Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.
Slade singing Still the Same, the lead song from the 1987 album You Boyz Make Big Noize. The performance was on the Tom O’Connor Roadshow, in Blackpool 1987.
Slade rehearsal, photo Jane Mclean, no reproduction without permission
Slade rehearsal
Chris Wright – director
Photos by Jane Mclean, no reproduction without permission.
These photos are from the Tom O’Connor Roadshow in Blackpool, 1987. The top photo shows a rehearsal of the live show with the band, Slade. The lower photo shows one of the multi-camera directors, Chris Wright, deep in thought over the script.
Thanks to Jane Mclean for sharing the photos.
Good Morning OB in Rwanda, Caroline Officer and Sue Robinson
Photo copyright Sue Robinson, no reproduction without permission.
The date was December 1994 which began with an appeal we launched on Good Morning in September 1994 in conjunction with Oxfam requesting our viewers to knit jumpers for the Rwandan refugee children who had been displaced just over the border in Goma, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) due to the horrific genocide in Rwanda between the Hutus and Tutsis that began exactly 20 years ago this week.
Within weeks we were inundated with jumpers, so it was decided that a team would go out to Goma in Eastern Zaire and broadcast the distribution of the jumpers live on a pre Christmas edition of the programme.
Will Hanrahan was the presenter, Sue the director and I was the producer. Jim Knights was our camera op and our engineers were lovely guys from the OB unit in London, I remember our lead engineer was called Chris.
There were no commercial flights to Goma, so for the recce Sue and I did with Chris we flew from a Kent RAF base on a Russian cargo plane, I remember being given some vodka on take off, there were no seats or seat belts and I slept on top of a large water pipe which was far more comfortable than an economy seat.
The Oxfam people in Goma were fantastic, as were the aid workers at the camps, Toby Porter, a very young emergency relief worker was hugely charismatic and we decided to use him to convey the appalling situation the children were in. Toby has continued to work for aid organisations and is now CEO of HelpAge International.
We returned to the UK and planned the broadcast for a week later.
By now we had at least 100,000 jumpers, so Oxfam arranged to fly them to Goma and we travelled with them on the same cargo plane, along with BBC news journalist Roger Hearing. For our OB engineer Chris, the challenge was building the portable satellite dish and finding a satellite to bounce off. We were lucky to have with us one of the very first satellite phones and this helped us contact an American satellite company who turned theirs towards us, it was amazing how rudimentary it was, but it worked.
I will never forget the first communication with Gallery C at Pebble Mill and clearly hearing Jane McLean in my ear as I was standing in the middle of Africa, one of those magical TV moments.
For the final link, the idea was to have all the children, about 800, wearing a jumper each and we had about 12 minutes to get them on, so we had lines of small children with their hands in the air as we rapidly worked down the line.
We’d also chosen a handful of knitters to join Anne and Nick in the studio and it was my job to ensure that the jumpers they had made were shown on the children for this final link. This connection between the donor and the recipient was another important moment. Such a simple thing as a jumper meant so much to these children and I have often thought of them in the intervening years. We stayed in touch with the aid workers for a while and did learn that quite a few of the children had been reunited with relatives.
I am very proud to have been part of this broadcast, on a personal level it was the most moving experience of my career.
Caroline Officer
Photos by Jane Mclean, no reproduction without permission.
Producer Steve Weddle, in different forms of fancy dress, on location with The Tom O’Connor Roadshow. Heidi Wright is in the middle photo, with Steve as a chicken! Top photo in Newcastle, middle photo in Liverpool, bottom photo in Portsmouth.
In the lower photo: Jane Mclean (front, scarf), Mary Sanchez (blue top, on right), Mark Botfield (blonde hair, next to Mary), Jo Dewar (behind Mary), Steve Weddle (at back next to Jo).
The following comment was left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Page:
Mary Sanchez: ‘Portsmouth! Is this where you Jane and Jo played a trick on me with T.O’C ? ( remember the ‘on the spot’ slot- and me and my gymnastics??!)’
The Directors: Chris Wright, David Weir, Mark Kershaw
Nicky Savage, Jane Mclean, Tom O’Connor, Jo Dewar
Photos from Jane Mclean, no reproduction without permission.
(The following blog was written after a conversation with director, Mark Kershaw in Feb 2014)
The Tom O’Connor Roadshow was a live entertainment show transmitted from around the country early 1987, it went out daily around 12pm on BBC1. The show was based in a different town or city each week, including: Derby, Falkirk, Port Talbot, Blackpool (twice!), Portsmouth, Newcastle, Cambridge, Exeter, Bradford, Londonderry with Liverpool being the final week’s location.
The show was commissioned to plug a gap in entertainment programming after Pebble Mill (the lunchtime magazine show) was decommissioned in May 1986. There was a move to use underutilised resources, and it was felt that outside broadcast scanners were busy at weekends during the winter, with football and other sport, but were available during the week. Therefore a live entertainment show, like the Tom O’Connor Roadshow, ticked all the boxes.
It was important that all areas of the country were covered, hence shows coming from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as England. Two versions of the set had to be made, travelling round the country in different directions, with one set being erected as the other one was in use.
There were three multi-camera directors assigned to the show. Mark Kershaw did all the advance planning. There was a main director of the week, which was either Mark, David Weir or Chris Wright. One of the others was the support director for the week, whilst the third, planned ahead for the following week.
The series encountered a few issues along the way. A week in Aviemore was planned, but because of an electricians’ strike had to be relocated as a return visit to Blackpool. Inserts from Aviemore were included instead. The Londonderry week was eventful. ‘The Troubles’ were still very active. The final show on the Friday in Derry had to be stopped part way through because of a bomb scare at the venue. The show went to an filmed insert, and never came back on air, with Pres taking over the transmission! UHF mics had to be hired in for the Cambridge shows, as the University complained that the Roadshow mics were using the same frequencies as the lecturers, meaning that instead of some erudite academic lecture,the sound of the Tom O’Connor Roadshow was coming through instead!
The series was expensive to make, although it was popular with the viewers. It was its high budget that meant that it wasn’t recommissioned.
The following comment was left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Page:
Jane Green: I worked on this series. It was great fun. I thought being sent to the Port Talbot TOCRS was drawing the short straw, until the Fine Young Cannibals came out of their dressing room dressed as Welsh Dolls and Miners to sing She Drives Me crazy!