I am the Peter half of the blog.
I have been so busy thinking about starting this blog that I haven’t actually written a post on our own blog.
Having given it some thought, I decided something different to getting fit might come as a breath of fresh air.
So I will digress and tell you a little about myself.
Our older “Get Fitters” will probably remember the programme series I mention.
When I was 49, I became one of three Producers of a new long running TV investigative series called “The Cook Report”, so called because it was presented by the then well known Roger Cook of the BBC Radio 4 programme Checkpoint.
Roger was a New Zealand-born British investigative journalist and television broadcaster and was well established as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront wrongdoers in all their various forms, so he was ideally suited for this series.
In those days film crews (Yes, film, not video) amounted to at least 7 people – Director, Researcher, Cameraman, Assistant Cameraman, Sound Recordist, Sparks (Lighting) and PA who looked after all the crew and their needs and took all the shot notes and was the one who often used the clapper board to identify the shot and to enable the sound to be put in sync with the picture.
Usually the Producers who acted in the joint role of Producer/Director were journalists and needed a full crew but because I had come up through the ranks, BBC TV Engineer, Lighting Engineer, Sound Recordist, Film Cameraman, TV Director, Roger and I would be sent off on our own as between us we encapsulated all the necessary abilities required. So we were very cost-effective, where the programme budget was concerned, as regarding expenses (Hotels, Flights Etc.)
So I was lucky enough to travel the world at Central Television’s expense. Well, not exactly the world, quite a few countries in Africa and Europe, the United States and parts of Asia.
Roger was too well known to do any undercover work unless heavily disguised so all the secret filming was down to the producer/directors and the researchers.
We targeted villains of all types, shapes and sizes and most of the secret filming was from my bag or briefcase or a pinhole camera in my tie depending on the type of villain or location.
I, personally was involved in quite a few hairy programmes, Ivory poachers in Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania, child pornographers in the UK and Amsterdam, and tomb raiders in Turkey to name a few.
I was a Producer on “The Cook Report” for 10 years and produced 22 programmes but shot a lot of footage for the other two Producer/Directors as I came free. A cameraman didn’t always have to be taken on if I was available as I could do the filming/videoing for them. I contributed in this way on a further 66 “Cook Reports”