31/12/11

As an experienced sound recordist / soundman I worked on every type of programme, including drama and comedy but specialising in arts, history and science documentaries. I started at the BBC straight from school in the 1970s and just a few of the programmes I worked on are mentioned if you click here.

I have a long list of credits to my name including several multi-part arts and history series for BBC TV, such as Omnibus and Timewatch. I worked in about 40 countries and with internationally renown figures in public life and in the arts and entertainment worlds right the way up the scale to some of the world's most disadvantaged people. I have been fortunate enough to gain valued personal experience by working in sensitive situations and on 'difficult' subjects.

Many people outside the film and TV business still ask me if I "worked with any famous people"....   well... people who work in film, TV, music recording and entertainment in general usually don't like to brag about the famous people that they have either met or worked with; it is something you take as part of normal work. But I still get all these curious questions and where have I been and who have I met... so, at the risk of sounding conceited, here are some of the things that I have done over the years during filming trips, in no particular order:

Shaken hands with Gorbachev in Moscow. Climbed a minaret at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Gone mule-trekking in the highlands of Argentina. Been lowered in a lifeboat to get shots of a cruise ship in Alaska's Glacier Bay. Landed at Tegucigalpa in Honduras, "arguably the world's deadliest airport".  Visited the Kremlin, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon, Vlad the Impaler's Castle in Romania, Niagara Falls, Victoria Falls, Iguaçú Falls, Sydney Harbour, the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Been spat at in Jamaica for being of the wrong ethnicity. Floated in the Dead Sea. Stood on scaffolding on the outside of the crown of the Statue of Liberty during its restoration. Walked up the inner staircase of number 10 Downing Street. Flown in a hot air balloon over Aspen, Colorado. Filmed inside Tutankhamun's Tomb.  Been detained at gunpoint by the British Army in Northern Ireland. Filmed the disused gallows in the execution shed at Wandsworth Prison. Eaten something in very spicy sauce that they called "African Chicken" (probably monkey) in Sierra Leone. Filmed people kissing the Blarney Stone and no I did not. Had an armed guard while filming in some of the less salubrious areas of Bogotá, Colombia. Been on a boat trip around the Lake Palace Hotel, Udaipur, at sunset. Filmed a dramatic reconstruction of a Belfast street riot at the height of the "troubles", only it was done in a run-down area of Stoke on Trent. Filmed a heart-bypass operation; a Caesarean Birth; a breast implant operation and a post-mortem (autopsy) on someone who had died of cirrhosis of the liver. Met, rigged radio microphones on, or otherwise recorded in person the voices of: Peter Ustinov, Kevin Spacey, The Princess Royal, Larry Grayson, Omar Sharif, Luciano Pavarotti, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, Helen Mirren, David Attenborough, The Prince of Wales, Barry Humphries, Anthony Sher, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Briers, Ronnie Corbett, Douglas Hurd, Tony Benn, Maureen Lipman, Robert Altman, Brian Sewell, Margot Fonteyn, Jack Dee, Victoria Wood, Tony Blair, Joan Plowright, Clive James, John Inman, Robin Cook, Angela Rippon, June Whitfield, Edward Heath, Judi Dench, John Hurt, John Cleese, Annie Lennox, Felicity Kendal, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Mario Vargas Llosa, Dave Allen, Les Dawson, The Queen ...and possibly a few more people you might have heard of but that's quite enough for now.