THE heart of the World of Sport doesn’t beat. It ticks relentlessly.

Tick-tick. It’s the first sound heard by three typists, four sub-editors, two pools advisers, eight results men, three editorial executives, 40 sound, lighting, camera, studio, props and make-up staff when they arrive at Teddington Studios at 8.30 every Saturday morning.

Tick-tick, tick-tick. That’s the sound of the enemy – the small black clock with white figures on the studio wall. It reaches a pounding, panic-stricken peak at around 4.40 p.m. And stops at 5.15 p.m.

But for eight hours 45 minutes every Saturday, that clock is the god of World of Sport.

Morning. Staff arrive quickly, without fuss. No time to chat. There’s equipment to check. Telepronters, soon to chatter their frantic messages; scripts to recheck; schedules to go over.

First tea of the day. Steaming. Good. One tea lady makes 25 gallons [~114 litres – Ed] of tea every Saturday for the World of Sport team.

Control room. One long desk. Six monitor sets.

Sports editor John Bromley, tall, rather pale, intense, sits in the middle seat. Assistants Ian Marshall and Olympic runner Adrian Metcalfe flank him. Already they’re checking on outside broadcast teams. John Rickman at horse racing… Freddie Trueman on a roving commission… Bill Fallowfield at Rugby League… Kent Walton at wrestling.

Late instructions for all of them. Last minute link with cricket correspondent Ian Wooldridge in South Africa.

The line’s faulty. Needs attention. Are the telephonists on the switchboard happy? Everything OK with the 16-man O.B. teams?

No troubles. Not at the moment. Anchor-man Eamonn Andrews arrives.

Teleprinters start tapping mid-morning messages. A game off here… a team change somewhere else. Each message carefully scrutinised; weighed up for news potential and rushed to Andrews.

No time for lunch. Just tea. It’s nearing zero hour. 12.50 p.m.— when World of Sport booms across your screens.

Strangely, no outward excitement. A sense of calm. Of expectancy. Of relief. Who was it that said waiting was the worst part of war? Countdown … three, two, one … IN. Perfectly synchronised. The face of Eamonn Andrews appears on the two centre monitors in the Control Boom.

Tick-tick, tick-tick, bang on 12.50 p.m. The war is on. The enemy is the clock.

First film report. Bromley waves his hands in the air as the flashover from studio to film seems to be seconds out. Sighs with immense relief as it flicks on in perfect time.

Pictures from Catterick racing appear on the two monitors on the right. John Rickman tuning in. Teleprinters going. Everyone has a job. News flashes from Bloemfontein to Birmingham are plonking into the in-tray.

Over to Catterick. First race. John Rickman selects his tip. Editorial racing man Ian Marshall duly notes. Eamonn Andrews, off screen, gets a few facial flicks with a powder puff from a make-up girl.

In comes the result of the first race. Jubilation in the Control Room. John Rickman tipped the winner. Eamonn does a double-handed “thumbs up” across the studio floor. Tick-tick. Everything going fine.

The soccer programme has kicked off. Flash. Denis Law has scored. That’s quick. And worth a mention. Skilfully, Eamonn’s voice is superimposed over snooker with the news. Another quick score message. Passed to Eamonn.

Panic, panic, panic. That last score … it was a Combination League score, not first team stuff. Frantic waving of arms in the Control Room, trying to attract Eamonn’s attention through the window. A messenger boy gallops away at full throttle with the correction.

“Now steady down, lads,” shouts Bromley. But is he just reassuring himself?

Executive producer Geoffrey Gilbert sails into the scene from his studio control box in the gallery. Declares that things are going smoothly.

Back again comes racing. John Rickman back on the screen, weighing up the next race’s prospects. “Tell ’em about your first race winner, Rickers,” implores John Bromley. (Nicknames are rife: Rickers, Bromers, Matters. I swiftly became Lanners!)

“OK, OK, Eamonn can do it,” said Geoffrey Gilbert. “Not to worry, lad. It’ll all work out.”

Tick-tick, tick-tick. Trouble. The 2.45 p.m. race starts 13 minutes late. Big trouble. Timing thrown out. The odd minute is allowed for. Thirteen minutes is a lifetime.

Schedule running late. Urgent readjustments. Cut Jimmy Hill interview. Get back snooker.

Soccer results coming in. Results “king” Dave Richmond collates the mass of teleprinter messages thumping on to his desk. All around a cacophony of clattering, typing, shouting. This is full stretch.

Yet on the studio floor, complete calm.

Wrestling over. Eamonn Andrews sums up the headlines. Into result sequence. Result reader Martin Locke is allowed exactly four minutes 40 seconds to cover all six leagues. He takes his time, standing casually before a mike, reading from a monitor in the studio. Ian Marshall does the same for the racing round-up.

All eyes on the clock. Tick-tick. tick-tick. No longer a menace. Eamonn signs off. Bang, theme music. Bang, advert for toothpaste.

John Bromley strides out of the Control Room, thanking everyone loudly. The clattering has stopped; plenty of chatter. Eamonn Andrews sits back, pours himself coffee from a couple of thermos jugs.

The news room is tidied and emptied within five minutes. One Saturday’s war is over. Next Saturday’s starts at 5.31 p.m. that same evening.

But at least you don’t hear the tick of the clock any more.

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The TVTimes tells us what’s on ABC on Saturday 27 July 1968. Things worth noting include:

• With one exception – Rediffusion’s The Gamblers at 9.05pm – everything today is coming from ABC. No other company gets a look-in except for outside broadcast items in ABC’s own World of Sport.

• ABC opens at 1.15pm for 50 minutes of pretty heavyweight adult education programmes.
  • The last in the series of The Middle Years presented by Ludovic Kennedy. The splendidly named Hilde Himmelweit, the ever brilliant Richard Hoggart and Polly’s father Philip Toynbee discuss how it feels to be middle-aged.
  • Fit for Life at 1.40pm is also sociology on the television – the 1960s being the peak of scientific sociology being seen as a potential cure-all. The GP and the psychiatrist talking to John Pett go unnamed because of the British Medical Association’s then-rule that practicing doctors where not allowed to advertise, and appearing on TV was in itself an advertisement.
• ABC produces the last World of Sport before handing it over to London Weekend from next week. The programme started in January 1965 and was presented by Eamonn Andrews with Richard (Dickie) Davies as his deputy. With Andrews off to Thames to host their daily magazine programme Today, Davies gets a promotion, with LWT promoting Fred Dinenage to the deputy spot.
  • The sports on offer today were diving from ATV, horse racing from ABC, athletics from Harlech, motor racing from ABC and wrestling from ATV, with the whole programme billed as an Independent Television Production. It was made at Teddington.

• The repeat of Life with Cooper marks the end of Tommy’s long association with ABC. However, Tommy and the series moved to Thames and Tuesday nights, renamed Cooper King-Size, as David Hamilton points out on air.

• The TVTimes in the North makes a big deal of Opportunity Knocks! being a special devoted to the closure of ABC at Didsbury – although Yorkshire Television would make some of its programmes there whilst they waited for their own studios in Kirkstall Road to be completed. In other TVTimes regions, the magazine would simply refer to this being a special edition to mark the closure of ITV’s Didsbury studios, with ABC’s name left out of it.
  • This special edition of OpNox! had no new talent in it, instead inviting back former contestants who had gone on to bigger things and showing the television audience around the backstage areas of the studio. The special, like much of OpNox! at ABC and at Thames, was produced by Royston Mayoh.
• The Horne a’Plenty sketch show at 8.35pm was another survivor into the new Thames, lasting one more series before the death of the brilliant Kenneth Horne brought it to a premature close.
• It was not unusual for Granada and Rediffusion programmes to turn up at the weekend – and ABC programmes to pop up on weekdays – across the major contractors as well as the minors. ABC and ATV’s petty bickering over the Sunday schedules had led to ABC pointedly selling The Avengers to Rediffusion and squeezing both ATVs out of one of the most popular programmes on British television. In return, ABC picked up several Rediffusion dramas, amongst them being The Gamblers at 9.05pm, which in turn squeezed blameless Granada out of some big hitters.
  • All this created a bonanza for the schedulers at the minor ITV companies, allowing them to pick and choose which networking of The Avengers and The Gamblers and the like to show according to what they felt their region would prefer rather than just going with the usual flow.

• At 10.15pm, it’s the final ABC Armchair Theatre, it losing the ‘ABC’ in the process of moving to Thames and a less comfortable weekday slot (other regions already didn’t mention the ‘ABC’ bit either). By happy coincidence, this is the 400th edition of the strand – which viewers in London miss, as ATV London dropped the programme in favour of a repeat of Gideon’s Way, which can’t help but feel like a small bit of spite from Sir Lew.
  • In typical Armchair Theatre style, the description of ‘The Ballad of the Artificial Mash’ sounds pretty sexist until the last sentence, which hints at a slightly more feminist outcome to the plot. We may never know, as the episode is missing from the archives.
• Sunday night had no epilogue, allowing the station to make a clean break as they went off air for the last time. So 11.15pm (approximately) sees the last ever religious talk at closedown in the North – Granada had never done them and Yorkshire launched continuing that policy.
  • This epilogue is by ABC’s religious adviser, and although it doesn’t survive in the archives, take my word for it that it was truly surreal. Ian Meckenzie opened with the most bizarre and tortured metaphor in the history of late night sermons, solemnly telling viewers that “Jesus was like the Independent Television Authority” and going on to note that the “disciples are like the [ITV] contractors”. It was ludicrous.

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He was born in Synge Street, Dublin, and educated at Synge Street CBS. He began his career as a clerk in an insurance office. He was a keen amateur boxer and won the Irish junior middleweight title in 1944.

In 1946, he became a full-time freelance sports commentator, working for Radio Éireann, Ireland’s national broadcaster. In 1950, he began presenting programmes for the BBC, being particularly well known for boxing commentaries, and soon became one of television’s most popular presenters. He began hosting the game show What’s My Line? in 1951.

Throughout the 1950s, he commentated on the major British heavyweight fights on the BBC Light Programme, with inter-round summaries by W. Barrington Dalby. On 20 January 1956, he reached #18 in the UK Singles Chart with a “spoken narrative” recording named “The Shifting Whispering Sands (Parts 1 & 2)”, which was produced by George Martin with musical backing by the Ron Goodwin Orchestra, released by Parlophone as catalogue number R 4106, a double-sided 78rpm record. The song later reappeared on Kenny Everett’s compilation album The World’s Worst Record Show, which was released in June 1978.

Between 1955 and 1964, he presented the long-running Sports Report on BBC’s Light Programme. In 1965, he left the BBC to join the ITV contractor ABC, where he pioneered the talk show format in the UK. He hosted a chat show on ITV, The Eamonn Andrews Show for five years. He was known for coming up with off-the-cuff linkings that did not work – such as: “Speaking of cheese sandwiches, have you come far?” This was parodied by the character Seamus Android on Round the Horne in the 1960s, performed by Bill Pertwee. In the 1960s he presented Thames Television’s Today news magazine programme.

He was likely best known as the presenter of the UK’s version of This Is Your Life, between its inception in 1955 and his death in 1987, when he was succeeded by Michael Aspel. Andrews became the very first This Is Your Life subject on British television when he was surprised by the show’s creator, Ralph Edwards. Andrews also created a long-running panel game called Whose Baby? that originally ran on the BBC and later on ITV. He was a regular presenter of the early Miss World pageants.

His contribution to UK radio is commemorated in the The Radio Academy Hall of Fame. Andrews appeared as the linking narrator who introduces the unrelated segments that comprise the portmanteau film, Three Cases of Murder (1955).

Article source: Wikipedia | Contributors | CC-BY-SA 3.0

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You know, I probably spent loads of time in front of the telly as a child, as some of you did too. As a sickly child (asthma), I relied upon the TV set to provide undemanding entertainment, yet I only watched Granada when the “Pruitts of Southampton” or “The Beverley Hillbillies” were shown. Granada depressed me as a child. I know now what it was I felt: the Granada output, firmly rooted in the North of dark satanic mills, while extremely solid and gutsy, sometimes lacked a little of that showbiz glitter. On the other hand, ABC came across as a friendly, relaxed company with sparkle, and my recollections of ABC are, as such, more lucid and coherent, even though I was only seven when the company took its final bow.

So what memories do I have? Imagine that you’re just about at school age, and the only thing to do on Saturday mornings is to listen to the Light Programme, as my family often did, to “Junior Choice” and then “Saturday Club”. I loved those shows, and the atmosphere they created was magical.

I used to wish ABC was on immediately afterwards (12 noon) but it never was: it used to start with adult education programmes until “World of Sport”. But when teatime came, there were a succession of excellent things to enjoy, like “Just Jimmy” and “Batman”. Of the former, I really believed, as a child, that Jimmy Clitheroe was about 10 or 11 – it was a shock to hear that he was 51 when he died in 1973. “Batman” caused more accidents in my home than you could wag a stick at. After each week’s amazing story, my older brothers used to pretend that they were Batman and Robin, or I was Robin (it varied) and Mum’s best tea towels ended up as superhero capes. My eldest brother always wanted to be the supervillain, so he may have used Mum’s coat to be the Penguin, or Dad’s jacket to be the Riddler or the Joker. Leaping three stairs in a single bound, inevitably one – or all of us – ended up with some degree of minor injury, crying as Mum applied Witch Hazel for the umpteenth time to a cranial lump the size of a dinosaur egg. All this pain, despite David Hamilton warning us not to try to fly like Batman! Kids! Ha!

Recently, I found a copy of a Tommy Cooper video in my local megastore. I saw that the copyright was given to ABC. Hmm, I thought. I wonder if this was what I watched as a five-year old? And it was “Cooperama”, which I thought was absolutely the funniest thing I’d seen, which still, as a video, retained something of the original sparkle I referred to earlier. All these years later, Tommy Cooper still makes me laugh.

I always remember the “Blackpool Show”, because we used to watch it on Sunday evenings before school holidays. According to all accounts, Tony Hancock was the MC, but I only recall Bruce Forsyth for some reason. These shows were class, no more, no less. Admittedly, looking at the TV Times listings, they were, in retrospect, very middle-of-the-road fare, but it’s easy to forget that the inclusion of more up-to-date music or comedy was sparse across all TV output. Mind you, entertainment was entertainment in those days.

My parents sometimes let me stay up late when I was unwell, and I was able to see “The Magic Box” with Kenneth Robinson. What I remember of it is this: titles similar to “Picture Box”, a signature tune that sticks in the mind, and a succession of guests, all placing their favourite object or moment in the magic box. The antithesis of this would be “Room 101”!

“Time to Remember” was one of a number of series dedicated to history, and it always seemed to be on at odd times and days. The ticking of the grandfather clock always seemed to soothe me, and made me attentive for the whole of the half-hour. A lot of famous actors narrated those films, like Sir Ralph Richardson.

After enjoying all of these ABC moments and more, the final weekend rolled around. David Hamilton reminded us to make sure that we got the correct TV Times for our area, some shows ended up shoe-horned into the schedule (“Sgt Cork” on Sunday afternoon) and the final programme, “Goodbye From ABC” was trailed as being on at 11.55pm. Unfortunately for me, I had to go to bed, so I never saw that programme. I heard it though, from the comfort of my pillow, with tears in my eyes.

To this day, I can recall those weekends with warmth and affection, where television, although becoming increasingly sophisticated and constantly developing, retained something of its magic.

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Jack Hedley and Billie Whitelaw in the award-winning Armchair Theatre production.

Police Surgeon

Ian Hendry as Dr Geoffrey Brent attending to the wounded in the cop drama.

Our House

Hattie Jaques and Charles Hawtrey in Norman Hudis’s comedy about surreal boarding house residents.

The Human Jungle

Herbert Lom as the psychiatrist who can’t stay professionally detached from those he hopes to help.

Glamour all the way

Acceptable then, cringe-worthy now, the first Miss TVTimes contest is judged by Patrick Macnee and Adam Faith and won by Valerie Martin.

Redcap

John Thaw fights crime in the army as a member of the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch.

World of Sport

Saturday afternoons mean sport – and owning ITV’s largest Outside Broadcast fleet means ABC brings you the programme, fronted by Eamonn Andrews.

Public Eye

Alfred Burke as the private eye with no gun and no mobsters lurking.

Intrigue

Edward Judd fights industrial espionage.

The Phantom Lover

David Buck appears in a supernatural drama series Mystery and Imagination, in this story opposite Virginia McKenna.

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

CS Lewis’s timeless classic, adored by children and adults alike.

Photographs: TVTimes/ABC/ITA

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