was wonderful and it made every newspaper and I think he leaked it to the Daily Express [laughs] or something.  And, of course, everybody wanted to watch our Sports View coverage of the swimming to see what these costumes were like.  He was marvellous like that, absolutely wonderful.

I:   Well I’d seen him on Panorama, of course, the Panorama fun squad.

 

P:   Well he was pinched from me.  I made the very big mistake, well I made mistakes in my life, but in my television life one of my biggest major mistakes that I hope it worked very much to Paul’s advantage and my big major mistake was not making him head of sports.  I took Harry Middleton because one of my awesome responsibilities at that time that I’d taken over from Lotbiniere who had gone down the west region, he had been the BBC’s liaison executive for the Royal family and so I took that over from him, so that was very much a major part of my duties but I was so busy running OB’s and doing Sports View on Wednesdays that the Royal liaison side, which was a considerable amount because the Royal family got us very good viewing figures if we could ever cover Royal events, I bought Harry Middleton in because he’d been in radio and he knew a lot of the Buckingham Palace people, which was a great help to me.  But, in fact, the more important side really was sport and so I should have had a sports chap there which should have been Paul.  But, as a result of that, because he was editing Sports View, Leonard Mile took Paul out to lunch and said, “Paul, how would you like to come to Current Affairs and edit Panorama?”  Well, of course, it was something that Paul couldn’t refuse, but I was very sad to lose him it was a great loss.  But then he went on from strength to strength and…

I:   You were of Head of OB’s 54 to 72?

 

P:   That’s right.

I:   And you fronted/hosted Sports View for 10 years?

P:   Yeah, 54 to 64, I did that.  And then it went on for a little bit and then became Sports Night with Coleman and it’s still Sports Night and it’s still going today I think under the title Sports Night.

I:   Extraordinary.  [Unclear speech 1:11:09].

 

P:   It was.  Well, for me, it was a wonderful form of relaxation because we had a great system going, Paul used to get the script across to me at about four o’clock and I’d change it into my own words so it could then be put on the prompter and put it in slashes and things where I make myself look down so that I didn’t look as if I was reading, and I would then go over at about six and we’d do a very rough run through.  It would make your hair stand on end if you compare with how we ran the programme then with the number of people that it takes to put a programme on today, we were really doing the whole thing by the seat of our pants, we’d have one producer, we’d have all sorts producers at various times with Ginger Cargill, Dennis Mungar and several others, and there were OB producers but working out of the studio.  Because this was the thing that it was a studio based programme but came out of the OB department because it was sports which was rather fun.  But we had a very small staff to run it and, of course, it was all live, which was great fun. 

         But we established quite a good reputation and it helped me, and people often say to me, “But, you know, there you were running the television outside broadcasts and then when BBC2 came along you had even more to do, how could you do Sports View?”  Well, Sports View (a) was a relaxation for me because it was great fun to do and I enjoyed it very much; but, secondly, and I know Grace said, “Peter should stop doing Sports View,” after about four years I think.  The point was that when I went to negotiate for the BBC, particularly when ITV came in and it was very competitive negotiations for events, when I used to go into the room to meet usually the committee or the organisers of the event, the first thing they’d say to me was, ‘Now, Sports View last week Peter, we didn’t agree with so and so at all, why didn’t you do this, or why did you have that item in?’ and we’d chat about that for probably five or ten minutes before we started to negotiate the event that I was trying to get the TV rights for.  And that broke the ice and very often enabled me to get events for about 75% of the fee that I was in fact prepared to go to.  So that the BBC was getting a great advantage out of that and it they didn’t have to pay, I was a thing called SNF, which was Staff No Fee, which producers loved because that kept the budget down, so there wasn’t much incentive, however bad I was at times, there wasn’t a lot of incentive for Paul to get rid of me because he’d then have to pay somebody else [laughs].

I:   Obviously the work you did overlaps, one thing overlaps another, and Sports View you fronted 54 to 64, you were head of OB’s, if I’m right, 54 to 72?

 

P:   That’s right.

I:   And…

P:   You see, I’d really been virtually Head of OB’s right from before that, because “Lobby” was put in nominally because they considered I was too young to be made head in the BBC hierarchy, the said, “This chap is too young and he’s going to fast,” because OB’s were growing so quickly, but they really put “Lobby” as a steadying influence and it was a very shrewd move in a way because “Lobby” and I got on very well because he let me run things, but I would go to him for advice and it was very useful to me, because I was a bit hot headed and it meant that I could go to “Lobby” and say, “Well, Lobby, I want to do this but do you think I’m going over the top?” and he would say, “Yes, perhaps you are.  Why not do it this way?”  And other times, I wouldn’t go to him because I knew if I went to him he’d say, ‘No, don’t do that,’ and I wanted to do it desperately so I wouldn’t go to him.  And then he never complained afterwards, he was a wonderful boss in that respect he gave me a tremendously free hand.  But it was, as I say, because I don’t think basically he ever really enjoyed having the responsibility of television, he was basically a radio man.  But he was a very good administrator, a very good administrator, a very tidy mind.

I:   I’ve also got you down Peter from 1959 to 72 Sports Advisor European Broadcasting Union?

 

P:   Oh, well that was another of my hats that I had to wear.  I went with Cecil McGivern to the very first meeting of the European Broadcasting Union, which was headed then by Ian Jacob, down at Aix-on-Provence.  Cecil McGivern spent most of the time in his bedroom and we couldn’t get him out of his bedroom to the meeting said “The meeting bored him,” and said “There’s a lot of eurocrats,” he said, “What do we want anything to do this?” so he wasn’t at all for it.  But the he gradually came to like it and also I think because he gave him a few trips away.  But, Joanna Spicer very early on said to me, “Look, Peter, I think we ought to get you as Chairman of the EBU Sports Group.” So I became Chairman of that and we had regular meetings.  And that was very useful because I then negotiated on behalf of the European Broadcasting Union all the rights for Europe, which included the UK, to the Olympic Games, the World Cup and all those big events around the world, which meant that again, we were in the forefront of things and when ITV came in we were very firmly established in Europe and internationally that although they came and had a seat on the committee they were very much under me in a sense and that gave the BBC quite a working advantage. 

         Eventually, it was interesting, Curren gave that advantage to get himself elected as President of the EBU.  I was a bit of fed up with him because – this is what I didn’t like about him, he was very devious and if he’d just come to me and said, ‘Look, Peter, will you please resign because I want the Spanish vote which will assure me of the presidency of the EBU?” I would have said, “Well, absolutely, great.  What could be better?”  But he didn’t do it that way, he caused an election to be held at which the Spanish chap was put up as opposition to me and I suddenly said, “What’s all this about?” and I discovered what was going on, so I quickly pulled the plug on the whole thing by resigning there and then.  But it was embarrassing because if he’d asked me I would have happily gone, but I think what he was frightened of was that I wouldn’t resign [laughs] if he asked me, but of course I would have done.  And I then stayed on the committee and we put the Spanish chap, a very good lad, he became Chairman and then, eventually, of course, when I left OB’s I went to Enterprises.

I:   Yes, I was going to come to that, that was 72 to 77, that means, am I right, the first time you were really away from the actual production of programmes in one form or another?

 

P:   Yes, what really happened I should have left OB’s before I did, but that was such a wonderful job that I think anybody would have been reluctant to move.  I was asked to be Assistant Controller of Television Programmes – not Assistant Controller – Controller of Television Programmes, and at the Board I said, “Well, I want £12,000 a year for four years and then I’ll come back to £8,000 a year if you don’t think I’ve done a good job or there isn’t another job for me to have or I’ll have to go and work somewhere else.”  They were absolutely horrified that (a) that I could have mentioned money; and (b) that I could ask for so much, but I say it was the hottest seat in television and I’m going to wear myself out in four years and I want to be well paid for it, and I had three children don’t forget.  And then they added insult to injury by appointing Stuart Hood out of Bush House who knew absolutely B.O. all about television, and then rang me, Kenneth Adam rang me at home and said, “Ah, Peter.  You’re much too expensive we can’t give you the job, but we can increase your salary by a very considerable amount if you would be Assistant Controller of Television Programmes to Stuart Hood.”  And I told him where he could put in no uncertain terms and never bore a grudge of it, but I really blew my top because I thought it was the biggest bit of cheek I’d ever heard.  And, as we know, Stuart Hood didn’t exactly set the world on fire [laughs] in the job.

I:   This was in the early 60’s wasn’t it?

P:   Yes.

I:   Am I right?  Yes.

 

P:   Yes.  It was unbelievable.  But then in the 70’s it was quite clear, my sort of term – Paul Fox went onto be Controller of BBC1, Aubrey Singer who had been by Assistant Head Science Features, which was another very important element of BBC2 as well, and Aubrey did a very good job and we did a lot of very good feature, science and feature programmes under the aegis of OB’s, but when Aubrey went off to be Controller of BBC2 that left me now…Ginger Cargill by then was very much making his mark as Head of Sport doing a great job, and impatient to get on and get promoted and don’t blame him a bit, but I think what Weldon felt was before we promote Cargill, we should give him a drubbing as a Head of Group, and the only way to do that was to move me.  Well, he wanted me to be Managing Director of Radio, which didn’t appeal to be at all, he brought me back from Mexico I was at the Olympic Games and pre-planning and he brought me back to a board.  And I didn’t fancy this at all, but they said, “Oh it’s a stepping stone to Managing Director of Television.”   That happened to Aubrey Singer, which was extraordinary, I just frankly didn’t believe them, and I thought once I’d gone to radio that’s Peter Dimmock out of sight out of mind.  So I was very glad not to have that job, but Weldon was very keen I should take it because that would mean that he could promote Ginger, and he was afraid to lose Ginger to independent television, and I could see the sense of this.  Well then an incredible thing happened, Dennis Scuse decided to go off and join James Hanson to try and get him some television franchises.  So, Weldon said to me, “Peter, would you like to run Enterprises?” and I said, “Well, what does it involve?”

I:   Dennis Scuse ran Enterprises?

 

P:   Sorry, Dennis Scuse was Head of Enterprises at that time.  He’d taken over from Ronnie Waldman.  And, Dennis Scuse had made it moderately successful, more successful than Ronnie, but Ronnie starting the thing off had a difficult road.  Because the BBC, at that time, was not respectable to make money by the BBC, so even Dennis was working under quite a few constraints.  Well, because I’d been very commercial in OB’s negotiating all the contracts and everything, Hugh said, “I think you’ll enjoy doing it.”  Well I went in there with sort of mixed feelings but very soon got to like it and found a wonderful team to work with, very much the same sort of spirit as Outside Broadcast, very much mavericks, very much doing their own thing yet within the BBC enjoying the advantages of claiming that we working for the BBC but absolutely taking no notice of all the BBC rules and regulations if they interfered with us getting on with making money.  And within those four years, we improved the turnover enormously and we brought in and made records and tapes a viable arm of Enterprises whereas before it been a bit of a joke and had lost money and it was a very profitable concern. 

         But an indication of how the BBC still felt it rather disgraceful, I had pulled off a real coupe deal with Time Life to be our distributors in the United States on very favourable terms.  [Laughs] And I got a memo from Hugh Weldon saying, “Peter, I’ve looked at this deal and it’s great, but I think that you should give them back a million dollars.”  I read this thing about four times and I said he’s made a mistake it leaves a hundred thousand dollars, and I rang him up and I said, “Hugh, I see that we’re having a profit here of about two and a half million, why the hell do you want give a million back?”  “Well”, he said, “I don’t think it will look good for us to make all that money,” and so we had to give it back.  And I’d spent weeks and weeks negotiating this deal, arguing and we’d had a fellow called Robeck was negotiating for Time Inc. and he was a big, tall man he was about six foot five and he marched up and down at Villiers House in Ealing, and then I went over to America to Time and he marched up and down arguing and arguing about the price and the conditions, and then suddenly I had this million dollars taken away from me it broke [laughs] my heart.  It wasn’t my money it was the BBC’s money, but.  Anyway, Hugh explained to me and said, “Well, we feel, Peter, that it will also in the coproduction area,” and I think probably in the end it did, but the fact that we’d given them back that money engendered quite a bit of goodwill with them, though, in the end, the BBC’s relationship with Time Inc – long after my time – I think came to an end.

I:   [Unclear speech 1:25:44].

P:   And they didn’t in the end themselves, yes.

I:   Yes.  I remember co-productions because I was involved with the Alistair Cooke America series that was a coproduction with Time Out wasn’t it?

 

P:   Yes, that’s right.

I:   And eventually bought by NPC...

 

P:   That’s right.

I:   …and put it on the main network.

P:   Yes.  A lot of arm twisting went on there.  It’s very difficult to sell BBC programmes in American, and still is I think to this day.

I:   I’m sure.  Anyway, Peter, was it 1977 you left the Enterprises and you left the BBC in 78?

 

P:   That’s right.

I:   Can you tell us about…well you should tell us something about that a revolutionary position?

 

P:   Well, I was a little bit naughty about that, but I’d had one or two big arguments about salary with the BBC and I had a contract, I was one of the very few people within BBC who had a long term contract.  The contract actually initially when independent television came in they were so keen to keep me for some reason, best known to themselves, they gave me a 12 year contract.  And I began to realise that – at the time it seemed marvellous, but then I began to realise that I was very much locked into this thing, and so I said, “Hey, I want more money now.” And they huffed and puffed and everything else and said that I was already getting very nearly what the various directors and controllers were getting and that I didn’t deserve anymore.  And I said, “Well I’m not paid too much and you’re all paid too little.”  And I had lots of arguments with a fellow called Tinniswood who had been brought in from the Post Office who had never liked me because I’d heard that there had been a new appointment as Director of Personnel that [unclear 1:27:41] was going and I didn’t know who it was.  And I was up in the senior luncheon room at Broadcasting House I’d been to a meeting there and popped in to have a quick lunch, and I sat down and I was talking to one or two of my colleagues, radio colleagues, and I said, “My God, have you heard about the new [unclear 1:28:03] appointment?  Yeah, they’ve appointed some bureaucrat from the Post Office.”  I didn’t know him like Tinniswood or something and I thought what the hell’s the BBC coming to?  And he was helping himself to lunch in the adjoining [laughs] room and heard every word.  So, quite understandably, he didn’t think much of me after that, so I didn’t get very far with getting any more money. 

         And so, I finally came to the point that I was terrible lucky, I let it be known that I thought it was time I left the BBC, thinking really I’d go to commercial television because I’d turned them twice.  And CBS heard about this, because I was in the Carlton Hotel and one of the senior CBS men were there and said, “Hi, Peter,” and I said, “well, I don’t know, I think it’s about time I left the BBC” funnily enough.  And he’d obviously reported this back to New York because I got a call from CBS saying was I serious, would I like to go and work for them?  Well, I then happened to run into my old friend, Roone Arledge, who was boss of ABC Sports in America and I told him, he said, “God, why didn’t you tell me?” I said, “I thought you were a BBC institution,” I said, “No.”  He said, “Well, you should come and work for us.”  Well this was wonderful because I then had both CBS and ABC wanting me.  And so he said, “You should have an American lawyer,” and I thought, “God, this is going to cost an arm and leg,” what I didn’t know until afterwards was that lawyers’ fees are deductible against your tax in America, so it really doesn’t matter what they charge you, it’s marvellous comes off your income tax. 

         Anyway, I appointed a lawyer and he just kept ringing me up and saying, “Well, I think the better deal is with ABC.”  Well, in the end, it became obvious that really ABC were the only runner and they invited me, and they do things very thoroughly, they invited me over with Polly and we went and we were both invited to the Race for the Pennant which is at Yankee Stadium it was the Yankees against somebody and I didn’t understand baseball in those days and neither did Polly, but all the members of the ABC Board were there and the Chief Executive, all the top brass in other words, and Roone Arledge obviously, and quite sort of unobtrusively and without it having appeared to have been arranged in any way, Polly found herself at various times sitting next to all the ABC top brass, and so did I.  And I was cornered by a fellow called Fred Pierce who, at that time, was the President, and he grilled me as I’d never been grilled in my life before and in a totally informal way.  He seemed just to be chatting to me, but he’d worked out every question: how did I think I could work in a commercial environment like America which is so different from the BBC?  All those questions, which, fortunately, having been in Enterprises which is where they wanted me, obviously I was able to satisfy them because when I got back to England, we got back and eventually got a cable from Arledge saying, “Welcome aboard, when can you begin?”

SIde 3

I:   Side three.  Now, ABC.

P:   Yes?  I had a telegram a cable came from Arledge saying, “Welcome aboard, when can you begin?”  Well, I hadn’t said anything to the BBC about going, so I went to Tinniswood and said to Tinniswood, “I have it in mind to take early retirement,” because I knew that miniscule though it was that there was always a possibility if you took early retirement the BBC would give your full pension, in other words, the pension you would get when you reached 60.  And so, Tinniswood said, “Well, Peter, we’d be sorry to lose you but you’ve had a quite a tough career with the BBC and quite understand,” and I think quite secretly he wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of me.    So, he put it to the Board of Management and the Board of Governors and they said yes, and he wrote to me and said, “You’ll be very pleased to know that although, albeit with reluctance, the Board of Managing Governors have said if you wish to take early retirement you may and you can have your full pension.”  So I said, “Thank you very much,” and got that in writing and gave it to my solicitor, he said, “That’s fine,” and whereupon I issued a press statement to say that I was joining ABC Television in New York. 

         The telephone wire was red hot and Tinniswood said, “You never said anything about this to me,” I said, “Well, Maurice, I didn’t know, I didn’t decide to go until after I decided to retire, it’s surprising how people…” and it was an absolute fib and he knew it was a fib, but I really felt that that was game, set and match to me in my relationship with him, and he was quite nice about it and laughed.  But we’d had quite a few brushes, one of my brushes I’d actually taken – with Tinniswood – Quinlan came with me, and an old friend of mine, Frank [s.l. Govern 1:35:05] said to Goodman, “Look, Peter’s got this problem with the BBC, would you go with him because he feels he ought to have a legal chap with him?”  And I went with Goodman and on the pavement we walked from Goodman’s flat which was at the top of Portland Place down at Broadcasting House, and on the way he said, “Peter, I’m really going to enjoy this,” because there had been a big rumour in the papers that he was going to become the next Chairman of the BBC and he said, “I really don’t know whether I’m going to become Chairman or not,” I’m not really sure that I do, but he said, “I’m going to have a lot of fun,” because we were beginning to wonder what is going on?  [Laughs]  So I couldn’t have had a better representative and Tinniswood’s face when I walked with Lord Goodman was really quite incredible [laughs].  And Goodman was marvellous, Goodman dealt with the whole thing in about five minutes flat and that was the end of that and he had the sharpest line ever, I admired him enormously, absolutely enormously.

[Laughter]

I:   And then you went to New York did you?

 

P:   Now, I went…

I:   Sorry.

 

P:   …I went to New York and I couldn’t have gone at a luckier time because ABC was the number one television network at that time in America, so they were riding absolutely high.  And because of my experience at BBC Enterprises, Arledge asked me to have a look at the sales and marketing side of ABC Sports.  Well, I very quickly saw that they had been using agent and they would have been ripped off, the agent was not paying a great deal of attention to the sports programmes or news programmes and other programmes that ABC were allowed to sell, weren’t allowed to sell entertainment programmes ABC that’s an NFCC regulation but it still hasn’t been changed, and he [unclear speech 1:36:55] independence and the right to sell their own programmes they had made for the network.  But sports and news and certain other programmes were excepted from that because of.  So I set up a worldwide sales and marketing operation within ABC Sports and was made Vice President of that, and put their profits and turnover up by over 1000% in the first year.  And anyone could have done it providing you had a certain experience, but I was just very very lucky to arrive at that time. 

         And so I stayed there four years and then Polly’s cancer had got worse and she had come with and the family, and ABC were a wonderful organisation to work for, they knew about Polly’s cancer and they said, “Look, clearly it’s getting serious,” she was taking advice from the Sloan Kettering cancer hospital in New York, but it was a question of how long and not when.  And they said, “Look, we think if you would like to go back to Europe, we have a [unclear 1:38:08] with the IRS which we’re trying to get them not to tax us so heavily on certain overseas earnings in various aspects of which it would suit to have an office in Monte Carlo.  So they sent me back to Europe and we opened an office in Monte Carlo and I ran my division in New York from Monte Carlo picking up the French Concorde and going back once every ten days or so for three or days, but doing the rest of it really via telex, which we hadn’t got fax in those days we had telex, and telex and telephone.  And then they decided they wanted to open an office in London.  I should have explained that I really wasn’t any longer working for ABC Sports, I was working for Video Enterprises which was a fellow called [s.l. Granite, Earl Granite 1:39:09].  And they decided that they wanted to open a sports office in London, so they put me in charge of the sports office in London, and I ran that with the aid of another chap, Michael Carlson.  And then became a consultant for ABC Video Enterprises until December last year.

I:   This covers the LA Olympics doesn’t it?

P:   Yeah, the Los Angeles Olympics.

I:   Yeah, 84.

 

P:   That’s right in 84, as I went over for there so I was there for that.

M:   What then what did you actually do on that, you looked after the ABC side of it did you?

P:   Well the sales side etc…

M:   I see.

P:   …as we sold them.  There were a lot of brush off of sales.  The Olympic Games is a really very useful thing and [unclear 1:40:08] and the rights do that, helps you sell a lot of rights to other things.

And it was quite a lucrative thing, our big sales things it was things like baseball which we had two Canadian breweries like Labatt’s and Carling fighting over the rights, which was a wonderful [over speech].

M:            [Laughs].

P:   We had two offices and going back forwards and saying, “Well, how about another half a million, well they’ve just go another, what about another million, do you want to knock them out?”  And it was a great negotiation and they were both determined and they both had their boards had voted enormous budgets.  I was staggered, I’d obviously had my projections said what I thought it would get and which was more than somebody else that advised board, an independent advisor, because the Board in America they’re thorough they’ve got an independent thing.  My projection was more than that, but I thought was a bit optimistic but then in fact we got even more than that just by luck.  So it was a very profitable division and the money, of course, all ploughs back into the programmes, which was…

         That was another thing that annoyed me about the BBC Enterprises was that all the money I made, I couldn’t tell whether it went to providing a new lavatory for the Chairman on the fourth floor of Broadcasting House or where it went.  And I suggested and never got anywhere with it that those programmes that made the most money they should get a percentage of the whole.  In other words, a small percentage should go into a general BBC fund I accepted that, but then that the major programme makers should have had that money returned to their budgets so they could better and bigger programmes, so I never got away with that, they said it was terribly unfair on the small departments, but there could have been a general fund which they could have…after all it would be money for nothing for them.

I:   Yes, quite.

P:   But whereas the other programme departments I felt didn’t earn the money and enabled us to make the money, but they wouldn’t have that.  And the other thing I did while I was at Enterprise I started the British – what do we call it – British Television Distributors Association that’s still going today.  Because I tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Lou Grade that we might try and promote the idea that IBA and the BBC of a British Television Export Corporation.  Because they were doing some damn good programmes, Brideshead and all those programmes they were doing, and I said if we could put all of these eggs into one sales basket, so the old thing you sell the potatoes with the bananas, and some people think it isn’t strictly ethical, but I don’t see what’s wrong with it, it’s the same thing you do with films that you sell your B films and you package them with your video features and I said, “Well, why couldn’t we do that and if we could do it with all British programmes whether BBC or ITV we’ll make more money for both of us,” and Lou said, “No,” he had so many axes to grind and there were so many vested interests that I could see that it was too bigger thing for him to contemplate really.  And I think the BBC probably I wouldn’t have been able to get it through the Board of Governors, but it was something that I worked at and tried hard but failed. 

         My other failure in Enterprises was I failed to get, which I think would have saved the expenditure on that what I think is a bit of white elephants at Woodlands, I’d love to know what Woodlands costs and overheads, I failed by two weeks to get the lease on Telstar House that was at Paddington Station.  I was very keen to have that because (a) the rent was not astronomical; (b) I wouldn’t have lost my staff because most of them came into Ealing, because we were by Ealing Broadway Station in the previous house, I think they would have stayed because there were non-stop trains from Ealing to Paddington and we would have been bang opposite Paddington Station, so I wouldn’t have lost a lot of key personnel on travel grounds nor we would have had to pay them a lot extra if we had uprooted them, but I gather later on they decided, because it was obvious one had to move because we were expanding so much, they built Woodlands at enormous expense I believe.

I:   [Laughs] Well.

 

P:   It’s easy to criticise when you don’t know the full facts.

I:   Oh yes.

 

P:   And I could be wrong.

I:   What is interesting is the fact that in your position that you never – you thought you might have done – never actually worked for an ITV company in your entire career.

P:   No, the nearest I got to it was I was made two conditions, we’d agreed on the salary, which was wonderful, I mean I didn’t finish the process as I went to America, but ITV were prepared to me that kind of money then right at the beginning.  I insisted my contract would be with the IBA, or ITA I think it was.

I:   MM, ITA.

 

P:   And not with any of the companies in case they went bust.  And secondly, and this was what the whole thing fell down on because they had a meeting and I lost out, but I had pre-emptive rights over the mobile units in the regional companies.  Because I said, "I can’t make you number one in Sport and number one in Outside Broadcasts unless I have a totally free hand in pre-emption of units and an overrun agreement on five or six star events a year," that’s all I want.  And that’s where they said no, we’re not going to take you on, on that basis.  I said, “Well, I’m not prepared to have the job without it.”  I said, “It won’t work out,” I said, “Unless that is part of my contract and I could sue you if you don’t, because I’m going to do a bad job then that’s my reputation on the line and my only recourse would be to sue you for breach of contract, because I don’t want to just work for the money, I want to work for enjoyment and beating the BBC,” because that was the competition and you’re prepared to pay me a lot more money than them I’m  prepared to try and beat them and why not it’s quite fair.  So I didn’t’ join them, but there were actually three occasions but that was one that came nearest to it, the others there were too many problems that didn’t appeal to me.

         I tried to pinch John Bromley from them very early on.  I think Ginger was in two minds about it, but, at that time, I thought Ginger would be promoted or go across and I really wanted to have a good back-up for him.  But, in the end, Sam Leach that Ginger brought in was a very able chap, it’s a shame he died.  Ginger had a very good team on the Sports side.

I:   Excellent.

 

P:   A man who was a tough customer but he knew what he wanted and how to get it, he was full of bright ideas.  He really began live on tape, he was very keen on that and I think proved to be right.  I having been brought up with live television was much more keen, because I could see in the end that I was wrong there were certain things that you could improve them no end by making them live on tape and cutting out the dull bits.

[Laughter]

I:   Can we talk about your father, Peter?

 

P:   Yeah.  Well, my father was with Marconi’s and then he went to…

I:   What was he in at Marconi’s?

 

P:   At Marconi’s, I think he was on the engineering side, he was basically an engineer, was trained as an engineer and it was very surprising I didn’t become an engineer but I was never really interested in becoming an engineer.  But as I got my first glimpse of television because he had a television set in those early days and I didn’t watch it very much because I didn’t think much of it quite honestly, but I remember the newsreel thing going on.  And then, of course, when I went to television and he was still Head of the Equipment department but then he retired quite soon after that.  He was very ill during the war and he ran the Equipment department during the war from Evesham and, of course, I was in the Air Force so I used to drop my laundry on the tennis court so my mother could wash it as I could never get it properly washed in the Air Force.

[Laughter]

         I used to do a sort of bombing run over the tennis run and I missed it sometimes and I used to bung my washing out of the window [laughs] and I used to have to cant the tail round because otherwise there was the danger of the washing hitting the tail which would have damaged it and God knows what might have happened, but I felt quite skilful.

[Laughter]]

I:   A pretty colour.

 

P:   Yeah, well it was idiotic really, but it was a wonderful way of getting my washing done.

[Laughter]

         But, no, I think he had…I’m trying to remember I think he got his OBE during the war, because the BBC did a tremendous amount of confidential stuff for the Forces during the war.

I:   Yes.  Oh, yes.

P:   Yeah.

I:   Because I remember the OB vans or, in fact, well the BBC vans [over speech].

 

P:   We had to by law.

I:   That’s right.

 

P:   But then you remember when John – I think he died the other day – John Althorpe, I think his name was he took over.

I:   Yes.

 

P:   You had to have any commercial vehicle has to have a name and address on the side so that the police can take it in the event accident I think.

I:   It was based at Brixton wasn’t it?

P:   Clapham.

I:   Clapham, that’s right.

 

P:   Avenue House, Clapham.

I:   Avenue House, yes.    That’s right.

 

P:   Because, actually, I went to Dulwich, you see, because we lived in Islington, South London and moved to Coulsdon.

I:   He was Had of Engineering wasn’t he?

P:   No, he was Head of Equipment at Marconi’s.

I:   Head of Equipment at Marconi’s.

 

P:   He never got promoted, I there was a long story about that, I don’t know why.  He didn’t get on with somebody I think.  But he was a bit like me and I think that’s probably where I’ve inherited my sort of…I think he said what he thought rather [unclear 1:51:31] which is what I’ve done.

[Laughter]

M:   Why not.

P:   Well that’s why I would never…

M:   Why not.

P:   Well, I enjoyed it, I’ve no regrets at all in that part, I’m very lucky to go to America when I did.  Because I got rid of my overdraft and three children to educate. 

         You see, that’s what the BBC never…no-one now seems to remember that my BBC pension is laughable, because for a large amount of the time, and this was one of my big arguments was about with the BBC which was part of the [unclear 1:52:04].  But I have to say there’s a  phrase you remember everybody [unclear 1:52:10, I suppose you must remember the [unclear 1:52:11]?

M:   No, I was on…

P:   Were you on contract?

M:   No, I had a grading, I had a grade and it went to a certain thing, then they upped the ceilings of the grades.  Then after that, I reached the ceiling and every now and again you get a special award or something like that.

P:   That’s right.  But, no, if you remember there was a period of about a year, or two years, when there was a wage freeze and they weren’t allowed to increase your salary, you didn’t get a rise.

M:   I left – what was it, the end of 71/72.

P:   Perhaps it was about [over speech].

M:   It was probably the result of me going.

[Laughter]

P:   But it was in the very same year and…

M:   Oh.

P:   Oh yes, it was a real crisis.  And people also forget the television closed down after the war for several weeks.  And also had very restricted transmission hours for a longer period because of the fuel crisis, we had petrol coupons back then.  [Unclear speech 1:53:08] came back after the war.

M:   That’s right, yes.

P:   They’re printing them now.

M:   Are they?

I:   Well, I’ve still got some.

P:   I don’t think [unclear 1:53:20] has done that.

I:   No, I suppose from the last time when there was…there was a thought of rationing anyway.  Looking back, Peter, what’s the highlight of your career with the Beeb?

P:   Oh, the Beeb has to be the Coronation, there can’t be anything else.

I:   Yeah.

 

P:   It was the most nerve-wracking, the most exhilarating experience of my life and I think always will be.  There were lots of other excitements, which we’ve talked about, and doing the State Opening of Parliament that was a tremendous challenge doing that, and Montgomery’s funeral, Churchill’s funeral, all those things, Churchill’s funeral was very exciting because I managed to find out, and I shouldn’t have done, that he was going to be buried at Bladon, and I had to go to get a BBC camera position and I saw a house and I had to go and make up the most extraordinary story as to why, “Could I possibly rent this woman’s back room at the top?”  She said, “Why?”  And I said, “Well, we’re thinking of doing a series on graveyards of Britain and this is one of the featured being so near Blenheim and all that,” and I said, “I don’t know for sure that we will include, but just in case we do and you know it is always possible somebody else might have the idea, because I do want to get the best and be sure to have the best position first.”  “Oh, I don’t think there’s any worry, of course you may.”  I said, “No, I’d rather have a contract, if I may, just have something in writing.”  And I got this letter from this dear lady yes, we could use it.  And then, of course, sometime after that the news broke, Churchill was going to be buried there, so we got that camera position.

[Laughter]

         And thinking back that was so funny it never occurred to me.  I looked at the shots and then I went up there after the grave had been dug and we had this thing here across from this window, and it looked just like a sort of lark on the ground.  I can’t remember who it was, one of the AP people said to me, “Peter, put a spade in it,” and we put a spade in it and transformed it.  It immediately like a grave, because you had then a relationship with the spade at the far end, you could see about three quarters of the spade but immediately gave depth, whereas before it just looked absolutely just a sort of flat [over speech].

I:   Flat, yes.

 

P:   Quite extraordinary.  A very bright chap to come up with things like that.

I:   What was the greatest disappointed do you think, and have you had them, you must have had some…

P:   Disappointment?

I:   …that hasn’t worked out right?

 

P:   Not having a son.  Not, funnily enough, for my sake so much as for my father’s.  I knew this because his brother, my uncle who as a pilot in the First World War, successfully shot down several German planes, gone all through the war and was just about to leave – I think it was called the Royal Flying Core – was just about to leave then that flu epidemic and then he was down at Bournemouth in big camp there, got flu and died.  And I was an only son and so I knew that my father desperately wanted a son, wanted a grandson, that’s why Polly and I had three children, we would have stopped at two but fortunately my father, or however you put, my father died soon after we had the third daughter and so we didn’t need to go on.

[Laughter]

         Otherwise it might have like the Duke of Norfolk and finished up with five daughters.

[Laughter]

         No, I love having three daughters it’s great, but I would have liked to have had a son because…

I:   Any professional disappointments?

 

P:   Erm…

I:   Probably not.

P:   Well,  there was the one, I don’t know if you would call it a disappointment or a mixture of disappointment and frustration and puzzlement, but after we did the rehearsal of the Coronation, Johnny Vern was with me doing the remixing and my Assistant Producer, and we’d done a lot of the camera angles, we had done more or less a play script because it really is theatre the Coronation, so.  And so we knew that’s what we wanted, but, honestly, we were in doubt, do we want an 8 or a 12 or do we want a 6 or an 8, and you couldn’t really tell until we came to the rehearsal.  So, on the rehearsal we were changing lenses all the time and making notes as we went along.  Sound Radio was doing the same thing with their microphones because they had microphones hidden in the [over speech]…

I:   [Over speech].

 

P:   …and so on, and so it was what the rehearsal’s for, we were experimenting all the way through it and when it was all over we’d – what was his name, Shaw, Jim Shaw I think, a lovely man and my engineering manager, great chap, he did a great job, wonderful, and I think we’ve got it taped, hope so, Johnny said this, I think.  So Frances House who was in there and he was head of religious broadcasting and he had been a very good liaison with the Archbishop and the Dean in the Abbey through all this sort of negotiation and camera positions and so on and so forth, he and I went off to have lunch and we went to have our lunch in the RAF [unclear 1:59:05] and I was summoned to the telephone and it was George Barnes who was Director of Television, and they never knew anything about television anyway, but it was another political Broadcasting House move to get us to Television Service.  He said, “You must have made a request, Peter. Cecil and I would like to see you in the office at once.”  I said, “We’re in the middle of lunch.”  “Well, I want you to come now, we’ve got to have a serious talk.”  So I went back to lunch [laughs] and I said, “Francis, let’s finish our lunch.  I don’t know what the hell’s coming today.  Something’s going on.”  So then we went to Lime Grove and there were McGivern and Barnes.  And George Barnes said, “Well, what are you going to do?  Should we put in another producer?”  I said, “We’re doing that.”  “Well, I mean, we watched the rehearsal on screen it was diabolical.  If we’re going to have that on Coronation Day my God.”  I said, “What are you talking about?  We knew what we were doing.  You don’t think it’s going to be like that on the day, do you?”  “Well…”  And even Cecil, to my utter astonishment a television man said, “Well, I don’t think it was very good, Peter.”  Now the bugger, bugger.  Cecil had done that because he didn’t want me to become complacent.  He put Barnes up to it.  [Over speech].

[Laughter]

         …on television went along with it

[Laughter]

         Well it was a disappointment because I was taken in by it and I worried about it.

I:   As you weren’t meant to.

 

P:   Of course, of course.

[Laughter]

         I really was a sucker.

I:   Oh dear!

P:   An absolute sucker.

[Laughter]

         And sweated blood and tears over this bloody coverage [over speech]…

[Laughter]

         …ungrateful so and so’s.

I:   I’m sure Cecil liked you to have learned.

 

P:   Oh, well, George Barnes [unclear speech 2:01:08] and the queen sent me a Coronation medal, that was an incredible touch, this thing came in the post saying [laughs], “In recognition of your [unclear 2:01:19]” and I always say that was due to my colleagues more than me – to everybody, but.  No, it went very well.  Well the whole day went well.

I:   Yes.

 

P:   And you couldn’t really go wrong as long as you didn’t have any real serious breakdowns, that’s what we [over speech].

I:   Yes, those are things of the past almost now aren’t they breakdowns, yeah.

P:   Oh, yes.

I:   Breakdowns, mm.

 

P:   Well now they’ve got to just slot a new component in so very quickly and they don’t bother…in the early days, you’d have the engineers with the soldering while you were on the air trying to keep the thing working.

I:   [Laughs].

 

P:   And do you know it’s interesting you say disappointments I’m sure I must have had a lot.  Oh, a big disappointment was when – this was to do with, I don’t know whether you remember but, in the early days, there was a terrific anti-advertising thing stopping people who did gratuitous advertising, and, what’s his name, SG Williams was a great proponent of this and was always on at me over the slightest things, there were too many signs and this, that and the other.  And we were doing, I can’t remember the runner’s name, Irishman, was it Bryony?  I can’t…anyway, he was expected to break the mile record, well it might have been 1500 meters by then, at the White City in a meeting that was being sponsored by Coca Cola, or Pepsi Cola, one of the Cola’s, and we had agreed the usual two banners for Pepsi Cola or Coca Cola, whichever it was, was the sponsor, I get a telephone call at home half an hour – well, no, about 45 minutes before transmission saying, “Peter, Pepsi Cola…” – or Coca Cola whichever it was  “…had just put up another 10 signs,” I said, “There’s no way that I can avoid that and get the runners when we go round the far bend.” I said, “I haven’t got a lens that will do it, just won’t work.”  “I’ve asked them to take them down and they’re refusing.  What shall I do, should we cancel the broadcast?”  And I said, “Yes, I think we should.  We’ve got to take a stand on this because otherwise if we open the floodgates that will be it.”  So I ring up Hugh Green, who funnily lived in the same road down Anson Avenue, and he was in, fortunately.  I said, “Hugh, I’ve got a big problem, I’m taking the decision to pull.”  He said, “What, I’m only here tonight to watch this.”  So I said, “No,” I said, “Well there are millions that are going to watch it and it’s going to cause me the most terrible Kafuffle.  If we are serious in our fight against advertising, we’ve got to do it.”  He said, “A big decision, Peter, I want to think about it and talk to other people and carrying your back.”  I said, “Well, for God’s sake be quick, because in half an hour it won’t matter.”  And I said, “I’ve ward Presentation, they’ve got it covered,” I said, “There’s another programme all ready to go.”  So I waited and waited and the time expired and the telephone rings Hugh.  “Peter, I’m very sorry, I must let the advert go ahead.”  And that, to me, was a desperate disappointment.

I:   Yes.

P:   A desperate disappointment.  And said, “Well, Hugh, you’re the boss,” I said, “This goes against grain, but it’s not something I’ll resign over” -  there’s certain things I wouldn’t resign over – “but it’s not a thing I’ll resign over but it is a great disappointment.”  And then the whole joke was that the fellow ran very badly and the race was a non-event.

[Laughter]

         And that was sod’s law wasn’t it.

I:   It didn’t matter.

 

P:   But it was very aggravating, that was a disappointment.  Oh there was another I’ve just thought of too.  Oh the thing over the World Cup.  We had an agreement with ITV…

I:   This would be the 66 one would it?

 

P:   Yeah, that’s right.  We had an agreement with ITV, [unclear speech 2:05:49] and John McMillan, Robin – if he’s still alive – Robin…can’t remember his surname – and they broke it and announced that they’d acquired the exclusive rights.  I had done the deal with the EBU to include the UK.  [S.l. Escaraga 2:06:12] didn’t sign the deal and was there said he had a broken wrist.  I was ill in bed at home and [s.l. Strasrov – 2:06:20] rang me from Geneva and I said, “Good is the contract signed?” And he said, “No it’s not, Peter.  Escaraga said it’s all okay as we agreed but he can’t sign it because his wrist is in plaster and so I’ve given it to him and as soon as his wrist is better he’ll sign it and send it to me.”  I said, “I don’t like the sound of that,” you see, I didn’t think anything crooked at the time, I didn’t like the sound of it and I said, “Well, couldn’t he have signed with his left hand?” I said [laughs].  “He really didn’t want to and you’ve got to trust these people, Peter,” and he’s a Mexican and I knew Mexico very well, I used to go there quite a lot.  And nothing happened until two days later headline in all the papers, “ITV secures exclusive UK rights to the World Cup,” in Mexico.

I:   Oh, so it wasn’t 66 then?

P:   No, this is from Mexico.  Escaraga on behalf of the FIFA and the Mexican thing has sold the rights exclusively to ITV.  God, I didn’t understand I nearly went berserk.  I was ill in bad, Strasrov came to see me, I was going to kill him I was so furious.  The only time I lost my temper with a journalist on the telephone which was very undignified I called up [unclear speech 2:07:42] I said, “They’re not judging me, they’re not this, they’re not that,” and all this was in the paper the next day [laughs] but I was in my sick bed and I couldn’t do anything about, I got flu or something, and I was furious because I wanted to go and castrate Escaraga.  He’s not a bad chap, he’s very smart.  And then in the end the disappointment was the repercussion of that was that in the end we were force – I was forced to accept a compromise, and ITV got the greater share of the event than they otherwise would have had, and I felt it was all wrong that they’d got it by basically being slightly dishonest, well more than slightly dishonest and aided and abetted by Escaraga.

I:   This will be 1970?

 

P:   Yes, I think wasn’t the World Cup in 70 in Mexico?

I:   Yes, I think so.

 

P:   It was in 66 England and [over speech]…

I:   Then in Mexico, that’s right.

P:   […over speech]…

I:   That’s right, yeah.  Yeah, 70.

 

P:   …in my house.

I:   1970.

 

P:   The police came over at half past one because I had Mariachi’s [over speech].

I:   [Laughs].

P:   It was wonderful, it was a super party, which is Escagara came too and all that lot, [unclear speech 2:08:51] and we had a wonderful time in Mexico they had given us every…no, sorry, we’d been to Mexico – we’d been to Mexico before they came over, I think it was because the Olympic Games were going to be in Mexico.  When were the Olympic Games in Mexico, 68 weren’t they?  Yeah.

M:   Yes, that’s right.

 

P:   68.

I:   Interesting

 

P:   Well lots of things were…there was another big disappointment but I can’t remember.

I:   Never mind.  Three disappointments, three disappointments were enough.

P:   As you get older you…

I:   You forget them.

 

P:   …can really forget them.  Oh, I know what it was.  One thing, my one thing I would love to have been is either Chairman of the GPO before telephones were nationalised, I reckon I could have run the Post Office and the telephone system a damn sight more efficiently than it was run and cut out a lot of the dead wood, and I’d have loved to done that.  And I would have loved to have been Chairman of the BBC.  But how the hell I nearly could have been and I’m sure I would never have been competent enough, but it’s a fantasy, I would have loved to be Chairman of the BBC because I feel I know where so many of the bodies are buried that we could have a lot of fun sorting it out.

 

M:   There’s still time.

 

P:   No you can’t do these things now you’re 80.

M:   Oh, I see.  Yeah, that’s right.

P:   No.  They wanted me on a committee, which I couldn’t go onto because I was still working for ABC and I said…I finished with BBC 31st December, they then said, “No, sorry.  No good then because you would become 70 before the committee winds up.”  And this rule apparently has only come in the last 18 months or so, and they now won’t appointment people to committees who will become 70 during the term of the committee.  It’s interesting isn’t it, you’re considered old at 70 now.

[Laughter]

I:   The only points I was going to make, well it should be on the record that you’re a Fellow of the Royal Television Society, correct?

P:   Yes.

I:   And you were in the Honours list twice.

 

P:   Yes, well the first one was other buddies’ efforts.

I:   1960/61.

 

P:   I mean OB’s got them for me, I had a wonderful team and I was just lucky enough to be the boss of it so I got the gong.  And the second one…

I:   The CBO?

P:   Yes, the second one again is really was a direct appointment from the Queen as a result of the liaison duties which my predecessor [unclear 2:11:49] so there was nothing really very distinguished of either of those things.  They’re very nice to have.

I:   I think they should be noted.  [Laughs].

 

M:   Yes.

I:   Right.

 

M:   Well, thank you, Peter.

 

P:   It’s all pretty uninteresting.

End of Transcript