A Day in the Life of behind a steering wheel.
I drove a lorry to Stoke 3 times last week delivering packaging to a porcelain wash hand basin company. 3 days wages, better than nothing, job is easy enough except for the miles of road works on the M6, the inevitable crashes, the typical Police response: “0h lets close the Motorway and piss everybody off”, and the fact that the workers of Stoke don’t understand me and I don’t understand them. Maybe I should compose a Rough Guide to visiting Stoke, perhaps the previous sentence was it !!
At least as I sit behind the steering wheel listening to the latest road closures on Radio 2’s traffic reports, it gives me time to contemplate. Also gives me time to figure out avoiding the Police road blocks and go the scenic route as a diversion, an ability artificial intelligence through satellite navigation aids fails to cope with. In addition to this latest conspiracy theory of how the Police want to stop Britain working, it does amaze me how all the junctions, direction signs and even the lady on sat nav wants me to pay £10 on the M6 Toll road, which of course is empty because no one in their right mind will pay a toll. Blimey the delivery to Stoke costs £100 in diesel as it is round trip, 50 pence a mile shared between a taxing government and a profiteering oil company.
And…………….it is you the reader, the end consumer, that pays for it eventually when you unpack that everything including the kitchen sink !!!
Of course all this driving me mad and round the bend as opposed to up a toll road, has been a 3rd career blocking me from getting back to my former, better paid, more worthwhile careers. That’s what I think about behind that steering wheel, and when I will get a change in direction, and free from my career path obstacles.
Another blimey. This one aimed at recruiters. Yes I am a real person , not just a name on a piece of paper. Could you not afford me the common courtesy of acknowledgement that I exist, instead of me having to pinch myself all the time. I could get a reputation for self harm you know. It is the same when you are an agency worker: no point talking to him, he is not important, he is only here today or the odd day.
There was a time when I actually interviewed prospective employees, when I actually hired agency staff, I always chatted with them, made them feel comfortable in new surroundings, ease their obvious anxieties. I would make them a cup of coffee, tell them what was going on, what was happening, and a bit about the organisation and our own operation.
It was called politeness. It did not take long, it was an important 1st impression and I did not have a lot of time, but I made time.
Though I hate using the word “obviously” because every Wayne Rooney sentence starts with that very word “obviously”....... Obviously, I was the exception to the rule. Because most employers in this day of improved technological communications, do not consider it important to be friendly, to even know one’s name. Personnel don’t answer your applications, even as a worker in a garden centre, something that would be a labour of love for me, but not even a “f… off we did not like you anyway”. Emails, they are free, don't even have to lick a stamp and walk to the pillar box.
Lot’s of advertised jobs clearly do not exist in truth, when you hear the fumbled excuses at the other end of the telephone line, which funnily enough is a one way line of communications. It is just a ruse to get cvs on the books. Targets once again, false targets, playing the system.
I used to be a somebody and now apparently I am a nobody. And who cares? Well actually I do.
And………. I am still the same person, I am still Allan Sharpe. I must admit when the decade changed to the 2010’s my first thought was, will I live to see the end of it, I would like to see Spurs win the League again, the European Cup before I die (Harry get a move on) and I would like to see England win the World Cup again, and not miss out on penalty shoot outs. I would like to see my off spring progress for as long as I can stay around.
BUT………I have not changed, Mr Somebody has not changed, except I am older, and maybe because I believed in certain things and held onto certain principles and values, that life has and is passing me by…....now.
Of course there are exceptions, there are some friendly faces, but I have to say, and it is an indictment of middle management, that the friendlies are in the vast minority and perhaps that’s why the organisation relies heavily on agency staff, because no one else will work for them as Fagan Plc. True they might get more pay hourly rate as a temp, certainly get overtime, but the temp is not only here today somewhere else tomorrow, maybe, he/she has total insecurity and lack of control. Anyway they do a job for Fagan plc without whom that job would not be done. Yes they get paid. A thanks would be courteous too, not too much to ask for is it, yes it is, oh well.
It is not only, but also......... There is a lot of self interest, only, in the workplace, maybe even in society. It does not matter what is happening outside your front door, don’t get involved, look after number one, sod the rest. Maybe that is why society relies on authorities to clean up the mess we see regularly on 24 hour news channels, instead of looking out of their window and doing something about what is going on. Maybe they have lost faith in the authorities and we are becoming more like Mad Max and survival of the fittest.
Nostalgia is bitter sweet, and I do get bitter and twisted about changes I see all around me, and changes that have happened to me. Don’t tell me you make your own luck, because I will smack that straight back at you on the half volley.
I spent most of my life trying to make the world a better place for some. I got thousands of people millions of pounds back in just refunds, when they were David against Goliath, I took hundreds of con men to the dock and put hundreds on the tv screen, my version of the village stocks and rotten tomatoes.
One of the best things I ever did was pick up a BBC telephone on my Watchdog desk to take a call from an old age pensioner telephoning from Spain the Costa Almeria. The winter of 1988, Bert told me there were about 65 of them paying for an extended winter break to avoid the winter fuel bills at home, and the travel company had put them in a dump next to a building site. Of course I had to validate his story, and the BBC had stringers (researchers) all over the world to call on. So when the stringer phoned me back to tell me the story was true and it was horrendous, the holiday from hell, I put the wheels in motion. Mike Embley and I flew out with a Spanish speaking cameraman and film crew on the Friday and we were filming that night and Saturday morning. We decided to make a send up of the holiday brochure. Our camera had seen the mould on the walls, the newspapers used as draught excluders, the refrigerators that did not work, the green water swimming pool with floating rubbish, the closed restaurant “where there is dancing every evening”. In fact the only dancing would be by mad men on their hats in frustration because the restaurant was part demolished. So Mike read the glossy brochure and then told the reality in front of the camera and we interviewed the poor old pensioners who the travel company ignored... "me I'm sick of it, up to here me, my wife on her hands and knees cleaning this stinking place up, that's not right, it's not a holiday , it's a nightmare……….. until.
The camera always seemed to concentrate minds on problems. It was our style , my style, the doorstep kings’s style, big Al’s style, to take some of the unhappy viewers along to meet Goliath and get them an audience. So it was in the Costa Almeria, and when , with the camera rolling, we entered the local travel office, instant panic set in, a phone call to Head Office in Lancashire: “there is a BBC film crew here, from a programme called Watchdog”, “WHAT!!! What are they doing there?” “its about that block of apartments”, “GET THEM OUT OF THOSE APARTMENTS, do what it takes”.
And so it came to pass…………….. the coaches lined up within hours and what had taken 6 weeks before of ignoring the problem , suddenly became priority uno, mucho grazias. Yes and you guessed it, the pensioners were put up in the biggest 5 star hotel in town for the remainder of their holiday at no extra expense. When we filmed their champagne breakfast that Sunday morning before we flew back to blighty, I had never had my hand shaken so much. It was a wonderful moment of the power of the media to obtain justice and redress.
The film was edited that following week with Mike and I and a film editor, it was a great film, showed the Monday after BBC1 7.30pm, maybe you were watching Coronation Street, I wasn’t.
Greg Dyke used to say, there are no rules in TV, if your Mum likes it and understands it, you have done your job. We used to work on the basis of “the gosh factor” now we have an X Factor, instead. I think we pushed the infotainment boundary then by ridiculing the patently misleading and false brochure description of holiday accommodation that was uninhabitable. It still makes me smile and giggle to this day when I think about it, I guess that is the sweet part of nostalgia. Shame those days have to end my friend, shame no one else has picked up the baton and carried the torch on. Shame our priorities have changed, well for some at least and shame the accountants run things now.
It did not have to be like it was, we showed it could be done better.
Now others try their best to avoid MY winter fuel bills.
For the time I was unemployed during this recent cold spell, I have just got a letter from the Department of Works and Pensions, about my winter fuel payment benefit, circa £25 during the coldest winter for 30 years. Good old civil service.
Uno, they did not know I was unemployed, even though I was in their Job Centre Minus offices (no, I was not making myself a cuppa tea).
Dos, they have only just acknowledged my application form, now that Spring has Sprung.
Tres, they will deal with my claim in June 2010, yes midsummer.
Men for all seasons obviously (there is that word again, "obviously") I must not turn into a Wayne Rooney interview alike …………………………………….
So endeth another chapter....until we meet again………………….some sunny day
Now is the time to say goodbye.
(Goodbye)
Now is the time to yield a sigh.
(Yield it, yield it)
Now is the time to wend our way-eee
Until we meet again-eee
Some sunny day.
Goodbye, goodbye, we’re leaving you, skiddlydye.
Goodbye, we wish a fond goodbye, fa-ta-ta-ta-ta, fa-ta-ta-ta.
Goodbye, goodbye, we’re leaving you, skiddlydum.
Goodbye, we wish a fond goodbye, la-la-ta-ta-ta.
La dah da, lah la la
It’s Not only … But Also, aint it Dud, yes Pete sniff.
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
They dont make them like they used to
They don’t make them like They used to
A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.
Is nostalgia more bitter than sweet?
As my suits stay in the wardrobe, I still apply for gissajobs, but as my age increases my opportunities decrease.
It seems to me that what I have achieved in the past counts for little today with prospective employers. I would like to become involved with combating climate change. Unlike Trading Standards and Consumer Protection where I hold a seemingly worthless Government Qualification, I have no pedigree in climate change, only that I have added to it along with the rest of us and I made TV programmes about it almost 20 years ago. A situation that has not changed much since, except worsened hence my desire to get involved once again. Apparently one can get a degree in climate change these days. I guess that qualifies someone to sit behind a desk top and do too little before it’s too late. If only it was never too late.
It was oh so different once. 42 is not only the answer to the universe, I think for me it was my Everest. Circa 42 I was head hunted by Science at the BBC to bring an element of Current Affairs into a new series called Life on 1. Prime Time BBC1, Thursday evenings 8pm. Science made Horizon and Tomorrow’s World, but for a new programme that addressed environment issues, I was asked to transfer from Watchdog to help produce it. My role was in charge of the film team, whilst others produced the live locations each week.
Exciting times. I had my own office in Kensington House. I had and earned the respect of a great Editor David Patterson. One day back in 1991 (those were the days still my friend) I said to him, “do you remember going back to school after the summer holidays?” He was my age, a bit older, and he always smirked when I asked him a question, I guess he did not know what was coming next. It was interesting though being unpredictable, it still is. I said when I was going to Grammar School in September 1960’s I walked through Roundwood Park Willesden (about 5 miles from Kensington House due north west). As a 12 year old I trudged through all the autumn leaves in the park, leaves that had fallen off the trees by September, Plane Trees, Horse Chestnut Trees, Oak Trees, Sycamore Trees. I said to him looking out of the window, “now the trees are in leaf till November, the seasons are changing, shifting.” He said “you are right.” Patterson was a great thinker, a very clever man, we got on well, we spoke the same language and shared the same ideals and principles. He was old guard BBC, a true programme maker, who wanted to make the viewer think.
So, he gave me a reporter, a researcher , a production assistant and said prove it. If you prove it we can base one of the series of programmes on it. So I set about my task in the days before the internet, when you had to find written articles and telephone bash the world to find experts. In addition, it was not the only concept I had to juggle with.
At the beginning of the time with Science I still played football for BBC every Saturday. One such afternoon in Tooting the normally strong resilient centre half who took no prisoners as well as the ball in the crunching tackle of the day, tried to do something completely different. As well as Mr Dependable, “they won’t get past Allan”, I liked to think I had a degree of skill when kicking the ball. At least I could kick the ball with either foot, unlike most of today’s professional prima donnas. So when the right winger came bearing down on our penalty area with the goalkeeper at his mercy, I came from his left straight across him and Franz Beckenbauer style took the ball from him with my left as I glided past, only for him to shoot at my trailing right leg, which then spun round like the whizzing hands of a clock. Down I went. I could not believe it. Even the Red Coat referees at Butlins had told me in their football competitions, take it easy these players are on holiday they don’t want to go home with a broken leg. Now after all these years and famous local newspaper back page headlines like the pitch battle of Ruislip Manor 1974, there I was on the grass with my fibula and tibia sticking through my metal shin pads and black woollen socks. “You alright Allan?” Harry said. “No my leg’s broken Harry”, “you’ll be alright, stand up and run it off”. Yes that is what we all did with knocks. “Harry my bones are sticking through my sock”, “oh blimey , yes it does look bad”.
Good old Harry , he brought 4 bottles of beer to my hospital bedside a week later just before I was due to try out crutches for the first time in my life with the physio nurse. I sailed up and down those stairs!!!
HOWEVER. A new role at the Beeb, a new girlfriend Hazel Graham, a beautiful long hair, long legged production assistant on Watchdog, and now a broken leg. So the Beeb hired me a converted Austin Allegro from Hertz in Edgware Road, Marble Arch. As I sat in the car with my right leg out straight in plaster up to my groin, I had an accelerator and brake on my right hand by the steering wheel. Of course I had to undergo the sods law initiative test, as I drove out of their alleyway a white transit van tried to write off the vehicle. But…………….. I managed to swerve and avoid the lunatic, in my first 30 seconds of disabled driving.
So, I would be there on the cliffs of Sunderland in a 70mph gale, on my 2 crutches under my armpits, directing a film crew about the pollution on the otherwise picturesque beaches there, shame about the weather. I looked like a parrot on a perch in a draught swinging backwards and forwards and trying not to go over the cliff.
Yes Life on 1 had to go on like any show and it was life as I knew it. The crutches always fell to the tarmac as I got out of the car. Young girls would run across the road to pick them up for me. Men would slam the door in front of me along corridors or at entrances. Yes equal opportunities as a sharp lesson for this Sharpe.
But, by the time I flew to Colorado and California, my plaster was cut down to size. I was still able to get caught by the Highway Patrol (Denver Branch). We had a plane to catch, it was getting there by the skin on our teeth time, once again. Fortunately the Highway Patrolman was one of those that loved our British Accents, I had 3 giggling, friendly , fluttering eyelash, BBC females in the Pontiac. He detained us no longer so we could catch the flight. I guess he finally gave up when my production assistant flung the large unfolded map (yes before sat nav) at him through her window asking for the quickest route to the airport, and he managed to catch the paper missile in the breeze and screw it up to shove back to her and wish us a nice day. Well done Linda!!
Now when I made a programme for the BBC I became a rapid mini expert in whatever subject the film was about. I had to know what I was talking about, have the facts at my fingertips, my finger on the pulse, else you guys the viewers would see there was no substance. And, substance there was. In fact that film in 1991 with interviews and computer projections from the world’s leading climatologist Professor Schneider of Colorado University predicted our weather today almost 20 years later. Extreme weather. Events that when they happen, whether the weather is hot, cold, dry or wet, it is an all time record “since records began”. Even though my brother in law, Mick, is one of the many sceptics, we have borrowed this earth for our children and our children’s children, as the Red Indians believed. Climate change is man made, the evidence is all around us, like the leaves on the trees, or on a park path in Willesden as they used to be.
20 years on. the electric cars, hydrogen cars, natural gas buses I drove then, are still to emerge in the showroom. When have you ever been in a pub with double glazing and the lights are not switched on, even on a sunny day.
I filmed these alternative fuel vehicles in California. They even converted 2nd hand Ford Fiestas in Islington London N1 by taking out the engine and fitting banks of batteries and electric motors to the front wheels 20 years ago.
But where is the infrastructure in “Great” Britain? I drive for miles these days. Yes I have seen a dump of an LPG filling depot for converted cars run by Polish Workers, one of whom speaks English. But, are the Seven Sisters preventing change while there still is oil to drill under our ocean floors? Do all governments lead or follow. California made legislation for change. They still lead the world, because their land suffered from air pollution even when the Spanish Conquistadores first discovered the angel coast line, due to climatic and geographical coincidences.
Amory Lovins was, and probably still is, a leading energy scientist. He lived 10,000 feet up in the Rockies outside Aspen. His house used electricity but even surrounded by snow, his meter tricked round, whereas ours resemble a helicopter rotor blades. He had 10 fold glazing and copper water piping circulating behind the glass and walls oh his home. He used heat extraction when cooking on his Aga, His washing water never went below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They could have called him Mr Fahrenheit, he was travelling at the speed of light as Freddy Mercury would sing it. He grew indoor banana plants behind the window panes, 10,000 feet up in the Rockies.
Dennis Weaver, who used to be Chester in Dodge City to Gunsmoke’s Mr Dillon played by James Arness, lived in Malibu. He had a home constructed out of old rubber tyres and empty drinks cans. The rubber kept the heat in and the cold out, helped by the air contained in the aluminium cans. It was also a great use of recycling. His Duel, as in the film he stared in against a crazy lorry driver, was with Climate Change. Now he is dead, alas, like so many great names and great people of nostalgia.Little did the wooden legged Chester who run up the Dodge City Street shouting for help from "Mr Dillon, Mr Dillon" on my black and white TV set in Willesden, realise how much I was glued to his performance as a 10 year old, in the good old days.
And, when I recount these tales of yesteryear. When others ask me, how did you make a programme then, I have to explain about the days, weeks, months phone bashing, planning, organising, researching, then filming the interviews. Filming the scenes, the location, the action scenes that would be needed to voice commentary over when we got back to base and started editing the film. Putting all the best bits and clips together to make sense and compose the argument, in the time we had allocated to us. The story we were telling and the story we believed in.
Those were the days my friend, yes we thought they would never end, but end they did. Patterson and others like him left the BBC as it changed and followed the lesser, cheaper standards of ITV. I would soon leave too. Now I watch little television. Programme schedules that incorporate free talent or free reality offer little to my intellect. Entertainment they might be for some that want to emulate the couch vegetable. Infotainment they are not, and I will always hold the record viewing figures for Watchdog at over 10 million up against Coronation Street, because now we have more channels, more choice, but not better programming.
Yes generations have at first been glued to Top of the Pops then subsequently sat at the back of the room irritated and not recognising any of the so called performers. But, they don’t make them like they used to. They call it progress. Me, I beg to differ.
Until the next time, stay tuned to this channel……..after all one day even this channel will end !!!
Post Script:
Remembering Chester, I even used to hobble as a kid emulating his performance on those wooden sidewalks of Dodge City in the Wild West.
I made a Sport Video for the retail market under the Sharper Image Banner in the 90's. It featured Jimmy Greaves and Tommy Docherty with ad lib links to film clips of incidents on the fever pitch. My son Ian was working, learning, with me in those days and in the West End studio whilst I was in the gallery, and Jimmy Greaves was on the studio floor, Ian confessed to him "you were my dad's hero when he was a boy, he saw you play for Spurs every game, and when my brother and I grew up and watched Spurs with him he would tell us about the goals you scored as if he was still there".
What a confession to make huh!!
A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.
Is nostalgia more bitter than sweet?
As my suits stay in the wardrobe, I still apply for gissajobs, but as my age increases my opportunities decrease.
It seems to me that what I have achieved in the past counts for little today with prospective employers. I would like to become involved with combating climate change. Unlike Trading Standards and Consumer Protection where I hold a seemingly worthless Government Qualification, I have no pedigree in climate change, only that I have added to it along with the rest of us and I made TV programmes about it almost 20 years ago. A situation that has not changed much since, except worsened hence my desire to get involved once again. Apparently one can get a degree in climate change these days. I guess that qualifies someone to sit behind a desk top and do too little before it’s too late. If only it was never too late.
It was oh so different once. 42 is not only the answer to the universe, I think for me it was my Everest. Circa 42 I was head hunted by Science at the BBC to bring an element of Current Affairs into a new series called Life on 1. Prime Time BBC1, Thursday evenings 8pm. Science made Horizon and Tomorrow’s World, but for a new programme that addressed environment issues, I was asked to transfer from Watchdog to help produce it. My role was in charge of the film team, whilst others produced the live locations each week.
Exciting times. I had my own office in Kensington House. I had and earned the respect of a great Editor David Patterson. One day back in 1991 (those were the days still my friend) I said to him, “do you remember going back to school after the summer holidays?” He was my age, a bit older, and he always smirked when I asked him a question, I guess he did not know what was coming next. It was interesting though being unpredictable, it still is. I said when I was going to Grammar School in September 1960’s I walked through Roundwood Park Willesden (about 5 miles from Kensington House due north west). As a 12 year old I trudged through all the autumn leaves in the park, leaves that had fallen off the trees by September, Plane Trees, Horse Chestnut Trees, Oak Trees, Sycamore Trees. I said to him looking out of the window, “now the trees are in leaf till November, the seasons are changing, shifting.” He said “you are right.” Patterson was a great thinker, a very clever man, we got on well, we spoke the same language and shared the same ideals and principles. He was old guard BBC, a true programme maker, who wanted to make the viewer think.
So, he gave me a reporter, a researcher , a production assistant and said prove it. If you prove it we can base one of the series of programmes on it. So I set about my task in the days before the internet, when you had to find written articles and telephone bash the world to find experts. In addition, it was not the only concept I had to juggle with.
At the beginning of the time with Science I still played football for BBC every Saturday. One such afternoon in Tooting the normally strong resilient centre half who took no prisoners as well as the ball in the crunching tackle of the day, tried to do something completely different. As well as Mr Dependable, “they won’t get past Allan”, I liked to think I had a degree of skill when kicking the ball. At least I could kick the ball with either foot, unlike most of today’s professional prima donnas. So when the right winger came bearing down on our penalty area with the goalkeeper at his mercy, I came from his left straight across him and Franz Beckenbauer style took the ball from him with my left as I glided past, only for him to shoot at my trailing right leg, which then spun round like the whizzing hands of a clock. Down I went. I could not believe it. Even the Red Coat referees at Butlins had told me in their football competitions, take it easy these players are on holiday they don’t want to go home with a broken leg. Now after all these years and famous local newspaper back page headlines like the pitch battle of Ruislip Manor 1974, there I was on the grass with my fibula and tibia sticking through my metal shin pads and black woollen socks. “You alright Allan?” Harry said. “No my leg’s broken Harry”, “you’ll be alright, stand up and run it off”. Yes that is what we all did with knocks. “Harry my bones are sticking through my sock”, “oh blimey , yes it does look bad”.
Good old Harry , he brought 4 bottles of beer to my hospital bedside a week later just before I was due to try out crutches for the first time in my life with the physio nurse. I sailed up and down those stairs!!!
HOWEVER. A new role at the Beeb, a new girlfriend Hazel Graham, a beautiful long hair, long legged production assistant on Watchdog, and now a broken leg. So the Beeb hired me a converted Austin Allegro from Hertz in Edgware Road, Marble Arch. As I sat in the car with my right leg out straight in plaster up to my groin, I had an accelerator and brake on my right hand by the steering wheel. Of course I had to undergo the sods law initiative test, as I drove out of their alleyway a white transit van tried to write off the vehicle. But…………….. I managed to swerve and avoid the lunatic, in my first 30 seconds of disabled driving.
So, I would be there on the cliffs of Sunderland in a 70mph gale, on my 2 crutches under my armpits, directing a film crew about the pollution on the otherwise picturesque beaches there, shame about the weather. I looked like a parrot on a perch in a draught swinging backwards and forwards and trying not to go over the cliff.
Yes Life on 1 had to go on like any show and it was life as I knew it. The crutches always fell to the tarmac as I got out of the car. Young girls would run across the road to pick them up for me. Men would slam the door in front of me along corridors or at entrances. Yes equal opportunities as a sharp lesson for this Sharpe.
But, by the time I flew to Colorado and California, my plaster was cut down to size. I was still able to get caught by the Highway Patrol (Denver Branch). We had a plane to catch, it was getting there by the skin on our teeth time, once again. Fortunately the Highway Patrolman was one of those that loved our British Accents, I had 3 giggling, friendly , fluttering eyelash, BBC females in the Pontiac. He detained us no longer so we could catch the flight. I guess he finally gave up when my production assistant flung the large unfolded map (yes before sat nav) at him through her window asking for the quickest route to the airport, and he managed to catch the paper missile in the breeze and screw it up to shove back to her and wish us a nice day. Well done Linda!!
Now when I made a programme for the BBC I became a rapid mini expert in whatever subject the film was about. I had to know what I was talking about, have the facts at my fingertips, my finger on the pulse, else you guys the viewers would see there was no substance. And, substance there was. In fact that film in 1991 with interviews and computer projections from the world’s leading climatologist Professor Schneider of Colorado University predicted our weather today almost 20 years later. Extreme weather. Events that when they happen, whether the weather is hot, cold, dry or wet, it is an all time record “since records began”. Even though my brother in law, Mick, is one of the many sceptics, we have borrowed this earth for our children and our children’s children, as the Red Indians believed. Climate change is man made, the evidence is all around us, like the leaves on the trees, or on a park path in Willesden as they used to be.
20 years on. the electric cars, hydrogen cars, natural gas buses I drove then, are still to emerge in the showroom. When have you ever been in a pub with double glazing and the lights are not switched on, even on a sunny day.
I filmed these alternative fuel vehicles in California. They even converted 2nd hand Ford Fiestas in Islington London N1 by taking out the engine and fitting banks of batteries and electric motors to the front wheels 20 years ago.
But where is the infrastructure in “Great” Britain? I drive for miles these days. Yes I have seen a dump of an LPG filling depot for converted cars run by Polish Workers, one of whom speaks English. But, are the Seven Sisters preventing change while there still is oil to drill under our ocean floors? Do all governments lead or follow. California made legislation for change. They still lead the world, because their land suffered from air pollution even when the Spanish Conquistadores first discovered the angel coast line, due to climatic and geographical coincidences.
Amory Lovins was, and probably still is, a leading energy scientist. He lived 10,000 feet up in the Rockies outside Aspen. His house used electricity but even surrounded by snow, his meter tricked round, whereas ours resemble a helicopter rotor blades. He had 10 fold glazing and copper water piping circulating behind the glass and walls oh his home. He used heat extraction when cooking on his Aga, His washing water never went below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They could have called him Mr Fahrenheit, he was travelling at the speed of light as Freddy Mercury would sing it. He grew indoor banana plants behind the window panes, 10,000 feet up in the Rockies.
Dennis Weaver, who used to be Chester in Dodge City to Gunsmoke’s Mr Dillon played by James Arness, lived in Malibu. He had a home constructed out of old rubber tyres and empty drinks cans. The rubber kept the heat in and the cold out, helped by the air contained in the aluminium cans. It was also a great use of recycling. His Duel, as in the film he stared in against a crazy lorry driver, was with Climate Change. Now he is dead, alas, like so many great names and great people of nostalgia.Little did the wooden legged Chester who run up the Dodge City Street shouting for help from "Mr Dillon, Mr Dillon" on my black and white TV set in Willesden, realise how much I was glued to his performance as a 10 year old, in the good old days.
And, when I recount these tales of yesteryear. When others ask me, how did you make a programme then, I have to explain about the days, weeks, months phone bashing, planning, organising, researching, then filming the interviews. Filming the scenes, the location, the action scenes that would be needed to voice commentary over when we got back to base and started editing the film. Putting all the best bits and clips together to make sense and compose the argument, in the time we had allocated to us. The story we were telling and the story we believed in.
Those were the days my friend, yes we thought they would never end, but end they did. Patterson and others like him left the BBC as it changed and followed the lesser, cheaper standards of ITV. I would soon leave too. Now I watch little television. Programme schedules that incorporate free talent or free reality offer little to my intellect. Entertainment they might be for some that want to emulate the couch vegetable. Infotainment they are not, and I will always hold the record viewing figures for Watchdog at over 10 million up against Coronation Street, because now we have more channels, more choice, but not better programming.
Yes generations have at first been glued to Top of the Pops then subsequently sat at the back of the room irritated and not recognising any of the so called performers. But, they don’t make them like they used to. They call it progress. Me, I beg to differ.
Until the next time, stay tuned to this channel……..after all one day even this channel will end !!!
Post Script:
Remembering Chester, I even used to hobble as a kid emulating his performance on those wooden sidewalks of Dodge City in the Wild West.
I made a Sport Video for the retail market under the Sharper Image Banner in the 90's. It featured Jimmy Greaves and Tommy Docherty with ad lib links to film clips of incidents on the fever pitch. My son Ian was working, learning, with me in those days and in the West End studio whilst I was in the gallery, and Jimmy Greaves was on the studio floor, Ian confessed to him "you were my dad's hero when he was a boy, he saw you play for Spurs every game, and when my brother and I grew up and watched Spurs with him he would tell us about the goals you scored as if he was still there".
What a confession to make huh!!
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