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d on their rostrum background in the hall yet although everything appeared to go off without a hitch there were at least four mishaps during the evening viewers saw two of them but missed the other two the first one they didn t see took place in the guildhall the hallé orchestra having finished elgar s cockaigne suite rose from their seats and attempted to leave the rostrum only to find that they were trapped so hemmed in were they by tables guests and tv equipment that they had to sit where they were until the banquet and the speeches had finished the second took place in the offices and studio of itn minutes before the news at 10 p m chris chataway snatched up the prepared bulletin and raced out to the lift that would take him up seven floors to the itn studio on top of tv house he found the lift jammed it was a terrible moment says chataway today we were all in a desperate state of anxiety and excitement and then this fortunately my limbs were still in a sound state in those days and i raced up the stairs two at a time followed by the whole production staff puffing and blowing for all they were worth another hitch which viewers actually did see also involved chataway he had begun his first newscast and everything was going fine when he found that the teleprompter on which his script was revolving was going too slowly it was being operated by a secretary who could control its speed with a gentle pressure of her foot chataway began slowing down to keep pace with the machine only to find to his horror that the slower he went the slower the teleprompter revolved finally in desperation he risked glancing away from the camera to look round at the girl who was standing a little behind him and out of vision she realised her mistake immediately and at once speeded up but next day a critic wrote mr chataway did fine except for one moment when he glanced over his shoulder apparently to see where the rest of the field were the second hitch which viewers saw was certainly far more hilarious at the end of each round of the professional boxing match from shoreditch there was a break for commercials at the end of one round the director cut away from the ringside to show a half minute of advertising the last of these spots was for a well known beer viewers saw the bottle of beer watched it being poured into a glass and finally saw a man drinking it with obvious satisfaction just at that moment the director cut back to the boxing the boxer on whom the camera focused having rinsed out his mouth spat the water into a bucket the impression given was that he was spitting out the beer the itv story pioneers play musical chairs from the tvtimes for 2 8 october 1965 t hroughout the spring and summer of 1955 small bands of men worked feverishly against the clock in london they had a deadline to meet september 22 1955 the night they must open a new television service in britain only the london area would see the new programmes to begin with the rest of the country would follow at gradual intervals two companies had been awarded programme contracts by the independent television authority to provide the london service they were associated rediffusion who had to provide the monday friday weekday programmes and associated television who had to provide programmes at weekends independent television news whose job was to provide a news service had been established and associated rediffusion had undertaken the publication of tv times for the whole itv network the men at the top of these companies started with almost nothing but their own determination and energies they had no staff no permanent office premises no studios no cameras no sound equipment and they had only 11 months altogether from the date of the announcement that they had been awarded programme contracts in october 1954 to the date on which the new service had to begin to mount programmes capable of challenging the mighty bbc they began with temporary make shift offices the top men of associated rediffusion found themselves housed in six offices in stratton house piccadilly comfortable enough to begin with but a bit overcrowded when recruiting boosted the staff to 60 the atv backroom boys found refuge at york house bloomsbury and regent house lower regent street here things were so cramped according to keith rogers then head of outside broadcasts that we all had to sit on the corners of chairs in my room for instance there were four of us and masses and masses of files and correspondence there was even a shortage of elementary office equipment when captain tom brownrigg arrived to take up his duties as general manager of associated rediffusion i found myself with a nice office but only a table and a chair so i had to go and find a telephone then a secretary then i went for a walk up tottenham court road and bought a second hand desk for 65 the stage is cleared at london s granville theatre and the scene is set for one of britain s first itv studios lloyd williams then assistant controller of programmes for associated rediffusion recalled that conditions in stratton house grew chaotic there were never enough chairs you just had to walk about the other offices and pinch what you could most of the time was taken up interviewing the prospective staff after all we had to hire something in the region of 600 people right from scratch things got so bad that you never got a chance to leave the office itn housed in ingersoll house kingsway had no complaints about space but max caulfield the chief news editor and bill sweeney the chief engineer fighting to get their departments organised found themselves squabbling over priority for the only telephone in the vast office sweeney complained one day if i can t use that telephone we won t be able to put out a programme caulfield retorted if i can t use it there ll be no programme to put out the big task for all the companies was to find suitable premises and recruit skilled staff as early as the frosty weeks before christmas 1954 commander e n haines managing director of central rediffusion the company providing technical services to associated rediffusion was tramping round london looking at possible studio sites studio 5b at wembley in the late 1960s the choice eventually fell on the old twentieth century fox studios at wembley studios was hardly the right word there was only one big studio and haines needed at least four worse right in the middle of the studio was a big tank filled with thousands of gallons of water and a battered looking old motor torpedo boat laden down with film actors film makers were still shooting a film called the ship that died of shame we had builders and installing engineers in the same night the filming finished said haines the ship was quickly unrigged and the tank emptied then we started building the four studios the real problem was dust we had only eight months from scratch to get everything ready and the trouble with rushing a job like this is that you are inclined to get technicians and gear in place before the place is dust free and that can create an awful lot of trouble we had plasterers working alongside installing engineers and the dust continually created problems we had to overcome somehow a speck of dust lodged in the wrong place might well have meant no programmes on opening night associated rediffusion also bought the old granville theatre in fulham road as studios which meant taking the whole theatre to pieces turning the stage around tearing out the old dressing rooms and redesigning everything to tv studio specifications television house in the late 1960s but the real nail biting problems centred round adastral house in kingsway the giant rabbit warren of out of date offices from which the air war against germany had been directed although a 50 year lease was taken out in january the company were unable to get in until the air ministry moved out which was not until late in may then the gigantic job of tearing the whole place asunder and redesigning it began atv with only the weekend programmes to worry about their transmission in the midlands did not begin until the following spring were able to manage in london with one big studio the old wood green empire in north london and a smaller studio and master control room in foley street near the g p o s museum exchange through which all tv lines pass to the transmitters for office space they hired two floors in television house bill ward pioneer of itv and now an executive controller my overriding memory of the very early days said keith rogers is of a small group of us bill ward then head of light entertainment now executive controller elstree studios his deputy frank beale terence macnamara the chief engineer and myself sitting on the floor of an office in regent house in the evenings plans for studios and equipment scattered all around us trying to work out exactly what were our requirements we needed a complete outside broadcast set up with two or three o b vans fully equipped we required a control room equipped with telecine sound and vision mixing and also a full sized studio we got wood green where we could stage variety and light entertainment programmes we weren t given a budget we simply worked out what we needed and sent up the list to the directors the most sobering thought for all of us was that when we totted up what we d ordered after an evening s work we d find we d spent perhaps 500 000 by july the job still seemed an impossible one skilled television technicians were at a premium men of course were being lured away from the bbc by prospects of promotion and better pay but said bill ward not everybody was prepared to take the risk like we were the directors of itv companies risked losing their money if the new venture failed and those of us who left the bbc knew that itv simply had to succeed if it failed there was no going back the bbc had made it plain they wouldn t take us back we knew we d all be out of work the first hours of itv in 1955 announcer muriel young faces the camera but nevertheless staffs slowly grew men like presentation officer cyril francis quit a job in commercial insurance to join neil bramson gave up a career as a professional french horn player with a leading orchestra muriel young gave up acting to become an announcer chris chataway chucked a safe job with a big brewery concern to become a newscaster with itn in july staffs at last moved into adastral house by then renamed television house few offices were ready for occupation pneumatic drills thundered everywhere barrow loads of cement were trundled up and down dust fell in showers women employees were given a hairdressing allowance the men were told to have their suits cleaned once a month at company expense the itv story and a tv quiz show was born from the tvtimes for 9 15 october 1965 h e was large fat and jolly he shook with laughter as he stood beside the microphone then quizmaster hughie green asked him what s your job you ll never believe me said the fat man go on said hughie green i m a morgue attendant said the fat man and roared with laughter the audience couldn t help itself and roared too then there was the girl who when asked are you married answered no i live at home with two sisters and a b of a brother a piece says hughie green that ended up on the cutting room floor the same girl asked what questions she wanted to take replied on cooking well asked hughie what kind of sauce do you put on the following meats chicken mint sauce she replied no i m sorry that s wrong said hughie what about pork chops mint sauce she said but you don t put mint sauce on pork chops protested hughie well we do on our b pork chops she said ten years ago and hughie green and assistant vic hallam set the mood for double your money in the warm up before the show it was the summer of 1955 and hughie green was telerecording the first of his famous double your money quiz shows one of the longest running shows on television the search for programmes by the new independent television companies was well under way four months before the service opened on september 22 1955 it was towards the end of may that an associated rediffusion talent scout called at the baker street studios in london where hughie green was recording the radio version of his show for radio luxembourg would you like to try it for tv asked the talent scout would i said hughie the answer s yes i realised he says today what wonderful opportunities itv was opening up for everybody in the entertainment and allied fields and i knew i d have to be in it we telerecorded a show and in less than a month associated rediffusion had made up their minds to buy it it was pretty tough doing them in those early days sometimes we were stuck for an audience i remember one night only a handful of people turned up for some reason or other so even though we had makeup on our faces all of us including myself went out into the streets and knocked on people s doors and asked them if they would like to take part in a tv show and that way we got a very good mob telerecording was fairly primitive in those days the cameras could only shoot 10 minutes or so of the show at a time you d have got everybody warmed up and somebody would be about to say something funny or somebody s trousers would be about to fall off when the cameraman would call out the film s run out so you d swear at him hate him and shout how you loathed the system and so on and wait until he had re loaded elsewhere staff training was carried out at a furious pace ex bbc men like stephen maccormack and barry baker men who had just started in television like ex navy man commander robert everett were flown to new york to study how american commercial tv dealt with the tricky technical job of timing programmes and commercials at the small viking studios off kensington high street two training courses with cameras and equipment were run for all the programme staff directors secretaries sound mixers vision mixers lighting experts cameramen all listened to lectures and then tried out in practice what they had been taught alongside them auditions for announcers personalities actors and actresses were conducted on closed circuit television i had to audition the announcers says leslie mitchell anybody and everybody thought they could do it some were very nearly right some were terrible i think i must have auditioned about 300 people altogether but it seemed like 3 000 chris chataway interviewed the deputy governor of cyprus mr john sinclair in october 1955 as one of his first jobs for itv in itn chris chataway and robin day stumblingly learned to read news bulletins my most vivid memory says chataway is of this wooden board which was put up to simulate a tv camera into which we solemnly delivered these news bulletins we would crane forward and talk into this wooden framework while everybody stood around and watched then we were taught how to conduct an interview people forgot ...