One of the less well publicised jobs at BBC Television – The man with the gun

BBC Television Centre in London. Big studio doors. Big airborne problems.

Yesterday, someone asked me if working as a researcher on BBC TV News’ early teletext service CEEFAX was my first job at a TV company.

No. It was my third.

My first was working as a Services Clerk in Central Services at BBC Television Centre.

They looked after the physical maintenance of the building and things like furniture and carpets. Not glamorous.

If people had problems with their radiators or lights or paintwork or phones, desks, windows or rats & mice and much more… In fact, if you had any problem with any of the fabric of the building or the stuff in your office… the central department you contacted was Central Services where two clerks answered the phones and four other people farmed out the problems to the actual people who could sort them out.

I was one of the two clerks who answered the phones.

I think maybe it was no coincidence that Terry Gilliam – who was one of the Monty Python team based at Television Centre at the time – called the rather bureaucratic plumbing/electrical maintenance organisation in his film Brazil Central Services.

I worked in Central Services for one year during which the BBC carpenters, electricians and general maintenance people were (from memory) about 30% understaffed (and they were – possibly not unconnected – about 30% underpaid too). During my time, there was a three-day week and there was an infestation of mice on the third floor. How the little bastards got up there, I don’t know. And I don’t mean the people who phoned in to complain.

It was very busy.

After that first non-programme-making job at the BBC, the high pressure deadlines of programme making were a dawdle in comparison.

People tended to shout at you a lot because things didn’t get done quickly.

I remember justly-famed BBC producer Dennis Main Wilson (Till Death Us Do Part apart many other shows) throwing a fairly-justified strop in the office one day, flouncing out and attempting to slam the door behind him but it had a Briton spring and so closed in slow motion with no noise. At least that one door worked in the building.

One of the things which had to be sorted out was the occasional problem of pigeons and other birds in studios.

The studios at Television Centre had big scene dock doors – like a film studio. They often had to be left open. Birds occasionally got in. Not often, but sometimes. Usually pigeons.

If you had a TV show in the studio, you did not want a bird squawking or flying around or shitting on the performers and set during the recording or – even worse – during a live show.

Studios are big. They have high roofs. It is virtually impossible to get a bird out quickly, if at all.

So what do you do? What did we do?

The answer is we phoned Rentokil, who sent a man round sharpish with a rifle and he shot the bird. He had to be a skilled marksman. Because the roofs of TV studios are covered with tens, perhaps hundreds of lights and there are electric cables everywhere.

For the sake of the nation’s entertainment, many a bird has been shot.

It is, perhaps, one of the less well publicised, yet vital, jobs in television.

“When I went down, it was about six inches long!” she said, still horrified

The horror… The horror… and they are getting bigger…

After the Edinburgh Fringe finished, I drove back to London from Edinburgh on Monday night – Well, actually the early hours of Tuesday morning. My eternally-un-named friend was looking after my house while I was away.

When I phoned her at 2.00am on Tuesday morning, there was initially no reply. This was because she was out in my back garden with a torch and a two twigs. She had looked out into the garden from my back bedroom and there, illuminated in the light from my kitchen below was what she described as a scene of horror.

“When I went down, it was about six inches long!” she said, still horrified by the memory.

She told me the full details yesterday.

“Hold on, hold on,” I said, scrabbling to turn on my iPhone’s audio recorder, “The slugs are getting bigger and now they’ve developed an ability to re-grow their heads?”

“They always had this ability,” she replied. “I just read about it on Google.”

“And they’re getting bigger?” I said. “Why are they getting bigger?”

“Because they’re eating a lot,” she said “and it’s been raining a lot.”

“They’re drinking a lot of water and they’re bloated with rain?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “they’re eating all the little plants.”

“And you said something about squidginess,” I prompted.

“No, no,” she said. “No more! Another subject. Let’s find something jollier.”

“You could be part of my increasingly prestigious blog,” I said. “Just the sqidgy reference. Give me the squidgy.”

“Well,” she relented, “I was a bit tired with putting boiling water on them, you know, to kill them. And then you have to drain off the boiled water and then I was adding salt and washing powder, because they seem to be able to come alive again even after all these terrible things. You find one that’s crawled out of the pan before dying.”

“Crawled out of the pan?” I said, surprised. “The pan?”

“Or a bird’s come along,” she continued, ignoring me, “and tried to lift it out and decided they didn’t like the flavour of washing up liquid or salt.”

“Pan?” I repeated.

“It turns out that copper,” my eternally-un-named friend said, “is really good for killing black mould. So we’ve now got to look for a lot of copper things on eBay.”

“Is black mould relevant to the slugs?” I asked.

“No,” said my eternally-un-named friend. “Well, it is slightly. There was a point where the grossness of everything and the looking round… I did try to spread coffee over one area at one point, because they don’t like coffee.”

“Slugs don’t?” I asked.

“The egg shells have worked a treat,” she continued, cheering up. “They can’t climb over egg shells. It’s too jagged. Egg shells are very sharp. You can cut things with egg shells.”

“I’m surprised chickens can get out of them,” I said.

“Anyway…” my eternally-un-named friend said, “there came a point where I couldn’t be bothered putting them in the water. I thought I’ll just squidge them to death… because I’m not actually touching them… So the end of a plank or something… bashing them and trying to rub them… And they ended up in little pieces, which I left there… Only to return a day or so later and it was like seeing half a thumb lying there, which had suddenly grown a head.”

She paused.

“It was gross!” she said, and started laughing uncontrollably.

“The pan,” I eventually interrupted. “There was a reference to a pan.”

“Well,” she said, “the pan is what I’ve been putting them in, with the boiling water.”

“Out the back door?” I asked, with visions of slugs being cooked in the frying pan on my cooker.

“Well,” she explained, “I gave up with the salt and washing up liquid. It was costing a fortune.”

“Do you pick them up with tweezers?” I asked.

“Sometimes I pick them up with sticks,” she explained. “You know how I’ve been eating with chopsticks a lot? I’ve been getting a bit more dextrous.”

“You’ve been using my chopsticks from Beijing?” I asked, slightly worried.

“No,” she reassured me, “I’ve been using twigs like chopsticks, only it’s a bit tricky.”

“Surely slugs are slimy and slide off?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “you pincer them between the two sticks and lift them up. Do you remember nothing of chopstick technique?”

“And you have a pan of boiling hot water out the back door?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “I stick them in an empty, dry, copper pan and then I just pour the… I’m usually making myself a cup of tea, wander out into the back garden… See one… Oh blimey! There’s a slug!… Next thing you know, I’m having to go into full operational mode and pour my boiled water which was going to make my cup of tea over a slug instead. By the time I’ve finished the whole awful procedure, I have had no tea and wander round the garden to see if there’s any other things out there. The biggest drag of it all is when you have to pour off the boiled water so you can tip the little bodies into the green bin. It’s all geechy and slimy and they all look quite gross.”

“How many have you killed in the four weeks I’ve been away?” I asked.

“Maybe thirty,” she told me.

“That’s around one a day,” I said. “Can’t we eat them?”

“You eat them,” she replied. “in a frying pan of your choice. I’m not going to have anything to do with them.”

“You can probably make a fortune selling them to some foreign restaurant,” I suggested. “They’re probably a delicacy in Norway or Burundi or Sarawak or somewhere.”

“I’m sure you’ll love them,” my eternally-un-named friend said.

“I’m still not clear about the washing powder,” I prompted.

But then she changed the subject. Intentionally. Successfully.

Why I had to eat half a grapefruit for my birthday breakfast today & for the slugs

The British Olympic team parade in their gay Abba costumes

I was slightly unsettled last night by the sight of the British team at the Olympic Opening Ceremony walking round the track wearing what appeared to be gay Abba tribute costumes. Now I have to face dead slugs. Only time can tell which will leave the greater psychological scar.

I blogged last month about my eternally-un-named friend’s triumph in building a better mouse trap and drowning one of the diminutive rodents overnight in my living room.

Now she has turned her attention to species cleansing my garden.

Planks and an unexplained copper chamber pot in my garden

She likes plants, which means she dislikes slugs, which is why there were three short wooden planks lying in my garden yesterday morning. And an unexplained chamber pot.

“They crawl around all night, doing their heinous things,” my eternally-un-named friend told me yesterday morning. “The slugs. Eating your plants and then, before dawn starts, they need somewhere to hide.”

“Like vampires?” I asked.

“Yes,” she agreed, laughing in an unsettling way. “Like vampires and Daleks,” she said. “They need somewhere to hide that’s damp and away from the sun, because they dry out. The slugs. The whole thing about them is they go round on their slime everywhere and they don’t like to dry out. That’s why they do their eating at night.”

“I know you put the planks down,” I said, “so the slugs will hide under them and you will find them in the morning. But there is a chamber pot involved. I didn’t know I had a chamber pot.”

Oddly orange and very dead slug barely visible in chamber pot

“The chamber pot,” she explained, “just happens to be the only thing I can use to put the salted water in. And it has a dash of washing up liquid. I don’t want to use saucepans and plates – obviously.”

“But I didn’t know I had a chamber pot,” I said. “The first I knew of it was ten minutes ago. I know I have a bad memory, but… And it’s metal!”

“I got it on eBay,” my eternally-un-named friend explained.

“But why a metal chamber pot?” I asked.

“It’s copper. It’s a lovely colour,” she said.

“But you will hear the sound of your own plops,” I said. “Why did you buy it?”

“Well,” she said, “I like copper and a chamber pot is always useful.”

“For killing slugs?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You either lay planks down on the ground near the plants – which they will hide under when the day comes – or you can use half a grapefruit.”

Grapefruit: weapons of mass destruction in the slug war

“You drop the grapefruit on them?” I asked.

“No. You cut the grapefruit in half and then eat the middle out,” she explained, “then over-turn it  and put it on the ground near the plants like a little hut for the slugs… And you maybe put some water around the area because they are drawn to anything that’s damp and then they hide under the hollowed-out half grapefruit and think Oh good. I’m not going to dry out during the day. But you find then the next day and, em…”

“You kill them?”

“Well, only one fell for my plank ruse this time,” she said, “but I read an article on Google that said, in one hour, you can collect one hundred slugs.”

“In a small space?” I asked.

“It didn’t say…” my eternally-un-named friend mused, “It didn’t say what size of space. But I suppose, if you had a very large garden…”

“Like the back garden of Buckingham Palace,” I suggested. “If the Queen did it, she’d probably get a hundred. I think I read somewhere that she likes grapefruit.”

“I would think, in your garden so far I’ve easily caught twenty odd.”

“Yesterday?”

“Over a period.”

“I don’t suppose Prince Charles would approve of his mother stalking and killing slugs,” I said, lost in my thoughts. “You had that dream last night.”

“Mmmm…..” my eternally-un-named friend said, also lost in thought. “About a giant…”

“Slug,” I said.

“Ye-e-e-s,” she said.

One casualty in the on-going back garden war of attrition

“What was it doing?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just had to find a bucket of water big enough to stick it in. The chamber pot was not big enough… And then there are the eggshells…”

“The eggshells?” I asked.

“Well, an alternative is – though you can use all these at the same time, of course – and I think you should – Slugs don’t deserve to live if they eat my sweet peas… Look at the size of my sweet peas! Can you remember what size they were last year?”

“I… I…” I spluttered ineffectively.

“They’re less than half the size!” she told me, her voice rising.

“What’s happened to the top half?” I asked.

“The slugs have eaten them,” she told me.

“But slugs don’t eat from the top down,” I said. “They can’t levitate.”

“Yes,” my eternally-un-named friend agreed, “but that’s why they don’t grow any further, because someone went and ate them when they were starting. They’re half the height and that bush which is supposed to be a pom-pom bush is…”

“… now only a pom?” I suggested.

“Every little sprout!” she said, passionately. “They chew on the new sprouts. A new sprout can’t turn into an older sprout if someone’s gone and eaten it.”

“Won’t the poison just kill them?” I asked.

My eternally-un-named friend has been spreading little blue poison pellets around my back garden for the last few weeks. When we returned last week after a week in Milan, there was a small mound of dead and decomposing slugs under a an up-turned flower pot.

“Another thing which will apparently kill them is coffee,” my eternally-un-named friend told me yesterday.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“I will try pouring coffee – obviously not hot – over the plants… I don’t think it will damage the plants but, anyway… slugs don’t like it and they’re not sure why…”

“The slugs aren’t sure why?” I asked.

“The experts,” she told me reprovingly. “They think it’s maybe because of the caffeine drying-out the slugs.”

“There’s always cocaine,” I suggested. “They’d run around so fast they’d burn their stomachs off and die in screaming slug agony. But why eggshells?”

“I told you,” my eternally-un-named friend said patiently. “They’re like the Daleks. They need a flat surface.”

“Daleks can levitate now,” I pointed out.

“They can’t climb over sharp edges,” she said, ignoring me. “So you put broken eggshells round the bottom of the plants like an impenetrable barrier.”

“Like tank traps,” I said.

“Yes,” she said supportively. “Well done.”

“And it is true,” I said. “You never actually see Daleks at the bottom of plants, do you?”

“Well, in your garden you do,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

A Dalek hides in the undergrowth at the bottom of my garden

“But won’t the poison pellets just kill them?” I asked, persisting. “The slugs, not the Daleks.”

“The blue pellets are very ugly on the ground,” she replied, “and they don’t work when it gets wet, because the whole thing of killing them is with the dehydration. And apparently the poison pellets work by attracting them. So, if they don’t eat the pellets and you haven’t managed to kill them, then you’ve gone and attracted a whole lot who are going to lay eggs around everything and you’re going to have the whole same problem keep happening and, basically, you’re doomed.”

My unexpected birthday breakfast today – half a grapefruit

“I’m doomed?” I said.

“Death and taxes and slugs,” she said.

So it goes.

Happy birthday to me.

A death in my home, a dead body lying among the bushes in my back garden

I wipe away a tear as I walk back from the bushes in my back garden

The last couple of days, I have blogged about the mouse in my living room. Sitting in bed, yesterday, I posted my blog, then mentioned it on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and then…

…literally about 30 seconds later…

My eternally-un-named friend rushed into my bedroom and almost shouted: “It’s dead!”

Flashback.

My eternally-un-named friend had built a mouse trap which was poo-pooed by both myself and by mouse-killing comedian Lewis Schaffer.

“Mice can swim!” we both separately told her.

How to build a better mousetrap including the death plank

The trap was a bowl of water covered in a sheet of newspaper with a cross cut in the middle and a small piece of Mars bar placed on the cross as bait. The seemingly silliest part of the trap was a wooden ruler placed against the side of the bowl so that the mouse could get up to the newspaper, crawl across towards the piece of Mars bar and, because of its weight, when it reached the cross cut in the paper, the mouse would fall through the paper into the water and drown.

Yesterday morning, hearing the news, I put on my dressing gown and went downstairs. Sure enough, there was a hole in the paper.

Death by drowning in a bowl of water: a sad end to a life

When I lifted the paper off, the dead mouse was floating, face-down, in the bowl of water, its little paws stretched out from its torso.

“I’m amazed,” I told my eternally-un-named friend. “I didn’t think it would work.”

“It’s the amount of water that’s important,” she told me. “It has to be shallow enough that it can’t climb out the side of the plastic bowl, but deep enough that its feet can’t reach the bottom of the bowl. That way, it drowns.”

“You are a dangerous woman,” I told her. I should have known. I have a photograph of her sitting at a dinner table in Milan with three bullets on the plate. Don’t ask.

I told Lewis Schaffer about the drowning of the mouse.

“Wow,” he e-mailed. “That’s incredible. You need to take a picture of the device.”

The last resting place of a living creature, lying unburied

“Have photos,” I e-mailed back. “of device, dead mouse in bowl, corpse in back garden, me returning from disposal sobbing piteously.”

Perhaps I should be ashamed of myself. Making light of a death.

I poured the water and the body of the mouse onto the earth among bushes at the end of my garden. I like to think it is what the mouse would have wanted. It is far better, I feel, than being thrown away in the green wastebin provided by the council for garden rubbish. Better to be eaten by a passing cat or pecked-at by magpies than to rot with orange peel in a rubbish tip.

When I die, I have told my friend Lynn, the executor of my will, who will have to dispose of my body, that I don’t want to be cremated. I want to be buried and slowly rot into the earth. It seems far more natural. Romantic, even.

Lynn is currently in Kyrgyztan. I suppose someone has to be. Why her, I have no idea.

Late yesterday afternoon, as I drove to see a recording for the Sky Arts TV channel of Michael Parkinson interviewing war photographer Don McCullin – someone who has seen countless men, women and children die in front of him – my eternally un-named-friend said: “I wonder what happened in the night, in the dark. Did the mouse go into the water head first? It would have climbed up the ruler, then crawled over the newspaper until it got to the Mars bar on the cut cross and then… Was it scrabbling with its feet in desperation as it felt the paper collapse under it? How long did it take to drown, alone in the dark?”

“I haven’t mentioned Malcolm,” I told her. “But I thought about him.”

We both knew comedian Malcolm Hardee, who drowned one night in 2005.

“I was thinking about him too,” she said. “I didn’t like to mention it.”

Ars longa. Vita brevis.

So it goes.