Well, sport then was… and of course, the Northwest as we all know, was a hotbed of football then as it is very much now. I wouldn’t have done it in that first three months, but certainly then in the following year or so. We had been working on local sports programmes. Of course one of our classics at the time… and we had one of the preeminent sports presenters, Elton Welsby, who then had developed a very national profile. So you would be working on live football matches. You would go out on a Saturday afternoon to record the match. So again, you’d be taking your kit apart, rubbing down the team names, and of course just hoping you got all the spellings right. But luckily, there weren’t quite so many foreign players then. So there were a lot more Joneses and Smiths. Then of course, there was always the… the directors would always panic. They wanted the score before it was actually at the score goal, and the goal scorer. But hey, you didn’t have a crystal ball, so you had to wait. Funnily enough, they always thought graphics even then, was electronic. They thought it was instant, whereas you’re still physically rubbing a name down. So yes, they would be a bit longer to wait for a name to go up on a caption.
Presumably, you could pre-do the actual scores.
Yes. Well, you could do. But they’d want the scorers, and of course you couldn’t do those. And of course, if it was a long name or something. But yes, we’d be on the outside, OB trucks as they were called, and they’d park up. I always remember, I ended up… I can’t remember if City won or City lost that day, but it was a main road and it was seven goals swinging the game. And that was a frenetic game, I seem to remember. The OB trucks were always really cramped. Although though there’s a comradery, which there is with the sparks and the electricians and the engineers, at the same time everyone’s looking out for themselves as well. So it’s an odd mix, really. Everyone is very professional in that they want to get their own bit done. You look out for each other, but you want to make sure that you get your bit right. So, yes. Yes.
I think some people take to live more than others. I guess it is a bit nervous. I’ve always liked football and knew a lot about football, I guess. So it helped as well to go there. And of course, going to some of these great grounds and thinking, wow. Yes, this is main road. This is Old Trafford. Which I had only ever read about in Shoot Magazine, way down south in Devon, where I was born. So, yes. No, it was. It was good. We were also meeting various freelance people or directors and that, that you’d only work with occasionally. On the whole, like I said, there’s a real comradery and professionalism. But at the same time, there was some sharp tongues if you didn’t get things right. Yes, there was an accepted standard always, which is quite right.