Towards the later part of the 70s I started doing drama, mostly with Phil Smith but some with John Muxworthy, who taught me boom swinging, basically. And the sort of drama techniques.
So you were an assistant on the dramas that you refer to…
My first dramas, I was a boom swinger. Yes, boom operator. The first ones where we did, I think the first sort of major network one was a thing called The Nearly Man, which was directed by John Irvine. After that we did Hard Times, where we had this amazing set on what is now the Science and Industry Museum, of a huge sort of fairground, and we had lots of smoke and braziers, and circus acts and that, Timothy West was in that and Patrick… I’ve forgotten his name. Yes. So that was great. So I began to do more drama, although there was still the variety you’d go off and do, you know, and I started doing recording on news as well, which was a great training ground, because you could do no wrong, basically. So you could try things out and get a lot of experience without coming to any harm. So that was my first recording experience.